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Of
our Canadian littérateurs, beyond any comparison
the palm belongs to some of the writers of our
song; yet nothing of Canadian effort has received
so chilling a reception as our home-made verse.
Some coarse-minded writer in the Globe
once said that M. Frechette might have a career,
but he would not find it on this continent.
Every Saturday the Globe and Mail
each gives three or four columns of literature,
embracing selections from prose authors, interspersed
with snatches of foreign song, a large proportion
of which has as much wood as spirit in its composition.
They use translations sometimes of the most worthless
of fugitive French verse; but never will print
a stanza from the incomparably superior verse
of Frechette, who is living amongst us, and whose
song is redolent of our woods and lakes, and of
everything Canadian, while suitable for all seasons;
and though they cram in sonnets and bits that
have appeared in the corner of some magazine,
into the page, never will they use a line of our
own Roberts, of whom no doubt some of them have
never heard, but whose song is the equal of Matthew
Arnold's, or of Browning's, or of any other of
our great English poets' verse, world-wide too,
in its sympathy, and ample enough in its range
even for season or festival application.
It is our intention now to take a brief review
of our Canadian singers and their important songs,
in the order of their merit.
Beyond
any comparison, our greatest Canadian poet—we
have already ranked him with Matthew Arnold, and
Browning—is Mr. Charles G.D. Roberts, of Fredericton,
New Brunswick. Besides Mr. Roberts' surpassing
gift of song, he is one of the most accomplished
of our native scholars, and the master of a marrowy
delightful prose that is not surpassed by that
of any other Canadian writer. He is a graduate
of the university of New Brunswick, where he took
the classical scholarship in his Freshman year,
the alumni gold medal in the junior year, graduating,
in 1879, with honours in mental and moral science,
and political economy. The first volume
of Mr. Roberts' verse, Orion,
and Other Poems, Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott
& Co., and dedicated to his father, Rev. G.
Goodridge Roberts, M.A., rector of Fredericton,
New Brunswick, appeared in 1880. Of this
volume, says a discriminating critic, in a lengthy
and almost rapturous review, in the New York Independent:
"The author has not rushed before the public
with a great bundle of all kinds in his hands,
but he has given us a little book of choice things,
with the indifferent things well weeded out.
Orion is a poem which Morris might not
disdain, and which has this advantage over that
poet's treatment of classic themes that it is
not dependent for its interest on a sensuous imagination.
* * * Fine as this is, there
is more as fine in the little book. The
'Ballad of the Poet's Thought' is an uncommon
piece of work, turning on a deep and subtle thought,
which nothing not akin to genius could raise so
high above the commonplace form in which we are
familiar with it. Very different is the
'Ballad to a Kingfisher." But how simply
and easily in these lines a common theme grows
into a unique creation—a thing apart, like itself
alone!" We have read from time to time
a large number of reviews of this volume in English
and American press, and one and all have hailed
in Mr. Roberts the appearance of a poetic star
of the first magnitude: we shall of ourselves
now give to such of our readers as have not seen
Orion, a glance into some of the incomparable
beauties of that volume. First let us take
his invocation of the Spirit of Song. Surely
a grander roll of music has never come from pen
of English poet:
"White as fleeces blown across the
hollow heaven
Fold on fold thy garment
wraps thy shining limbs;
Deep thy gaze as morning’s flamed thro’ vapours
riven,
Bright thine hair as
days that up the ether swims.
Surely I have seen the majesty and wonder,
Beauty, might and splendour
of the soul of song;
Surely I have felt the spell that lifts asunder
Soul from body, when
lips faint and thought is strong;
Surely
I have heard
The
ample silence stirred
By intensest music from no throat of bird:—
Smitten
down before thy feet
From
the paths of heaven sweet,
Lowly I await the song upon my lips conferred."
Here
we have all the strength, and the richness, and
the sensuous music of Swinburne,—not as one picture
is painted after another, but as one strong, grand
soul resemble another;—here too, we have confessed
to us the faith and the humility of genius.
