Bliss Carman is not properly called a nature-interpreter. To understand his point of view we must contrast his with that of Lampman. For Lampman Nature is one kind of being and Man is another—two separated entities—and Man may only commune with Nature by ‘reciprocal sympathy.’ So Lampman goes out to his Canadian maples and elms, fields and streams, and talks to them, as if they were human, and can sympathize with him. This is all simulated imaginative sympathy and communion on the poet’s part. The maples and elms, fields and streams, are really dumb, and the poet does but attribute to them what speech or answer he wants back from them for the solace of his spirit. Always with Lampman, Nature and Man are two. He does but humanize Nature for his own purposes, by conscious, deliberate objective symbolism.
Carman, on the other hand, is a spiritual monist. Nature and Man are not two. There is, in Carman’s poetical psychology and metaphysic, no mind and matter. The whole universe is spiritual through and through, and the vital spirit which is in Nature is the same spirit which is in Man and which is God. The universe is wholly spirit. We may call this ‘the higher pantheism;’ but even in pantheistic doctrine, matter does exist as alien to mind or spirit. Carman has no such attitude. He differs from Lampman in conceiving himself as able, by spirit or will, to identify himself personally with Nature. This power of personal identification with Nature begets personal sympathy; and the communion which the poet has with Nature is a ‘heart-to-heart talk,’ for spirit with spirit can meet. This new philosophy of personal identity of the human spirit with Nature is expressly declared by Carman:—
I blend with the soft shadows
Of the young maple trees,
And mingle in the rain-drops
That shine along the eaves . . .
No glory is too splendid
To house this soul of mine,
No tenement too lowly
To serve it for a shrine.