Breaking Camp
Helena Coleman has much of that spiritualisation of vision which was so evident in Adelaide Proctor, and which was exalted to the supremest poetic art by Mrs. Browning. From Miss Coleman's Love's Higher Way these stanzas are taken:
"Constrain me not! Dost thou not know
That if I turn from thee my face
'Tis but to hide the overflow
"Of love? We need a little space
And solitude in which to kneel
And thank our God for this high grace
"That He hath set His holy seal
Upon our lives. My heart doth burn
With consciousness of all I feel
"And own to thee, and if I turn
For one brief moment from thy gaze,
'Tis but that I may better learn
"To bear the unaccustomed blaze
Of that white light that like a flame
Thy love has set amidst my days."
Of Isabella Valancy Crawford, who flashed like a glancing star across Canadian skies, and whose death in 1887 (at the age of thirty-six) was a signal loss to her adopted country, Mr. Garvin, at once her biographer and the editor of the complete edition of her poems, well says: "A great poet dwelt among us and we scarce knew her." William Douw Lighthall pronounces Isabella Valancy Crawford the most impressive Canadian poet next to Roberts. "This wonderful girl, living in the 'Empire' Province of Ontario, early saw the possibilities of the new field around her, and had she lived longer might have made a really matchless name. It was only in 1884 that her modest volume came out. The sad story of unrecognised genius and death was re-enacted."