If, then, we find at the threshold such a glorious
outburst of song as this, when we get inside we
shall not wonder, while we may be astonished,
at what may come. The first and longest
poem in the collection is Orion, whence
the volume takes its name. In the steep-shored
Chios, the same island, shattered with earthquake
about three years ago, once lived the king Œnopion,
who had a daughter of wondrous beauty, named Merope.
Orion, a great hunter, seeing the princess, became
smitten of her wondrous charms, and demanded her
hand of the king; but Œnopion, who secretly hated
and feared "the son of three gods,"
refused the request unless upon the condition
that the suitor should rid his island of wild
beasts. The compact was ratified, and Orion
went into the jungle. The poem opens with
a description of the island; and at the set of
sun Œnopion
"Stood
praying westward; in his outstretched hand
The griding knife, well whetted, clothed with
dread,"
preparing
for a sacrifice. And then came youths, "chose
of Chios' fairest race," bearing the victim.
But let the reader hear this description of the
intended offering:—
* * "A
tawny wolf,
Blood-stained, fast-bound in pliant withes,
fed fat
On many a bleating spoil of careless folds,
His red tongue lolling from his fanged jaws,
His eyes inflamed, shrinking with terror and
hate,
His writhen sinews strained convulsively."
The
high-water mark is touched in the three last-quoted
lines, which, as a piece of description, we have
never seen excelled in English song. But
while the king offers sacrifice, the hunter, who
has been among the mountains destroying the wild
beasts, returns; and here is how Mr. Roberts tells
of his coming through the golden glow of the sunset,
and the mien the comer wears:
"Meanwhile,
from out a neighbouring gorge, which spake
Rough torrent thunders through its cloak of
pines,
Along the shore came one who seemed to wear
The grandeur of the mountain for a robe,
The torrent’s strength for girdle, and for crown
The sea’s calm, for dread fury capable."
It
thrills us, as we make this extract, to think
that we have a native Canadian who can write such
verses as these—song that would add a lustre to
any living English poet. More powerful lines
than these three given in italics we have never
anywhere seen. Yet, in this poem all is
of such astonishing merit, that it is with difficulty
we can discriminate in making the extracts.
The hunter now approaches the king, and tells
him that he has done his best in ridding the island
of the beasts that infested it:
"The
inland jungles shall be vexed no more
With muffled roarings through the cloudy night,
And heavy splashings in the misty pools.
The echo-peopled crags shall howl no more
With hungry yelpings ’mid the hoary firs.
The breeding ewe in the thicket will not wake
With wolves’ teeth at her throat, nor drinking
bull
Bellow in vain beneath the leopard’s paw.
Your maidens will not fear to quit by night
Their cottages, to meet their shepherd lads."
The
king received the tidings with feigned gladness,
and filled a cup of sullen wine, in which he poured
a Colchian drug, which he bade the hunter drink
in pledge
"Of
those deep draughts for which thou art athirst;"
and,
departing,
* *
"he went
Up from the shore and in among the vines,
Until his mantle gleamed athwart the lanes
Of sunset through the far, gray olive-groves."
The
hunter went apart "by the sleepless sea,"
for the drug had begun to work its spell, "and
his eyes were dim and his head heavy;"
"He
guessed the traitorous cup, and his great heart
Was hot, his throat was hot; but heavier grew
His head, and he sank back upon the sand;
Nor saw the light go out across the sea,
Nor heard the eagle scream among the crags,
Nor stealthy laughter echo up the shore,
Nor the slow ripple break about his feet
* * *
The deep-eyed Night drew down to comfort him,
And lifted her great lids and mourned for him."
* * * *
And
as he lay by the shore in the silent night, stealthily
out of the fog appeared the king, accompanied
by a torch-bearer, and poured a burning poison
into the eyes of the sleepy hunter, who knew not
his woe till the dawn, when "the maids beloved
of Doris," came out of the sea weeping for
the "god-begotten" and singing upon
their lyres, while "their yellow hair fell
round them." The lyrical interlude
here is worthy of quotation in full, but we must
tear ourselves away if we would have the reader
see other phases of this gifted writer's song.
