"We do but cross a threshold into day.
    Beauty we leave behind
    A deeper beauty on our path to find
And higher glories to illume the way.
    The door we close behind us is the Past;
    Our sons shall find a fairer door at last.

"A world reborn awaits us! Years to come
    Shall know its grace and good,
    When wars shall end in endless brotherhood
And birds shall build in cannon long since dumb.
    Men shall have peace, though then no man may know
    Who built this sunset city long ago."

Only nine years had passed since San Francisco had been practically destroyed by a sudden and terrible calamity. But the spirit of the Golden Gate laughs at calamity and with a magician's wand transmutes it into success. Only two years after this devastation San Francisco raised millions for the exposition she had planned. No earthquake could entomb her spirit, nor could it be drowned by any tidal wave that the Pacific is capable of providing. With that lofty poet, William Vaughan Moody, who, alas, "died too soon" for the nation which his lyre entranced, San Francisco might well declare:

"From wounds and sore defeat
    I made my battle-stay;
Winged sandals for my feet
    I wove of my delay."

The Panama-Pacific Exposition opened on February 15, 1915, and closed on December 4 of the same year. It was participated in by the Argentine Republic, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Equador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Holland, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Mexico, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Panama, Persia, Peru, Portugal, Salvador, Spain, Sweden, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

This enumeration of the countries participating will of itself suggest the somewhat new class of exhibits, as differing from those of older countries in former world-displays. The Panama-Pacific was thus its own precedent. Its claims to the novel and the unique were extremely well sustained. It was the second exposition held on the Pacific coast, and it had the longest duration by four months of any ever held before.

The grounds comprised over 600 acres, with a water-front of two and a half miles, on San Francisco Bay, just east of the Golden Gate. On the other three sides they were partly enclosed by hills, thus forming a natural amphitheatre. There were eleven colossal palaces with many lesser buildings. These palaces were grouped in a series of rectangles connected by courts and arcades with an Andalusian charm. The courts fascinated the eye by their colonnades, arches, domes, and glittering minarets. They were adorned by mural paintings of symbolic significance, by fountains, sunken gardens, and sculptured art, with niches and restful seats. Festival Hall, with its superb organ, where a concert was held every day, contained an auditorium seating three thousand people, and there were also ten smaller halls. The National Government staged its own special exhibit on a ten-acre space, appropriating two million dollars for this purpose, and this exhibit included a representation of the building of the Panama Canal.

In all this imposing world-panorama of twentieth-century exhibits, Canada led the procession. Whatever the enthralling nature of spectacles offered by other nations, it was the Dominion that set the pace. Canada, an entrancing, garlanded figure, aglow with her abounding enthusiasms; her resistless energy; her dreams of a future that crystallise themselves in her all-conquering empire building—Canada the Spellbinder assumed her place as if by divine right, and certainly by common consent, as the very Winged Victory flying on into a golden future. The Canadian Building, whose classic beauty would have done no discredit to the Parthenon had it also occupied a place on the "Holy Hill" that overlooks all Attica; this structure, so simple yet so rich in architectural effect, her main portal guarded by great lions sculptured on either side, was one of the most impressive creations of the entire Exposition. With a singular comprehensiveness of grouping, the exhibits in this building represented the Dominion in her completeness. It was no one province that engaged the attention to the exclusion of another; it was the Dominion herself, in the unity of her vast empire, rather than any merely tributary feature of the country. In the inscrutable magic that wrought this effect lay the secret of its spellbinding quality. It was a power that enthralled every visitor who crossed the threshold, and brought him back to study it again.

How was this result achieved? The question was in the air. Every one asked it. No one could exactly answer it, but every one shared the wonder. The statistical data of the Dominion was impressive enough for almost any commensurate influence; yet mere facts and figures could give little clue to the mysterious effect on the throngs of visitors. One might read that the population of Canada had increased from five millions to seven millions in ten years; and that fifty-five per cent. of this population was engaged in conquering Nature, and transmuting her plains into golden harvests as a granary of the world; that her Government is expending ten millions a year in agricultural instruction alone; that her root and fodder crop each year is valued at almost two hundred millions of dollars, representing an area of nine million acres, and that the value of her field crops annually is five hundred and fifty millions of dollars. One might read that her live stock, valued at a given time at seven hundred millions, increased a hundred and fifty per cent. within one decade only. This visitor might recall the shrewd assertion of James J. Hill that "there is land enough in Canada, if thoroughly tilled, to feed every person in Europe"; and that, while at present only thirty-six million acres are under cultivation, there are four hundred and forty millions, thirty per cent. of her entire area, that are available for agricultural use. Yet not all these impressive statistics can alone account for the innate magic, the indescribable witchery, that Canada flings about all who come to look upon these marvellous panoramas in her building. Statistical data have their uses and inspire respect, while one cons them by heart and feels sure he is thereby equipped to give a reason for the faith that is in him; but in his heart he knows that all the figures in the realm of mathematics could not really account for his consciousness of the fascinations of the Dominion. A leading journal of San Francisco, advocating the desire that the Californian exhibit should be made a permanent one, proceeded to point the moral and adorn the tale by pointing to the Canadian exhibition. The editorial argument thus ran:

"Canada, with her complete exhibit, has won much praise from Exposition sightseers and has set the precedent for a permanent exhibit. One reason why our northern neighbour was able to make such a splendid impression at the Jewel City from the first was because, as its display was permanent, much of it had been installed in a European exhibition and had come directly here from across the Atlantic. The packing cases were ready to be opened and the best arrangement for the resources of Canada had been determined by experience.

