Bliss Carman.
Bliss Carman is a native of New Brunswick and began life as a civil engineer and school teacher. The muse won him, however, almost from boyhood, and he has written steadily, slowly and safely, which is equivalent to saying that he has written progressively. Like many of the Canadian writers, he came to the United States to seek recognition. Here he met three other Canadians—C. G. D. Roberts, James Clarence Harvey and the late Richard Hovey. They formed a talented quartet of struggling poets, and their little world known as “Vagabondia,” was one of the most fascinating centers of American Bohemianism of the better type. Literary and artistic people coveted the privilege of entering therein. Mr. Carman and Mr. Hovey published several volumes of songs from “Vagabondia.” The subject of this sketch is best known by his Coronation Ode and his Sapphic Fragments. There is a fine and tender quality in Mr. Carman’s poems that accounts for their popularity among people possessing that which is known as the “artistic temperament.”