Space, in the dim predestined hour,
Shall crumble like a ruined tower.
I only, with unfaltering eye,
Shall watch the dreams of Gods go by.
Hovey, whom we may accept as an accomplished judge of symbolist literature, put "Do Seek their Meat from God" and "The Young Ravens that call upon Him," two sketches in "Earth's Enigmas," and "Savory Meats," a story published in the Chap-Book, together, and said that they "form an altogether unique and extraordinary triptych. I am inclined to think these three pieces," he says, "Roberts's most notable contribution to literature. The problem of the struggle for existence, of the preying of life on life, is treated with an inexorable fidelity to the fact, a catholic sympathy, a sense of universality and mystery, and a calm acceptance, that reaches the level of 'pathos' in the highest Greek usage of the word. There is a finality in these three prose poems that is known only to the greatest art."
As for Robert's novels, they are full of the perfumed freshness, the vigorous life and the romantic wealth which constituted, and to a small extent still constitute, the salient characteristics of the lands in which he spent his youth. We have noted his narrative and descriptive power. Let us take from "A Sister to Evangeline" one of Paul Grande's visions of Yvonne de Lamourie.
"In one of these I saw her as she stood a certain morning in the orchard, prying with insistent little finger-tips into the heart of a young apple-flower, while I watched and said nothing. I know not to this day whether she were thinking of the apple-flower or wondering at the dumbness of her cavalier; but she feigned, at least, to concern herself with only the blossom's heart. Her wide white lids downcast over her great eyes, her long lashes almost sweeping the rondure of her cheek, she looked a Madonna. The broad, low forehead; the finely chiselled nose, not too small for strength of purpose; the full, firm chin—all added to this sweet dignity, which was of a kind to compel a lover's worship. There was enough breadth to the gracious curve below the ear to make me feel that this girl would be a strong man's mate. But the mouth, a bow of tenderness, with a wilful dimple at either delectable corner always lurking, spoke her all woman, too laughing and loving to spend her days in sainthood. Her hair—very thick and of a purply-bronze, near to black—lay in careless fullness over her little ears. On her head, though in all else she affected the dress of Grand Pré maids, she wore, not the Acadian linen cap, but a fine shawl of black Spanish lace, which became her mightily. Her bodice was of linen homespun, coarse, but bleached to a creamy whiteness; and her skirt, of the same simple stuff, was short after the Acadian fashion, so that I could see her slim ankles, and feet of that exceeding smallness and daintiness which may somehow tread heavily upon a man's heart."
And there is a strong resemblance to Thomas Hardy in at least one of the paragraphs narrating Paul Grande's race with death toward the Anderson farm—the paragraph dealing with the idle things that then incongruously concerned the hero:
"Things idle as these: I see a dew-wet fir-top catch the moonlight for an instant and flash to whiteness, an up-thrust lance of silver; I see the shadow of a dead, gnarled branch cast upon a mossy open in startling semblance to a crucifix—so clear, I cannot but stoop and touch it reverently as I pass; I see, at the edge of a grassy glade, a company of tall buttercups, their stems invisible, their petals seeming to float toward me, a squadron of small, light wings; I hear the smooth swish of branches thrust apart; I hear the protesting, unresonant creak of the green underbrush as we tread it down, and the sharp crackle of dry twigs as we thread the aisles of older forest; I hear, from the face of a moonlit bluff upon our left, the long, mournful Whóo-hu-hu—Hóo-oo of the brown owl. I smell the savour of juniper, of bruised snakeroot, and of old, slow-rotting wood; with once a fairy breath of unseen linœa; and once at the fringed brink of a rivulet, the pungent fragrance of wild mint. I feel the frequent wet slappings of branches on my face; I feel the strong prickles of the fir, the cool, flat frondage of the spruce and hemlock, the unresisting, feathery spines of the young hackmatack trees; I feel, once, a gluey web upon my face, and the abhorrence with which I dash off the fat spider that clings to my chin; I feel the noisome slump of my foot as I tread upon a humped and swollen gathering of toad-stools."
More than one judicious critic has remarked that few men of his years have achieved—and deservedly!—the literary renown which Professor Roberts's published works warrant. These works are as follows: "Orion and Other Poems" (1880), "In Divers Tones" (1887), "The Canadians of Old" (a translation from the French of de Gaspé, 1889), Appleton's "Canadian Guide Book" (1890), "Ave, An Ode for the Shelley Centenary" (1892), "Songs of the Common Day" (1893), "The Raid of Beauséjour" (1894), "Reub Dare's Shad Boat" (1895), "Around the Camp Fire" (1896), "Earth's Enigmas" (1896), "A History of Canada" (1897), "The Forge in the Forest" (1897), "The Book of the Native" (1897), "New York Nocturnes" (1898), "A Sister to Evangeline" (1898), "By the Marshes of Minas" (1900), "The Heart of the Ancient Wood" (1900).
However, notwithstanding this long and excellent literary record, we are assured that Roberts "has a keen fondness for athletics. He is an enthusiastic football and tennis player, canoeist and fisherman, and is equally as skilled in these as he is in the pursuits of literature."
Another novel from his pen, "Barbara Ladd," appears this fall. "I consider it," he writes, "a sort of cross between 'The Heart of the Ancient Wood' and a historical-psychological romance." As for the future, he says: "Next will probably appear a collection of poems, and a collection of animal stories. Then another romance, planned but not yet named; and then, if the Fates are very good to me, I'll take time for a long lyrical drama on which I have been engaged off and on for some years."