"California needs to be an active participant in future expositions, as active as the Dominion of Canada.

* * * * * * * * *

"With a permanent exhibit California will be ready at the first sound of an exposition reveille to rush to the front, full panoplied in luscious armour of golden butter, armed with 42-cm. cases of preserved fruits and with glittering shields of virgin gold.

"Then bring on your Canada!"

The skill with which the Canadian exhibit was grouped impressed itself first as a work of art, and only secondarily as a thing of commercial value. This skill in presentation was not the least element in its attractiveness. Here was Dawson, shooting out rays of violet, vermilion, and orange, myriads of lights in all the colours of the spectrum. A panoramic view of a wheat belt that would feed the world; Vancouver, with the great elevator at the water's edge; and with that, was Vancouver's prophetic dream of 1923, when three hundred millions of bushels of grain will be sent from Canada to Europe by the way of the Panama Canal; again there were the homes of farmers, attractive and realistic; an orchard scene introducing real fruit, and where realism ended and art began it was difficult to discover; the trees were laden with fruit; apples lay in heaps under the shade of the trees; young men and maidens were gathering the rosy and the golden fruit, tripping over the green turf so naturally that one half wondered if they as well as the apples were not actual? Here was a section out of British Columbia showing a sportsman's happy hunting-ground; there were snow-capped mountains, but with real water trickling down; an eagle, fierce, tempestuous, with widespread, flapping wings, is hovering in the air in a manner that would do credit to Heller, the wizard of necromancy on the stage. From yawning crevices bears emerge, until the visitor instinctively shrinks away, and the beaver is seen constructing his dam. Was it Governor Frontenac who recommended to the King of France that the beaver should be adopted as Canada's trade mark?

There are mounted duck, grouse, elk, buffalo, and sullen, scowling carabou gazing at the surging throng. There are buffalo from the Peace River region, a thousand miles north of the border between Canada and the States, where these hordes formerly ranged in countless droves, and which to-day is one of the finest of wheat-growing regions.

Nothing is more interesting to the curious visitor than are the views of typical Canadian homes. Some that are shown are but the growth of twelve years; from the time of the first turning of the plough in the prairie soil to completion of the two-storied, balconied house, with its broad piazza, set in the pretty grounds whose shady trees were planted as seedlings, with gay parterres of flowers in and around the curving walks and paths. The facilities for thus acquiring a home, by taking up the usual allotment of a hundred and sixty acres of land, which can be done on such favourable terms, turned the attention of many visitors toward the Dominion.

Another exhibit of great interest was that of power plant models, for every industrial centre in Canada has this abundance of power at very low rates, owing to the enormous supply of water power in the country. The canneries, too, form one of the most important industries, and their extent is well illustrated in the display made in the Canadian building.

There are cases upon cases of specimens of Canada's precious minerals: gold from British Columbia, silver ore from Cobalt, gold from the Yukon, and copper and various other minerals, with representative specimens of coal deposits. Other glass cases again display much of the flora of Canada, in a profusion of flowers whose rich and brilliant colouring attracts attention; and there are curious grasses and rare plants and foliage.

In one corridor are a group of life-like portraits in oil of King George and Queen Mary, of several of the Governors-General of the Dominion, and of many of the Government officials, Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and Premier Borden. In this connection it is rather interesting to recall that the appellation of the term Dominion to the country was due to a member of Parliament who, after Sir John Macdonald had arranged for the confederation of the nine provinces, and a name was being discussed, said that he had that morning read in his Bible the words: "His Dominion shall be from sea to sea," and the happy augury was seized and the term applied to the vast and splendid country.

Colonel William Hutchinson's hospitable offices were a favourite rendezvous for appreciative visitors. Here gathered Canadians and Canada-lovers to discuss the latest news from the Dominion. So largely, however, had Colonel Hutchinson's life been passed in the noted national and international expositions of the world that for fifteen years he has hardly been more than three months at a time in his home in Ottawa.

The Grand Trunk building offered, daily, a moving picture exhibition that attracted many onlookers, and so real were the effects that when in one a torrent of water came rushing over a cataract, the visitor near involuntarily turned for a seat farther back. In this building, as in the national one, the Dominion was laid under tribute in representation that interpreted the essential life of Canada.

The superb collection of photographs of the scenic mountain route of the Grand Trunk Pacific was a perennial attraction to visitors in the exhibit made by this transcontinental railway. It revealed anew how the completion of the Grand Trunk System is an achievement which in its daring, its magnitude of interests, and the enterprise involved was one of the great twentieth-century events, and one only to be compared with the opening of the Panama-Pacific Canal itself.

Looking towards Mount Munn from the Valley of Flowers
Looking towards Mount Munn from the Valley of Flowers

It is not the aim in this chapter to describe the whole of this interesting and beautiful Exposition, but only the contribution made by Canada; yet one can hardly refrain from noting the charm of the Alaskan exhibit with its panoramic presentation of the Muir glacier; nor that of the Santa Fe Railway in the "Zone," where the very realistic and wonderful portrayal of the Grand Canyon in Arizona was one of the great attractions of the entire grounds.

The Palace of Transportation was one of the extremely interesting features of the Exposition. Here could be studied the latest scientific methods of the day in many details not familiar to the general public, as, for instance, the method of handling mails on fast trains and the delivery at stations while the full speed of the train is maintained; many types of marine transportation; and still more of aircraft, the navigation of the air being one of the things constantly demonstrated to throngs of people who were absorbingly interested in the possibilities of aerial flight.

