In the past

There lies a somnolent lake

Under a noiseless sky,

Where never the mornings break

Nor the evenings die.

Mad flakes of colour

Whirl on its even face

Iridescent and streaked with pallour;

And, warding the silent place,

The rocks rise sheer and gray

From the edgeless brink to the sky

Dull-lit with the light of pale half-day

Thro’ a void space and dry.

And the hours lag dead in the air

With a sense of coming eternity

To the heart of the lonely boatman there:

That boatman am I,

I, in my lonely boat,

A waif on the somnolent lake,

Watching the colours creep and float

With the sinuous track of a snake.

Now I lean o’er the side

And lazy shades in the water see,

Lapped in the sweep of a sluggish tide

Crawled in from the living sea;

And next I fix mine eyes,

So long that the heart declines,

On the changeless face of the open skies

Where no star shines;

And now to the rocks I turn,

To the rocks, around

That lie like walls of a circling sun

Wherein lie bound

The waters that feel my powerless strength

And meet my homeless oar

Labouring over their ashen length

Never to find a shore.

But the gleam still skims

At times on the somnolent lake,

And a light there is that swims

With the whirl of a snake;

And tho’ dead be the hours i’ the air,

And dayless the sky,

The heart is alive of the boatman there:

That boatman am I.

Trumbull Stickney

(Picture: Moonlight night on the sea, Arkhip Kuindzhi)