Frederick George Scott (1861–1944)

IT sleeps among the thousand hills

Where no man ever trod,

And only nature’s music fills

The silences of God.

Great mountains tower above its shore,

Green rushes fringe its brim,

And o’er its breast for evermore

The wanton breezes skim.

Dark clouds that intercept the sun

Go there in Spring to weep.

And there, when Autumn days are done,

White mists lie down to sleep.

Sunrise and sunset crown with gold

The peaks of ageless stone,

Where winds have thundered from of old

And storms have set their throne.

No echoes of the world afar

Disturb it night or day,

But sun and shadow, moon and star,

Pass and repass for ay.

’Twas in the grey of early dawn

When first the lake we spied,

And fragments of a cloud were drawn

Half down the mountain side.

Along the shore a heron flew,

And from a speck on high,

That hovered in the deepening blue,

We heard the fish-hawk’s cry.

Among the cloud-capt solitudes

No sound the silence broke,

Save when, in whispers down the woods,

The guardian mountains spoke.

Through tangled brush and dewy brake,

Returning whence we came,

We passed in silence, and the lake

We left without a name.