The experimental panorama of the Panama Canal itself was an appropriate feature. At the Exposition in Paris in 1900 the journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway was produced with extraordinary realism. The traveller entered a luxurious train, a very real train comprising drawing-room and dining cars, as well as a library car, and the passing of the long panorama of the entire scenery of that noted route gave a very vivid idea of what one would see in the actual journey. The California Exposition arranged a similar exhibit of a journey through the Panama Canal. The voyager was invited to the deck of a steamer, and ingenious illusions illustrated the sailing from ocean to ocean.

San Francisco was a gala city through the entire summer. Not the least of the enjoyments were the sails in the splendid local boats, with glass-enclosed decks, across the Bay to Oakland and to Berkeley, the latter city the seat of the University of California. There were excursions for every day in the week for those who wished to vary the scene, and the Exposition itself constantly presented new attractions and new features with the great number of congresses, the numerous lectures, and perpetual fêtes.

The close of the Panama-Pacific Exposition was a scene worthy to live in historic pageantry. The day was one of June dropped into the heart of December. The sun was burning against a cloudless sapphire sky. Within the very radiance of the Tower of Jewels, on one of the terraces of the Court of the Universe, was erected a stand on which were assembled the Directors, the Commissioners of Foreign Governments, the representatives of the Army and Navy of California, and the representatives of the City of San Francisco. From the arches of the Rising and the Setting Sun the sculptured figures looked down. There was orchestral music, and the reading of Mr. Sterling's poem from which lines have been quoted in preceding pages. The message of Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, was flashed around the world at the moment it was given to the Exposition. President Wilson well expressed the significance of the undertaking as one "eloquent of the new spirit which is to unite East and West and make all the world partners in the common enterprises of progress and humanity."

The guards marched away; the sailors fired a salute; the Exposition banner descended. President Moore's pictorial words have immortalised the scene:

"Night came on, and the world's wonder of lights; the Exposition lights that would never shine again—a red glow on Kelham's towers, rose flame in the porches of the Machinery Palace, dim reflections in the Lagoon of the Palace of Fine Arts and the broad basin in the Court of the Four Seasons, the splendour of the giant monstrances in the Court of Abundance, the silver phosphorescence of the Adventurous Bowman on his column and the Lord of the Isthmian Way on his rack-o'-bones horse, the tremulous frosty shimmer of the hundred thousand jewels of the great spire; and over all, the long bands, like lambent metal, of bronze and crimson and green and blue, from the forty-eight searchlights on the Yacht Harbour Mole, bands that barred the heavens so far that they deceived the eye and in the south-east appeared to converge beyond the hills of the city.

"Not abruptly, but slowly and gently, the lamps grew dark, the beams of the searchlights faded, and arches and courts and colonnades and towers and sculptured forms of men and women and angels and great beasts receded into the friendly night, lighted now by the glimmer of the winter stars, Orion and Sirius, Aldebaran and the Hyades. And through the starlight 'Taps' dropped in liquid notes from bugles high on the Tower of Jewels."

Bulkley Gate (150 feet high), Bulkley River
Bulkley Gate (150 feet high), Bulkley River

CHAPTER XII

CANADIAN POETS AND POETRY

"My guide is but the stir to song."

"But Love must kiss that mortal's eyes
    Who hopes to see fair Arcady;
No gold can buy you entrance there,—
No wisdom won with weariness."

"''Tis strange you cannot sing,' quoth he,
'The folk all sing in Arcady.'"

Arcady, or Canada, are they one and the same? The pipes of Pan echo throughout the entire Dominion. The Poet—

"Born and nourished in miracles,"

writes his scroll by every shining lake, in the deep, dim interior of the forest, on every majestic mountain height. He renders constant service to the inward law, and it is the poet who is the real historian of his country. It is he who immortalises her heroic deeds; who paints her landscapes in unfading colours; who crystallises her greatness into song. One line of the poet's may outweigh a volume of descriptive prose.

"His instant thought a Poet spoke
    And filled the age his fame."

It would be a marvel if the Canadian colour and atmosphere did not produce a choir of singers, if not, indeed, a nation of poets. Nor can national poetic feeling be measurably restricted to the comparatively few greater poets in any land or literature; to the supreme masters in the lyric art. The greatness of Wordsworth, Landor, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, of the Brownings, Tennyson, and of Swinburne, does not detract from, even though it overshadows, the charm of a score of the lesser poets, each of whom has his individual place. Had the lives of Browning and Tennyson been of the comparatively brief duration of Stephen Phillips, how much of their noblest work would have been unwritten? Had not Wilfrid and Alice Meynell, with angelic goodness, rescued Francis Thompson from destitution, what might not the world of poetic literature have missed? It is not alone by the standard of Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, or Petrarca that the art of poetry should be estimated. To no inconsiderable degree the number as well as the quality of the poets of a nation are typical of the national inspiration.

The fact that Canada, as a country that looks back to hardly more than a century and a half of organised life and whose literary expression has been almost entirely within the past half century, should have produced a body of poetry that has just claims to being considered national literature is as impressive as it is interesting.

