‘All my heart is known to thee—
All my longing and my yearning for the Loved One lost to me—
May these eyes again behold her?’—and the Shape said, ‘Come and see.’
It is impossible to read one hundred and twenty-five stanzas or 625 lines like the preceding, in which the feminine endings make fixed caesural pauses that prevent enjambement and thus inhibit rhythmical variety, without the reader’s feeling himself in the realm of the musically melodramatic. So that the high seriousness of the poem suffers a loss in impressiveness because of the metre and rhythm of the poem. It is plain that De Mille was not an adroit verbal musician. The spiritual dignity and seriousness of the poem can be commended, but on the whole, it is not poetry, and is not a significant contribution to the Canadian monody.
[1] A Seamark is found in the collection Ballads and Lyrics, by Bliss Carman (McClelland & Stewart: Toronto).
[2] Lines in Memory of Edmund Morris is from Lundy’s Lane and Other Poems (McClelland & Stewart: Toronto).
CHAPTER XVI
Novelists
THE FICTIONISTS OF THE SYSTEMATIC SCHOOL—THE HISTORICAL ROMANCERS—LIGHTHALL—SAUNDERS—PARKER—MARQUIS—MACLENNAN AND McILWRAITH—AGNES C. LAUT—WILFRED CAMPBELL—CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS. THE ROMANCERS OF ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY—THOMPSON SETON—ROBERTS—SAUNDERS—FRASER. THE EVANGELICAL ROMANCERS—RALPH CONNOR—R. E. KNOWLES.