Mr. Carman is pre-eminently the poet of nature, as how else could he be when, in The Breath of the Reed, he makes this appeal?
"Make me thy priest, O mother.
And prophet of thy mood,
With all the forest wonder
Enraptured and imbued";
or when he thus expresses himself in The Great Return?
"When I have lifted up my heart to thee,
Then hast thou ever hearkened and drawn near,
And bowed thy shining face close over me,
Till I could hear thee as the hill-flowers hear.
"When I have cried to thee in lonely need,
Being but a child of thine bereft and wrung,
Then all the rivers in the hills gave heed
And the great hill winds in thy holy tongue—
"That ancient incommunicable speech
The April stars and Autumn sunsets know—
Soothed me and calmed me with solace beyond reach
Of human ken, mysterious and low."
Mr. Carman is, however, more than a writer of exquisite lyrics, more even than a painter and hymner of nature in its various aspects and moods. He is more deeply concerned with the mystery which we call life than with anything else, and again and again seeks to understand and express his sense of that mystery. His Behind the Arras—described by a recent writer as the most distinctive book of poems issued in English in the past quarter of a century— is a record of such attempts. We quote here the opening verse of The Players:
"We are the players of a play
As old as earth,
Between the wings of night and day,
With tears and mirth."