"Has Canada a voice of her own in literature distinct from that of England?" questions Thomas Guthrie Marquis. "In Poetry, at least," he adds, "the Canadian note is clear and distinct, and of permanent value." There was little Canadian verse produced until well within the nineteenth century; and the first poem of real claim to distinction was the "Saul" of Charles Heavysege, published in 1857, a poem written "in the grand manner," the author presenting his ideas "with a dignity, austerity, and epic grandeur that are found in few poetic compositions." It was, however, with the decade of 1880-90 that the era of the modern and artistic poetic literature of Canada really opened, its keynote sounded by a poet, then hardly twenty years of age—Charles George Douglas Roberts—whose name has come to be widely known as that of one whose lips have been touched with the divine fire. His initial volume, Orion and Other Poems, revealed something in the quality that established his right to poetic rank. His very crudities, faults of construction inevitable to youthful ardour and inexperience, were still more suggestive of promise than higher technical excellence that might be recognised among contemporary verse. The classical tendency and temperamental assimilation were very obvious; the young man was evidently a devotee of Shelley and Tennyson; but he might easily have had worse masters. Six years later came his second volume of verse, In Divers Tones, that at once laid special claim on lovers of poetry; and when, in 1893, his Songs of the Common Day appeared, with its exquisite Ave, commemorating the centenary of Shelley, many people felt that a new star had arisen to shine with permanent splendour in the poetic firmament. There are lines and stanzas in the Ave that are worthy to hold their immortality so long as the art of poetry lives to bless and ennoble and inspire life. Shelley—

            "the breathless child of change,
Urged ever by the soul's divine unrest."

And again:

"But all about the tumult of his heart
Stretched the great calm of his celestial art."

And this stanza:

"Thyself the lark melodious in mid-heaven;
    Thyself the Protean shape of chainless cloud.
Pregnant with elemental fire, and driven
    Through deeps of quivering light, and darkness loud
With tempest, yet beneficent as prayer. "

And the breathing line:

"And speechless ecstasy of growing June,"

condensing in itself all the rapture of summer hours; or the beautiful stanza:

"O heart of fire, that fire might not consume!
    Forever glad the world because of thee;
Because of thee forever eyes illume
    A more enchanted earth, a lovelier sea!
O poignant voice of the desire of life,
    Piercing our lethargy, because thy call
Aroused our spirits to a nobler strife
    Where base and sordid fall,
Forever past the conflict and the pain
More clearly beams the goal we shall attain!"

Perhaps the most perfect lyric of Charles G. D. Roberts, and one that, while in no sense an imitation, yet suggests the Break, Break, Break of Tennyson, is that entitled Grey Rocks and Greyer Sea:

"Grey rocks, and greyer sea,
    And surf along the shore—
And in my heart a name
    My lips shall speak no more.

"The high and lonely hills
    Endure the darkening year—
And in my heart endure
    A memory and a tear.

"Across the tide a sail
    That tosses, and is gone—
And in my heart the kiss
    That longing dreams upon.

"Grey rocks, and greyer sea,
    And surf along the shore—
And in my heart the face
    That I shall see no more."

One of the stirring poems is that of An Ode for the Canadian Confederacy, in which occur the lines:

"Awake, my country, the hour of dreams is done!
    Doubt not, nor dread the greatness of thy fate."

The lyre of Charles G. D. Roberts is one of many strings, and the temptation is rather irresistible to quote from him at still greater length.

Within the opening years of the decade of 1860-70 were born Charles G. D. Roberts, William Wilfred Campbell, Archibald Lampman, Bliss Carman, George Frederick Scott (now Canon Scott), and another who, though bearing the same name, is only related to the Reverend Canon by the ties of poetic brotherhood, Duncan Campbell Scott. William Henry Drummond (known especially as "The Poet of the Habitant") and Isabella Valancy Crawford belonged to the preceding decade, and although ranked as Canadian poets, were born in Ireland, coming to the Dominion at an early age.

William Wilfred Campbell is the poet both of Nature and of human interests. No adequate view of an art so many-veined and so fine as his can be presented within the limited space of these pages, but from his noble poem on England this stanza is taken:

"And if ever the smoke of an alien gun
    Should threaten her iron repose,
Shoulder to shoulder against the world.
    Face to face with her foes,
Scot and Celt and Saxon are one
    Where the Glory of England goes."

And this from The Hills and the Sea:

"Give me the uplands of purple,
    The sweep of the vast world's rim,
Where the sun dips down, or the dawnings
    Over the earth's edge swim,
With the days that are dead and the old earth-tales,
    Human, and haunting, and grim."

A discerning critic says of Mr. Campbell that his poems are "something akin to the whisper of silence, the magic of moonlight, the sadness of art." Yet perhaps more than all one finds the tender human strain, as in The Last Prayer, of which these stanzas are representative:

"Master of life, the day is done;
    My sun of life is sinking low;
I watch the hours slip one by one
    And hark the night-wind and the snow.

* * * * * *

"And must thou banish all the hope,
    The large horizon's eagle-swim,
The splendour of the far-off slope
    That ran about the world's great rim,

"That rose with morning's crimson rays
    And grew to noonday's gloried dome,
Melting to even's purple haze
    When all the hopes of earth went home?

* * * * * *

"Yea, thou mayst quench the latest spark
    Of life's weird day's expectancy,
Roll down the thunders of the dark
    And close the light of life for me.

"Melt all the splendid blue above
    And let these magic wonders die,
If thou wilt only leave me, Love,
    And Love's heart-brother, Memory."

His Canadian Folk Song has become a popular favourite. The last stanza runs:

"The firelight dances upon the wall,
Footsteps are heard in the outer hall,
And a kiss and a welcome that fill the room,
And the kettle sings in the glimmer and gloom—
Margery, Margery, make the tea,
Singeth the kettle merrily."

It is in the setting of Canada's wonderland to music that much of the best work of Mr. Campbell lies; in his Manitou, The Legend of Restless River, Dawn in the Island Camp, and the musical Vapour and Blue. He has made himself the interpreter of Nature in all her moods, as has also Archibald Lampman, of whom William Dean Howells said that his pure spirit was electrical in every line; and that "the stir of wing, of leaf, of foot; the drifting odours of wood and field," thrilled his readers in his verse.

