The Witch-Maid, and Other Verses/The Grey Lake
THE GREY LAKE
(Lake Eyre, South Australia)
Far away to southward
The grey lake lies,
Thirty leagues of mud, bare
To turquoise skies.
Shallow, sluggish water,
Warm—warm as blood;
Not enough to cover
The quaking mud.
Hot winds drive the water
In summer time
Southward—and behind them
There lies grey slime.
Forty miles to westward,
A hundred north,
Wind-fiends hunt the water
Back—back and forth.
There are reed-grown islands
The eye scarce sees,
Grey ooze guarding grimly
Their mysteries.
Strange Things may survive there,
What, who can tell?
Monsters old—the lake-slime
Can guard them well.
No one knows those islands,—
The gulls that fly
May go near, but others
Would surely die.
For the wind-scourged water
Would flee the ships,
And the mud would open
Her soft smooth lips.
So the isles are sacred
From alien tread,
Since the slime can swallow
And keep her dead.
Who can know her secrets?
The blue sky might—
(Cloudless-hot in daytime,
Star-gemmed at night).
To and fro for ever
The water swings,
And the gulls fly over,
For they have wings.