Following the command of the sea-maids,
"Then
get thee up to the hills and thou shalt behold
the morning,"
the
hunter rises, and groping his way to where
* *
"a sound
Of hammers rise behind a jagged cape,"
one
comes forth to meet him, "to be him for eyes,"
on the journey to the hills, where the radiance
of the morning sun would restore his sight.
And when he reached the top, what a picture of
surpassing loveliness does not the grand imagination
of our author give us: what a scene for the sight
of the hunter to whose eyes night had clung because
of the treacherous poison:
* *
"All the morning’s majesty
And mystery of loveliness lay bare
Before him; all the limitless blue sea
Brightening with laughter many a league around,
Wind-wrinkled, keel-uncloven, far below;"
* * *
and
here Eos awaited him.
"Now
Delos lay a great way off, and thither
They two rejoicing went across the sea."
And
listen to the bridal following that our poet gives
them:
* *
"And every being
Of beauty or of mirth left his abode
Under the populous flood and journeyed with
them.
Out of their deep green caves the Nereids came
Again to do him honour,
* *
*
With yellow tresses streaming. Triton came
And all his goodly company, with shells
Pink-whorled and purple, many-formed, and made
Tumultuous music *
* *
* *
"And so they reached
Delos, and went together hand in hand
Up from the water and their company,
And the green wood received them out of sight."
So
ends the poem, not anything like a just idea of
the wondrous beauty, richness, grace and strength
of which we have been able to give by these few
extracts. We noticed in a friendly and appreciative
critique of this poet lately by a Canadian writer
the statement that Mr. Roberts is under the influence
of the English lyrical poets. This is not
correct. Mr. Roberts, who shows not the
faintest touch of provincialism, writes as a master
and not tentatively, and while his thought is
in harmony with the modern poetical school,—of
Swinburne, Matthew Arnold, Morris, Rossetti,—there
is nowhere a trace of imitating the manner of
any one of these. Mr. Roberts has a graceful,
sustained strength, and a thoroughly classic spirit,
aflame with the old Greek religious fire, that
no other living poet surpasses; he has a wealth
of language and happy epithet that is unrivalled,
and is in lyrical rush and intensity the equal
of Swinburne himself, though he never runs into
the riotousness of passion and phrase, and never
mars a line or a thought with a mannerism, as
does Swinburne. There is certainly a striking
resemblance between Mr. Roberts and the English
singers who are masters, and who appeal
to the wide world, unlike Cowper who sang only
to England. And here comes the opportunity
for us to state in opposition to the opinion of
a writer for whom we have the deepest respect,
and who is the friend and benefactor of most of
our poets and writers, that Canadian poetry should
be Canadian wholly in matter, manner, and everything
else. And why pray should this be so?
The whole world, surely, is as much open to the
Canadian singer as to writers in Great Britain
or anywhere else. Tom Moore wrote Lallah
Rookh, a poem of the East, though an Irishman,
and now Edwin Arnold sings of "The Light
of Asia." No one blames Englishmen
for ranging heaven, and earth, and hell for subjects;
and why should we be required to set a
limit to our soaring, to tie our imagination to
one country, a country with all its glorious dawn
of promise, still raw, and unfertilized with the
life and death of great names of humanity?
No; we should be sorry to see the transcendent
genius of Mr. Roberts cage itself within the bounds
even of this ample Dominion; and though he may
find in our wondrous forests, and our rushing
rivers, as he has found, inspiration, and harmony
as high as has yet been wakened by human hand,
yet if he wish to go beyond, and sing to all quarters
of the world a note that posterity will not let
die, as he will, for his seems to be the ambition,
and his power is supereminent, then shall we gladly
let him go, bidding him God speed. For whether
he win laurels at home, or in other lands, since
he is ours, with him we shall share the glory.
Let
us take a stanza or two from "Ariadne."
The classical story is familiar to the reader,
and in brief runs thus: This lovely Cretan, who
was the daughter of Minos, and ardent in her passion,
fell in love with Theseus, who had come with the
offerings of the Athenians for the Minitaur.