Canoeing on the Fraser River
Canoeing on the Fraser River

"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?

* * * * * *

"And that we took into our hands—
    Spirit of life, or subtler thing—
Breathed on us there, and loosed the bands
    Of death, and taught us, whispering,
    The secret of some wonder thing."

That the poem is faintly, vaguely reminiscent of Swinburne's Félise is only an added charm. Like a refrain of music lingers the last stanza:

"The night has fallen, and the tide ...
    Now and again comes drifting home,
Across these aching barrens wide,
    A sigh like driven wind or foam:
    In grief the flood is bursting home!"

Mr. Carman has kept faith with the poetic dreams of his youth. Could there be found in the songs of any land a lyric more subtle, more delicately exquisite in expression, than this which he calls The Unreturning?

"The old, eternal spring once more
    Comes back the sad, eternal way;
With tender, rosy light, before
    The going out of day.

"The great white moon across my door
    A shadow in the twilight stirs;
But now, forever, comes no more
    That wondrous look of Hers!"

Master of many and varied orders of song, Mr. Carman has the rare art of the ballad; and his blank verse, as his lyrical, is enticing. A series of the daintiest lyrics, Songs of the Sea Children, call up a very fairyland in which to wander. One of these (the lyrics form a sequence) thus portrays the mysteries of spring:

"In the blue mystery of the April woods,
                Thy spirit now
Makes musical the rainbow's interludes,
                And pink the peach-tree bough.

"In the new birth of all things bright and fair,
                'Tis only thou
Art very April, glory, light, and air,
                And joy and ardour now."

Bliss Carman is a word-painter as well as a poet in his lyrical work. With what fairy-like magic he pictures the landscape, the colouring, the very breath of the summer wind, the rustle of leaves, and the swaying of the flower on its stem.

From a multitude of examples, here is one poem, entitled The Dance of the Sunbeam:

"When morning is high o'er the hilltops.
    On river and stream and lake.
Whenever a young breeze whispers,
    The sun-clad dancers wake.

"One after one upspringing,
    They flash from their dim retreat,
Merry as running laughter
    Is the news of their twinkling feet.

"Over the floors of azure
    Whenever the wind flaws run,
Sparkling, leaping, and racing,
    Their antics scatter the sun.

"As long as water ripples
    And weather is clear and glad,
Day after day they are dancing,
    Never a moment sad.

"But when through the field of heaven,
    The wings of storm take flight,
At a touch of the flying shadows
    They falter and slip from sight.

"Until, at the grey day's ending,
    As the squadrons of cloud retire,
They pass in the triumph of sunset
    With banners of crimson fire."

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."

And here the first verse of In the Wings:

"The play is life; and this round earth
    The narrow stage whereon
We act before an audience
    Of actors dead and gone."

And here are some lines from Beyond the Gamut, which for philosophic insight are surely hard to equal in modern poetry:

"As all sight is but a finer hearing,
    And all colour but a finer sound,
Beauty, but the reach of lyric freedom,
    Caught and quivering past all music's bound;

"Life, that faint sigh whispered from oblivion,
    Harks and wonders if we may not be
Five small wits to carry one great rhythmus,
    The vast theme of God's new symphony.

"As fine sand spread on a disc of silver,
    At some chord which bids the notes combine,
Heeding the hidden and reverberant impulse,
    Shifts and dances into curve and line,

"The round earth, too, haply, like a dust-mote,
    Was set whirling her assigned sure way,
Round this little orb of her ecliptic
    To some harmony she must obey."

The temptation to go on quoting from Mr. Carman's work (which is more varied and touches more chords than most persons—even among those who endeavour to keep in touch with the poetry produced in our day—are aware) has to be resisted, but space must be found for a portion of a recent poem, A Mountain Gateway, in which, in beauty and clarity of thought and expression, the poet reaches perhaps his highest point:

"I know a vale where I would go one day,
When June comes back and all the world once more
Is glad with summer. Deep with shade it lies,
A mighty cleft in the green bosoming hills,
A cool dim gateway to the mountains' heart.

"On either side the wooded slopes come down,
Hemlock and beech and chestnut. Here and there
Through the deep forest laurel spreads and gleams,
Pink-white as Daphne in her loveliness—
That still perfection from the world withdrawn,
As if the wood gods had arrested there
Immortal beauty in her breathless flight.

* * * * * *

"And where the road runs in the valley's foot,
Through the dark woods a mountain stream comes down,
Singing and dancing all its youth away
Among the boulders and the shallow runs,
Where sunbeams pierce and mossy tree trunks hang
Drenched all day long with murmuring sound and spray.

"There, light of heart and foot-free, I would go
Up to my home among the lasting hills,

* * * * * *

And in my cabin doorway sit me down.
Companioned in that leafy solitude
By the wood ghosts of twilight and of peace,
While evening passes to absolve the day
And leave the tranquil mountains to the stars.

"And in that sweet seclusion I should hear,
Among the cool-leafed beeches in the dusk,
The calm-voiced thrushes at their evening hymn,
So undistraught, so rapturous, so pure,
It well might be, in wisdom and in joy,
The seraphs singing at the birth of time
The unworn ritual of eternal things."

In the Reverend George Frederic Scott, D.C.L., F.R.S.C., Canon of the Cathedral in Quebec since 1894, Canada has a poet of high poetic seriousness of especial distinction, and with just claims to more than a national recognition. A long poem entitled Evolution, written by Canon Scott in 1887, stands as something unique in English-speaking poetry, in its presenting a great scientific truth with poetic expression. Of this some stanzas follow:

"Life out of death, death out of life,
    In endless cycles rolling on,
And fire-gleams flashing from the strife
    Of what will come and what has gone.

