The quotations in this chapter are from A Lover’s Diary and Embers, by Sir Gilbert Parker, (Copp, Clark Co., Limited: Toronto); and from Poems, by Frederick George Scott, (Constable & Co.: London).
CHAPTER XIV
Minor Poets
THE TERM ‘MINOR’ DEFINED—ETHELWYN WETHERALD—JEAN BLEWETT—FRANCIS SHERMAN—A. E. S. SMYTHE—S. FRANCES HARRISON—ARTHUR STRINGER—PETER MCARTHUR—ISABEL ECCLESTONE MACKAY.
It is proper to distinguish Roberts, Lampman, Carman, Campbell, Duncan Campbell Scott, Frederick George Scott, and Pauline Johnson as the ‘major’ poets of the First Renaissance in Canadian Literature. Though of necessity with them the writing of verse was in a sense an avocation, in another sense it was a vocation. They were systematic both in the writing and the quantitative publishing of it. Contemporary with them, but, for the most part, later in production and publishing, were other poets who wrote with beauty and distinction in poetic style. They followed the aesthetic and artistic ideals of the ‘major’ poets, but they were not as systematic as Roberts and his confrères in writing or in quantitative publishing. These are denoted in this work the ‘minor’ poets of the Systematic School or Period. But nothing invidious as to quality of verse is intended by the distinction. For a few of these so-called ‘minor’ poets of the Systematic Period wrote some poetry as fine in aesthetic substance and artistic finish as the poetry of Roberts and his colleagues. The term ‘minor’ is meant to distinguish these poets as being, first, later, for the most part, than Roberts and his confrères, and as being, secondly, less eminent than the early systematic group of Canadian poets. The number of these so-called minor or later poets is legion. They ‘flourished’ from 1887 to 1907, or from the publication of Roberts’ In Divers Tones to the appearance of Robert Service’s Songs of a Sourdough (the beginning of the Decadent Interim). Detailed appreciation of the minor poets of the Systematic Period would, therefore, require a volume by itself. Here we may only recall the salient names, and specially remark the verse, of some of the minor poets whose lyrical poetry is particularly representative or noteworthy, or has become genuinely popular.
Worthy of a place beside the major poets of the Systematic Period is Ethelwyn Wetherald. In 1895 she published The House of the Trees and Other Poems; in 1902, Tangled in the Stars; in 1904, The Radiant Road and in 1907, an edition of her collected poems, The Last Robin; Lyrics and Sonnets. Perhaps the outstanding aesthetic quality of her poetry is a tender, subdued, melancholy, spiritual grace, ‘a grey-eyed loveliness,’ which undoubtedly derives from the characteristic pensiveness of her Quaker ancestry. But in all her verse, which is authentic poetry, she discloses pretty sentiment, reflective beauty, ingenious imagery, and fine craftsmanship. The Hay Field, which is Canadian in inspiration, setting, and color is an apt example of Ethelwyn Wetherald’s art:—
With slender arms outstretching in the sun
The grass lies dead;
The wind walks tenderly and stirs not one