But the heart of the beautiful stranger was false,
and, sickening of his bride, he left her on the
lonely shore of Naxos, and pursued his way.
It so happened that Bacchus, once having occasion
to pass along the solitary strand, saw the maiden
as "she lay face downward on the sighing
shore;" and went away smitten of her loveliness,
resolving to return again to woo her. The
maiden saw not her divine suitor, but still lay
cast down where her heartless love had left her,
and "clenched the ooze in mute despair."
The poem, from which we have taken the two last-made
extracts, opens in the evening, the moon looking
"like a ripe pomegranate o'er the sea."
Something the maiden hears in the still, silvery
air makes her start. Let us hear Mr. Roberts:
"A
many-throated din came echoing
Over the startled trees
confusedly,
From th’ inmost mountain folds hurled clamoring
Along the level shore to droop its wing:
She blindly rose and
o’er the moon-tracked sea
Toward Athens stretched her hands:—"With
shouts they bring
Their conquering chieftain
home; ah me! ah me!"
And
hear too this next not less lovely stanza:
"But
clearer came the music, zephyr-borne,
And turned her yearnings
from the over-seas,
Hurtled unmasked o’er glade and belted bourne,—
Of dinning cymbal, covert-rousing horn,
Soft waxen pipe, shrill-shouted
EVOES:
Then sat she down unheeding and forlorn,
Half dreaming of old
Cretan melodies."
Anon
"The
thickets rocked; the ferns were trampled down;
The shells and pebbles
splashed into the waves; *
*
for
god Bacchus with his "hoofed sylvans, fauns,
and satyrs" had come to woo his love:
*
* "And straightway by the silver
waste of brine
They laid them gently
down with gesture mute,
The while he twinéd his persuasions fine
And meshed her grief-clipt
spirit with his lute.
*
*
*
*
*
*
And so with silver-linked melodies,
He wooed her till the
moon lay pale and low;
And first she lifted up her dreaming eyes
And dreamed him her old love in fairer guise;
And then her soul drew
outwards, and a glow
Woke in her blood of pleasure and surprise,
To think it was a god
that loved her so."
Hear
then this stanza impregnate with that soft, delicate
sensuousness to be found alone in Keats, and in
that poet only at his very best, that deep breathing
of what may be called the refinement of intense
passion, touched with a master hand. The
maiden's heart becomes at last captive to the
god, and she rose and
"
. . Went with him where
honey-dew distils
Through swimming air
in odorous mists and showers,
Where music the attentive stillness fills,
And every scent and colour drips and spills
From myriad quivering
wings of orchid flowers;
And there they dwelt deep in the folded hills,
Blissfully hunting down
the fleet-shod hours."
Let
us then go away from classic story with our poet
into the greenwood, and hear him sing of the maple.
We make no apology for quoting in full:
"Oh,
tenderly deepen the woodland glooms,
And merrily sway the
beeches;
Breathe delicately the willow blooms,
And the pines rehearse
new speeches;
The elms toss high till they brush the sky,
Pale catkins the yellow
birch launches,
But the tree I love all the greenwood above,
Is the maple of sunny
branches.
Let who will sing of the hawthorn in spring,
Or the late-leaved linden
in summer;
There’s a word may be for the locust-tree,
That delicate, strange
new-comer;
But the maple it glows with the tint of the
rose
When pale are the spring-time
regions,
And its towers of flame from afar proclaim
The advance of Winter’s
legions.
And a greener shade there never was made
Than its summer canopy
sifted,
And many a day as beneath it I lay,
Has my memory backward
drifted
To a pleasant lane I may walk not again,
Leading over a fresh
green hill,
Where a maple stood just clear of the wood—
And oh, to be near it
still!"
We
cannot, for our space is growing small, speak
the admiration here of which we are so full; and
can call attention to those four surpassing lines
only by italics. A short quotation or two
must content us from the ode "To Winter,"
a poem which we would compare to the Allegro in
charming vignette, and the rivulet-like lyric-flow.
