Religion, these, as from a fountain start
The river, have been hers—man to endow.
It is Norwood’s mastery of verbal color and music and his power of spiritual vision and exaltation—his interpretation and treatment of Ideal Love—that constitute his novel quality of fresh excellence in the poetry of the Second Renaissance. Certainly in his sonnet-sequence His Lady of the Sonnets (1915), he has enhanced the quality of Canadian poetry. Uppermost in his heart and imagination is the refining redemptive, transmuting power of Love, an absolute joy in the thought of the spiritual union and companionship of the Lover and the Beloved. To him Love is a holy ideal; and Loving is the fusion of soul and soul, of spirit and spirit, until the Lover and the Beloved become one soul, one spirit, enamored of holiness in thought, speech, and deed.
As an example of Norwood’s sensuously colorful and musical envisagement of the Ideal Love we quote the following sonnet:—
I meet you in the mystery of the night,
A dear Dream Goddess on a crescent moon;
An opalescent splendour like a noon
Of lilies; and I wonder that the height
Should darken for the depth to give me light—
Light of your face, so lovely that I swoon