In his Passing of Autumn Mr. Lampman gives this delicate picture:
"The wizard has woven his ancient scheme—
A day and a star-lit night;
And the world is a shadowy-pencilled dream
Of colour, and haze, and light."
And who would not turn to his April in the Hills to greet the springtime?
"I break the spirit's cloudy bands,
A wanderer in enchanted lands,
I feel the sun upon my hands;
And far from care and strife
The broad earth bids me forth. I rise
With lifted brow and upward eyes.
I bathe my spirit in blue skies,
And taste the springs of life.
"I feel the tumult of new birth;
I waken with the wakening earth;
I match the bluebird in her mirth;
And wild with wind and sun,
A treasurer of immortal days,
I roam the glorious world with praise,
The hillsides and the woodland ways,
Till earth and I are one."
Mr. Lampman was a master of the sonnet and one of these entitled Outlook touches a high note, while another, The Railway Station, so interprets the poetic side of common experiences as to be rather distinctive among all his work and so claims reproduction here:
"The darkness brings no quiet here, the light
No waking; ever on my blinded brain
The flare of lights, the rush, the cry, and strain,
The engines' scream, the hiss and thunder smite:
I see the hurrying crowds, the clasp, the flight.
Faces that touch, eyes that are dim with pain:
I see the hoarse wheels turn, and the great train
Move labouring out into the bourneless night.
So many souls within its deep recesses,
So many bright, so many mournful eyes:
Mine eyes that watch grow fixed with dreams and guesses;
What threads of life, what hidden histories,
What sweet or passionate dreams and dark distresses,
What unknown thoughts, what various agonies!"
Bliss Carman has long been recognised by the critical lover of poetic art as a poet of unusual distinction and grace. When, in the days of his early youth, his poem Low Tide on Grand-Pré appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, all connoisseurs in poet-lore felt the magical touch. Over all the barren reaches on which the sun had gone down the poet saw the "unelusive glories":
"Was it a year or lives ago
We took the grasses in our hands.
And caught the summer flying low
Over the waving meadow lands,
And held it there between our hands?