* * * * *

"But what art thou and what am I?
    What place is ours in all this scheme?
What is it to be born and die?
    Are we but phases in a dream?

* * * * *

"And we are present, future, past—
    Shall live again, have lived before.
Like billows on the beaches cast
    Of tides that flow for evermore.

* * * * *

"That may be so; but to mine eyes
    A being of wondrous make thou art—
The point at which infinities
    Converge, touch, and forever part.

"Thou canst not unmake what has been,
    Nor hold back that which is to come;
We dwell upon the waste between
    In the small 'now' which is our home.

* * * * *

"But in the ages thou shalt be
    A link from unknown to unknown,
A bridge across a darkling sea,
    A light on the world's pathway thrown.

* * * * *

"And we must pass—we shall not die;
    Changed and transformed, but still the same.
To grander heights of mystery,
    To fairer realms than whence we came.

"God will not let His work be lost;
    Too wondrous is the mind of man,
Too many ages has it cost
    The huge fulfilment of His plan.

"But on we pass, for ever on,
    Through death to other deaths and life;
To brighter lights when these are gone,
    To broader thought, more glorious strife,

"To vistas opening out of these;
    To wonders shining from afar.
Above the surging of the seas,
    Above the course of moon and star;

"To higher powers of will and deed,
    All bounds, all limits left behind;
To truths undreamt in any creed;
    To deeper love, more God-like mind.

* * * * *

"Great God! we move into the vast;
    All questions vain—the shadows come!
We hear no answer from the past;
    The years before us all are dumb.

"We trust Thy purpose and Thy will;
    We see afar the shining goal;
Forgive us, if there linger still
    Some human fear within the soul!

* * * * *

"But lo! the dawn of fuller days;
    Horizon-glories fringe the sky!
Our feet would climb the shining ways
    To meet man's widest destiny.

"Come, then, all sorrow's recompense!
    The kindling sky is flaked with gold;
Above the shattered screen of sense,
    A voice like thunder cries, 'Behold!'"

In Canon Scott's Requiescat, in memory of General Gordon, is one of the thrilling lyrics of memorial verse:

"O thou twice hero,—hero in thy life
    And in thy death!—we have no power to crown
Thy nobleness; we weep thine arm in strife;
    We weep, but glory in thy life laid down.

* * * * * *

"Saint! hero! through the clouds of doubt that loom
O'er darkling skies, thy life hath power to bless;
We thank thee thou hast shown us in the gloom
Once more Christ's power and childlike manliness."

A quatrain on Darwin's tomb in Westminster Abbey is worthy to be held in memory:

"The Muse, when asked what words alone
    Were worthy tribute to his fame,
Took up her pen, and on the stone
    Inscribed his name."

Full of tender and beautiful feeling is this little lyric of Canon Scott's that he entitles Beyond:

"My heart it lies beyond, dear,
    In the land of the setting day,
Where the whispers are soft and fond, dear,
    Of the voices that pass away;
And oft, when the night is falling,
    And a calm is on the sea,
I fancy I hear them calling
    From that far-off land for me.

"It is only idle dreaming
    But the dream is full of rest.
And up where that glory is streaming
    From the gates of the golden west,
I wander away in spirit,
    With a mingled joy and pain,
Till I almost seem to inherit
    The sweet dead past again.

* * * * *

"Yes, my heart it lies beyond, dear,
    Where that sun is burning low,
And were you not so fond, dear,
    I might perhaps—but no!
Are you weary already with walking?
    And tears! What tears, dear, too!
How selfish of me to be talking,
    My darling, in this way to you!"

One of the most widely known and frequently quoted of the poems of Canon Scott is the Van Elsen:

"God spake three times and saved Van Elsen's soul:
He spake by illness first, and made him whole;
                Van Elsen heard Him not,
                Or soon forgot.

"God spake to him by wealth; the world outpoured
Its treasures at his feet, and called him lord;
                Van Elsen's heart grew fat
                And proud thereat.

"God spake the third time when the great world smiled,
And in the sunshine slew his little child;
                Van Elsen like a tree
                Fell hopelessly.

"Then in the darkness came a Voice which said:
'As thy heart bleedeth, so My heart hath bled;
                As I have need of thee
                Thou needest Me.'

"That night Van Elsen kissed the baby feet,
And kneeling by the narrow winding-sheet,
                Praised Him with fervent breath
                Who conquered death."

Canon Scott, who may well be recognised as the most spiritual of Canadian poets, has published five volumes of poems, The Soul's Quest, My Lattice and Other Poems, The Unnamed Lake, Poems Old and New, and In the Battle Silences, Poems Written at the Front. There is a depth of thought, an appealing grace and tenderness of feeling in his work that insures his poems a treasured place in Canadian life.

Duncan Campbell Scott has the fascination of the spontaneous singer, and how all the entrancement of the Dominion is caught into these lines:

"Oh, Land of the dusky balsam,
    And the darling maple-tree,
Where the cedar buds and berries,
    And the pine grows strong and free!
My heart is weary and weary
    For my own country."

Something in this song recalls, like remembered music, Katherine Tynan's (Mrs. Hinkson) haunting poem, Homesick, of which two lines run:

"But my heart flies back to an Abbey gray
Where the dead sleep sweet, and the living pray."

The professional critic could find many poems of Mr. Scott's with intrinsically greater claim than this lovely little chanson, To B. W. B. (now Mrs. Duncan Campbell Scott), but something in the lilting cadence enchains the reader:

"The world is spinning for change
    And life has rapid wings;
Oh, one needs a steady heart
    Not to falter while he sings.