The poet has apostrophized winter in a succession
of master touches, but, turning, challenges comparison
with the milder season. Hear these verses:
"But
what magic melodies,
As in the bordering realms are throbbing,
Hast thou Winter?—Liquid sobbing
Brooks, and brawling waterfalls,
Whose responsive-voiced calls
Clothe with harmony the hills,
Gurgling
meadow-threading rills,
Lakelets lisping, wavelets lapping
Round a flock of wild ducks napping,
And the rapturous-noted wooings,
And the molten-throated cooings,
Of
the amorous multitudes
Flashing through the dusky woods,
When a veering wind hath blown
A glare of sudden daylight down?"
*
*
*
*
And
turning again to Winter:
*
*
*
*
"Less the silent sunrise sing
Like a vibrant silver string,
When its prisoned splendours first
O’er the crusted snow-fields burst.
But thy days the silence keep,
Save for grosbeak's feeble cheep,
Or for snow-birds busy twitter
When thy breath is very bitter.
So my spirit often acheth
For the melodies it lacketh
’Neath thy sway, or cannot hear
For its mortal cloakéd ear.
And full thirstily it longeth
For the beauty that belongeth
To the autumn’s ripe fulfilling;—
Heapéd orchard baskets spilling
’Neath the laughter-shaken trees;
Fields of buckwheat full of bees,
Girt with ancient groves of fir
Shod
with berried juniper;
Beech-nuts mid their russet leaves;
Heavy-headed nodding sheaves;
Clumps of luscious blackberries;
Purple-clustered traceries
Of the cottage climbing-vines;
Scarlet-fruited eglantines;
Maple forests all aflame
When thy sharp-tongued legates came."
Here
the reader is no less sensible that a master hand
is painting nature, and what is more, making so
intensely a Canadian picture that he who has ever
seen our fields or wilds in the autumn or winter,
at once recognises the portrait, than he stands
to wonder at this very lyrical rush, and
the wealth of phrase that waits upon the warm,
rich imagination of the poet. And here also
he sees, as in the rest of Mr. Roberts' work,
the wrought art the author brings into the service
of his verse highly the complete technical mastery,
and the firm grip of the subject; and above all
the contained enthusiasm and the well-regulated
flow of the thought.
We
are sure the reader will not be tired, but rather
delighted, if we make an extract from "Memnon,"
a poem which first appeared in Scribner's magazine.
A traveller,
"Weary,
forsaken by fair, fickle sleep,"
rises,
and as the moon hangs low over the desert, standing
before his tent, is startled to hear an image
of stone,
* * "Prostrate,
half enwound
With red, unstable sand-wreaths,"
utter
words of musical anguish. Memnon was the
son of Tithonus, and Aurora the goddess of the
morning. When he died, the Æthiopians or
Egyptians over whom he reigned, erected upon the
bleak sand a monument to his memory; and this
statue, tradition relates, had the wonderful property
of uttering a melodious sound every day at the
rise of the sun, "like that which is heard
at the breaking of the string of a harp when it
is wound up." And the figure was said
to be possessed of all the feeling that belongs
to man—to suffer pain, and heat, and cold, and
the tortures of the sand-blast. This is
the story which Mr. Roberts' fervid imagination
seizes and shapes into a thing of such imperishable
beauty. And now
"Faint streaks quietly creep
Up from the east, into the dusky
sky;
Aurora's yellow hair, that up the steep
Streams to the rear of night full
breezily."
This
is the mother of the tortured figure coming.
Hear the son's plaint:
"Sweet
mother, stay; thy son requireth thee!
All day the sun, with massive,
maddening glare,
Beats on my weary brow and tortures me.
All day the pitiless sand-blasts
gnaw and wear
Deep furrows in my lidless
eyes and bare.
All day the palms stand up and mock at me;
And drop cool shades
over the dead bones there,
And voiceless stones that crave no canopy:
O beautiful mother, stay; 'tis thy son prayeth
thee.
*
*
*
*
*
*
Hyenas come and laugh
into my eyes;
The weak bats fret me with
their small, shrill cries,
And toads and lizards crawl in slimy glee.
