Saint Mary's Lake
By ERNEST McGAFFEY
1911

Saint Mary's, with her bannered heights,

Her limpid curves, her beauty's prime,
Stands ringed about with days and nights

As young as Youth, as old as Time.
Against the skies' o'er-arching dome

Her waters bask as smooth as glass.
Where edged with evanescent foam

The wind-spun ripples veer and pass.
To wait aloof on wooded steeps

And mark Saint Mary's pebbled floors,
With gold and green amid her deeps

And green and gold along her shores:
To look beyond brown rushes lone

Where blended with the shadows dim,
Like specks upon a canvas thrown.

The penciled forms of wild-fowl swim :
Is what the idlest dreamer sees

Half steeped in pools of bluish haze.
While touched with hint of wandering breeze

Unfolds before his listless gaze.
A vision of impending woods.

With yellow-scarlet fires agleam,
The Artist-trace of Autumn moods

On Nature's lavish color-scheme.
And slim young trees in colors bright

That through the groves hold carnival.
In sylvan maze of motley flight

With tipsy vine-shapes, bacchanal.
While fraught with sound of liquid themes

A distant music seems to be.
Of rills that murmuring meet the streams,
* Of streams that singing seek the sea.

Aye! many a year when I am gone.

Around Saint Mary's shore will twine
The miracles of dusk and dawn.

The changing webs of shade and shine.
And who shall read her hidden page?

Whate'er his sect be, creed, or school?
All one the scholar, saint and sage,

The dunce, the blockhead and the fool.
Who carved this space among the hills?

Who wrought the wave and arched the blue?
Who wove the currents of the rills?

And Echo, listening, answers "Who"?
And I, that hold no opening key

To solve the blank 'twixt star and clod.
Stand on Saint Mary's heights and see

How small is man, how vast is God.