While the bells ring for slumber
As out of the deep,
Come pleading those velvet-winged
Spirits of sleep.
And there at thy doorways
Of slumber he stands,
Like him of old Horeb,
And sees his heart’s lands;
And under the white awe
Of planets that swim,
Knows dawning and even
As one world to him.
To the Ottawa
Out of the northern wastes, lands of winter and death,
Regions of ruin and age, spaces of solitude lost;
You wash and thunder and sweep,
And dream and sparkle and creep,
Turbulent, luminous, large,
Scion of thunder and frost.
Down past woodland and waste, lone as the haunting of even,
Of shrivelled and wind-moaning night when
Winter hath wizened the world;
Down past hamlet and town
By marshes, by forests that frown,
Brimming their desolate banks,
Your tides to the ocean are hurled.