"But this is made for my Dear One
    When we are far apart,
That she may have, wherever she goes
    A song of mine in her heart.

"A song that will serve as an anchor,
    Compass, and pilot, and chart,
A song that will bid her remember
    That Love is the crown of Art.

* * * * *

"With a star from her open window
    When the cuckoo wakes with a start:
Oh, can she ever forget me
    With a song of mine in her heart?"

In The Voice and the Dusk what a play of colour:

"The slender moon and one pale star,
    A rose leaf and a silver bee
From some god's garden blown afar,
    Go down the gold deep tranquilly.

"Within the south there rolls and grows
    A mighty town with tower and spire,
From a cloud bastion masked with rose
    The lightning flashes diamond fire."

A poet's nom de plume is that of "Katherine Hale," so well known in private life as Mrs. John W. Garvin, who to her own charm as a poet must add still another as the wife of a poet and a critic of distinction as well. The gods endowed "Katherine Hale" with a resplendent lyre, and her poems have flown to many lands. Perhaps no poem of the war has more closely touched the universal heart than has "Katherine Hale's" poem, so intense in its restrained power, entitled Grey Knitting, so widely known that from it only these three stanzas will be given:

"All through the country, in the autumn stillness,
    A web of grey spreads strangely, rim to rim;
And you may hear the sound of knitting needles.
    Incessant, gentle—dim.

"A tiny click of little wooden needles,
    Elfin amid the gianthood of war;
Whispers of women, tireless and patient,
Who weave the web afar.

* * * * * *

"I like to think that soldiers, gayly dying
    For the white Christ on fields with shame sown deep,
May hear the fairy click of women's needles
    As they fall fast asleep."

What a spell of potent witchery she weaves in her song I used to Wear a Gown of Green:

"I used to wear a gown of green
    And sing a song to May,
When apple blossoms starred the stream
    And Spring came up the way.

"I used to run along with Love
    By lanes the world forgets,
To find in an enchanted wood
    The first frail violets.

"And ever 'mid the fairy blooms
    And murmur of the stream,
We used to hear the pipes of Pan
    Call softly through our dream.

"But now, in outcry vast, that tune
    Fades like some little star
Lost in an anguished judgment day
    And scarlet flames of war.

"What can it mean that Spring returns
    And purple violets bloom,
Save that some gypsy flower may stray
    Beside his nameless tomb!

"To pagan Earth her gown of green,
    Her elfin song to May—
With all my soul I must go on
    Into the scarlet day."

The poets have been the celebrants of many of the historic epochs of Canada and the recorders of her great names; and in this especial line John Daniel Logan has rendered an interesting service in his Songs of the Makers of Canada. In these Dr. Logan has celebrated Cartier as the "dauntless discoverer," Champlain as the "first Canadian," Laval as "the high-priest of knowledge," Wolfe as the "illustrious victor," Brock the "valiant leader," Drummond the "indomitable soldier," Ryerson the "renowned educator," Howe the "champion of self-government," Macdonald the "great confederationist," Laurier the "prophetic imperialist." Such a collection, in its vigour and vividness of personal characterisation, is the very intellectual panorama of Canada. Of Macdonald, the "great confederationist," the First Premier of the Dominion (1867), we find Dr. Logan saying:

"Macdonald, though thy soul hath passed away
From wonted wolds in our Canadian land,
Where thou wast chiefest of the fervid band
    That sought to give the people fullest sway
        O'er their own destiny, thy spirit goes
            Triumphant in this Canada of ours
            Resplendent now before the elder Pow'rs
        Who mark how virile our young nation grows!

"Thy wisdom was the vision of a seer
Who knew the meaning of the pregnant days
Which gen'rous Time should father into ways
    For unity...."

In the memorial lyric to William Henry Drummond, whom Dr. Logan enshrines as "Sovereign of Joy and Prince of Tears," the poet touches perhaps his most musical note in the lines:

"O Lost Canadian Singer of the winsome lays,
How farest thou along the Elysium ways,—
    Art thou companionless as we
            And sorrowing?

* * * * * *

"O gentle heart, we wonder if thou farest happily
    With Homer and the Attic strain,
    With Milton and the Tragic train."

Among the younger Canadian poets are two sisters, Annie Campbell Huestis and Ethel Huestis Butler, who have each won distinction. One little lyric of Mrs. Butler's, On Life's Highway, is singularly poetic in its motive, contrasting the experiences of walking as companioned with Grief, or with Joy, and is expressed with much tenderness of feeling. The work of Miss Huestis suggests that she makes her pilgrimages to the "holy hill," and brings away with her all the fragrance of the thyme. A poem of hers entitled Aldaran, the Singer, has somewhat of that sustained sweetness and music that so signally characterised Mrs. Browning's Catarina to Camoens. From Miss Huestis's Aldaran are these extracts:

"Aldaran, who loved to sing,
            Here lieth dead.
All the glory of the spring,
All its birds and blossoming,
            Near his still bed
Cannot waken him again.
Cannot lure to hill and plain,
            Aldaran, the Singer,
                    Who is dead.

"Aldaran, who loved to sing,
            Here lieth low;
Not again his heart shall spring
At the time of blossoming,
            Ah, who can know?
Still at dusk or break of day,
Some can hear him on his way,
            Aldaran, the vanished one,
            Walking, hidden, in the sun;
Moving, mist-like, by the streams
When the early twilight dreams;
            Speeding on his quiet way,
            Never seen by night or day,

"But in pity drawing near
To the help of those who fear.
            To the beds of those who die,
            Singing low their lullaby,
Singing still, when they are far
Where the mist and silence are,
            Singing softly still that they
            May not fear the hidden way.
So, to those whose day is sped,
In the hour lone and dread,
            Cometh Aldaran, the Singer,
                    Who is dead!"

