But specially to be noted is the fact that Carman does not stand apart from Nature, from the woods, and flowers, and hills, and streams, and become an interpreter of Nature’s moods and emotions. Nay, the poet enters into the tree or flower and becomes one with their soul or spirit, their body becomes his body, and their voice, as heard in his poetry, is but his voice articulating to the world what they are unable to articulate. Nature, in Carman’s poetry, is become vocal; and the poet himself is her very Voice. Metaphors in the nature-poetry of Carman are not metaphors at all; they are direct experiences of spirit:—
Just where one scarlet lily flamed,
I saw His footprint in the sod.
• • • •
I caught the glory of His robe
Where the last fires of sunset burned.
This personal identity of the human spirit with the spirit in (or of) Nature, this personal sympathy with the poet’s kin in wild Nature, and this taking on as a body the matter and form of a tree or flower or bird or other creature of Nature, and becoming vocal for them, and thus uttering their thoughts, and feelings, and emotions, is new in Nature poetry, and original with Bliss Carman. It is not Greek; it is not English; but it is Canadian and unique. It is Carman’s most notable contribution to world poetry.
This spiritual monism in Carman’s poetical attitude to Nature explains the seemingly strange commingling of songs of pure delight in the beauty and bounty of Nature and of joy in existence with poems which are the expression of a poet who has ‘kept watch o’er man’s mortality.’ It explains such contradictions as the joyousness of some poems and the metaphysical questings of others in Carman’s From the Green Book of the Bards (1903). It explains, in particular, why Carman, who, when he wishes, can surpass Roberts as a nature-colorist and whose poetry is actually rich in idyllic impressionism, never seems to set out, with conscious intent, to be a nature-colorist or word-painter for the sake of sheer impressionism. No other Canadian poet can make or has made such a brilliant use of primary colors or such an exquisite use of delicate tints and evanescent play of light on color as has Bliss Carman. In all his nature description or impressionism, Carman’s aim has been two-fold—first, ‘to better the world with beauty,’ and to compel appreciation of Nature wherever her sweet or solacing spirit abides, to reveal the haunt where Nature affords spiritual communion and refreshment. His aim, in short, is to have men go out and meet Mother Nature. To effect this, not to show how flashily she is dressed, Carman paints her face and garb sometimes brilliantly, sometimes with a grey-eyed loveliness. Carman’s poetry of Nature is only Nature herself ‘calling’ to each vagabond to rise and go out to meet her, ‘wherever the way may lead.’ This two-fold aim of Carman’s nature-painting or poetic impressionism is compellingly expressed in A Vagabond Song:—
There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;