In two respects, then, Marjorie Pickthall may be regarded as having made original contributions to Canadian literature. First, she winsomely pictorialized, not, as with Lampman, spiritually interpreted, the face and pageantry of Nature. Secondly, she subtilized verse technique in verbal coloring and melody. She had a light and tender fancy, and, certainly for Canada, a rare artistry. She brought Titania and Ariel to earth again; and suffused existence with magical illusion, rhymed of light. The monument she herself raised to her genius and memory is not large and imposing; but it is, like her own spirit, chaste, exquisite, beautiful—and enduring.
Another significant creative poet of the Second Renaissance Period is Robert Norwood. Miss Pickthall was an objective poet. Whenever her imagination concerned itself with the spiritual realm it was to interpret only her own private experience, strictly from a personal point of view. Norwood is an interpreter of the Spirit to the Spirit—universalizing his imaginative experiences. He is, to be sure, a colorist and a musician in verse; but he is these secondarily in aim, whereas primarily he is the singer and interpreter of the meaning of Spiritual Love. In this field he has made a really original contribution to native Canadian poetry. In another field, however, he has made a still greater contribution to Canadian poetry.
The faculty of love, which is the deepest function of man’s spiritual nature, is the imagination, the idealizing faculty. The greatest and most spiritualizing power in the world is love because its ultimate object is the heart of the universe; that is, Immortal Love, which is God, for God is Love. The greatest and most spiritualizing earthly object of love is Woman, because it is the idealization, the love, of Woman that most inspires men to achievement in this life and to the deserving of union and companionship on earth and in the life to come. That is to say, the spiritual love of Woman is the chief inspiration of human creative ideals and activities—of material achievement, of creation in the fine arts, and of religion. Thus did Goethe apostrophize this divine function of woman:—
Das Ewig Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan
—the eternal woman-soul draws us forever upwards and on; and thus has Robert Norwood also declared Woman’s spiritualizing function:—
Much have I learned of woman and the part
She plays in shaking from the laden bough
Life’s blossoms; all that has been, and is now,
And ever shall be: Science, music and art,