For her Magdalen, whose beauty of phrasing attracted attention when published in a leading critical review of New York, and in which there is a haunting reminiscence of Christina Rossetti, room must here be made, as it represents Miss Huestis in what is perhaps her most artistic mood:

"'Where are you going, weary feet.
    Feet that have failed in storm and flood?
'I go to find a flower sweet
    I left, fresh growing, near a wood.
The winds blow pure from many a hill,
    And hush to tender stillness there.
Shall not this restless heart be still,
    And grow more innocent and fair?'
'Not so; for sin and bitter pain
Can never find Youth's flower again!'

"'Where are you going, wistful face,
    Face with the mark of shame and tears?'
'I go to find a quiet place
    Where no one sees and no one hears.
The beauty and the silence there
    Shall thrill me through and still my pain.
Shall touch my hardness into prayer,
    And give me back my dreams again.'
'Not so; for Sin has closed the door
On Youth's fair dreams forevermore.'"

"'Where are you going, heart of woe.
    Pitiful heart of fear and shame?'
'A strange and lonely way I go,
    Where none shall pity, none shall blame.
Far with my sin and misery
    I creep on doubtful feet, alone;
No human heart can follow me
    To mark my tears or hear my moan.'
'Nay; but the never-ceasing sting,
The clearness of remembering!'

"'What do you see, O changing face,
    Alight with strange and tender gleams?'
'I near the hushed and holy place
    Of One who gives me back my dreams.'
'Where are you daring, eager feet,
    Feet that so wild a way have trod?'
'O bitter world, no scorn I meet.
    Sinful and hurt, I go to God!
On my dark sin, forevermore,
A sinless Hand has closed the door.'"

Miss Huestis dons her singing-robes too infrequently; but who may venture on any prediction regarding the poetic production of one who is still on the threshold of achievement? For the poet, himself, least of all, may foresee his own future, nor is it given to those who love his songs to discern his future in the magic glass. The poet is ever a subject in a kingdom of untraced laws and unmapped territory.

"For voices pursue him by day
    And haunt him by night;
And he listens, and needs must obey
    When the Angel says 'Write!'"

Forever does he await the Voice and the Vision.

Louis Frechette is the French-Canadian Laureate, who was crowned by the French Academy, in 1881, for the striking merit of his tragedy, Papineau. Doctor Frechette (born in 1841) has contributed greatly to the fame of his country. In his La Decouverte du Mississippi, and in Le Drapeau Anglais, Saint-Malo, and others, is his real distinction felt. His poems are so long and so closely woven as hardly to lend themselves to extracts.

Thomas O'Hagan is one of the favourite poets of the Dominion, and aside from his own notable contribution to poetry, he has done and is doing a wonderful work in his scholarly and critical lectures on poets. His published lectures interpretative of Shakespeare, of Dante, and of Browning, Tennyson, Longfellow, and others, are in constant demand. In A Gate of Flowers, An Idyll of the Farm, The Bugle Call, and the timely production I Take Off my Hat to Albert, are poems that inspire the popular favour; and in a lyric entitled Ripened Fruit these stanzas are especially calculated to awaken response:

"I know not what my heart hath lost;
    I cannot strike the chords of old:
The breath that charmed my morning life
    Hath chilled each leaf within the wold.

"The swallows twitter in the sky,
    But bare the nest within the eaves;
The fledglings of my care are gone,
    And left me but the rustling leaves.

"And yet, I know my life hath strength,
    And firmer hope and sweeter prayer,
For leaves that murmur on the ground
    Have now for me a double care.

"The glory of the summer sky
    May change to tints of autumn hue;
But faith that sheds its amber light
    Will lend our heaven a tender blue.

"O altar of eternal youth!
    O faith that beckons from afar.
Give to our lives a blossomed fruit—
    Give to our morns an evening star!"

Very distinctive is the work of Doctor William Henry Drummond, the poet of the "habitant" life. De Nice Leetle Canadienne and Leetle Bateese have become household songs. In the former one stanza runs:

"O she's quick, an' she's smart, an' got plaintee heart,
    If you know correc' way go about;
An' if you don' know, she soon tole you so.
    Den tak' de firs' chance an' get out;
But if she love you, I spik it for true,
    She will mak' it more beautiful den,
An' sun on de sky can't shine lak' de eye
    Of dat nice leetle Canadienne."

Leetle Bateese is a favourite with reciters who master the dialect, and who frequently delight their audiences by the mingled humour and tenderness of the picture:

"Too sleepy for sayin' de prayer to-night?
Never min', I s'pose it'll be all right;
Say dem to-morrow—ah! dere he go!
Fas' asleep in a minute or so—
An' he'll stay lak dat till de rooster crow,
        Leetle Bateese!

* * * * * *

"But, leetle Bateese! please don' forget
We rader you're stayin' de small boy yet,
So chase de chicken an' mak' dem scare,
An' do w'at you lak wit' your old gran'pere
For we'n you're beeg feller he won't be dere—
        Leetle Bateese!"

John W. Garvin, who has manifested his devotion to the muses by compiling a notable anthology of Canadian poets (recently published), is also a poet of recognition, and one of his productions, entitled Majesty, is especially original in conception. Mr. Garvin's devotion to the poetic literature of his country has rendered great service in the way of making the poets known to the general reading public and bringing together, within convenient limits, much that is best in poetic art.