*
*
*
*
*
*
Oh, dewy-lipped mother, stay; thy son desireth
thee."
And
this surely may pass for a stanza not excelled
in our literature:
"Soon
will for me the many-spangled night
Rise, and reel round,
and tremble toward the verge;
Soon will the sacred Ibis her weird flight
Wing
from the fens where shore and river merge,
With long-drawn sobbings
of the reed-choked surge.
The scant-voiced ghosts, in wavering revelry
For Thebes’ dead glory,
gibber a fitful dirge:
Would thou wert here, mother, to bid them flee!
O beautiful mother, hear; thy chained son calleth
thee."
We
have made the italics occurring in these extracts;
for again we cannot wait to say what our enthusiasm
suggests, of the verses so marked. At one
other of Mr. Roberts' poems we can only glance
before closing our review, and that "Off
Pelorus," which does not appear in the volume
before us, but which we find in a number of the
Canadian Monthly, under Mr. G. Mercer Adam's
editorship. This poem is founded on one
of the incidents in the wanderings of Ulysses.
After the return of the king from the shades,
he sojourned on Circe's island; and when he again
set forth, he had to pass by the strait of Scylla
and Charybdis, where the sirens sang their luring
songs. These were Circe's words of warning
to the reckless prince in Pope's mechanical strains:
* * * "Where
sirens dwell you plough the seas
Their song is death and makes destruction please."
As
for you, said the goddess to the king, I know
your love for me will be proof against the witching
music of the sirens; but stuff your rowers' ears
with wax, lest the songs might overcome them.
See that before you reach the charmed coast, your
rowers bind you to the mast. Ulysses then
set out, and submitted to the instructions of
the goddess. The poem opens off Pelorus,
the cape named from the pilot of Annibal.
The sea is drowsy, the sirenss sing, the rowers
labour at the oar, the king is bound to the mast:
"Crimson
swims the sunset over far Pelorus;
Burning crimson tops its
frowing crest of pine,
Purple sleeps the shore and floats the wave
before us
Eachwhere from the oarstroke
eddying warm like wine."
Let
us read on. Circe's precautions were not
ample; for what the rowers see intoxicate
them:
"Soundless
foams the creamy violet wake behind us;
We but see the creaking
of the laboured oar;
We have stopped our ears—mad were we not to
blind us,
Lest with eyes grown drunken
sail we hence no more."
The
sirens lived on this enchanted coast; and while
their song took captive the ear, the luxuriousness
of their abode intoxicated the eye. How
matchlessly Mr. Roberts has grasped the spirit
of the legend and wrought it into a picture moving
with life. Hear this stanza, and say if
even Mr. Roberts may not be proud of it:
"Idly
took we thought for still our eyes betray us.—
Lo! the white limbed maids
with beckoning arms divine,
Throbbing bosoms bare, loosed hair, soft
hands to slay us,
Throats athrob with song
across the charmed brine."
And
here also is a matchless stanza:
"See
the king he hearkens,—hears their song—strains
forward,—
As some mountain snake attends
the shepherd's reed;
Now with urgent hands he bids us turn us shoreward:—
Bend the groaning oar now,
give the king no heed!"
How
admirably does not the movement of the first line
picture the action of the mountain snake
in the second verse on hearing the shepherd's
pipe,—moving in jerks. It is the community
of thought and feeling among the rowers we receive
so far. This, after Mr. Roberts' skilful
and harmonious weaving, is the song of the luring
charmers on the shore. They reach out their
"beckoning arms divine," as they sing
it—and imagine such a song floating across that
gorgeous summer sea:
"Much
enduring wanderer, honey-tongued come nigher,
Wisest ruler, bane of Ilion's
lofty walls;
Hear strange wisdom to thine uttermost desire,
Whatsoe'r in all the fruitful
earth befalls."
A
siren truly might not have been ashamed of such
verses. The song bewilders the poor king,
and he struggles to free himself from the mast.
Then the rowers tell us:
"So
we rise up twain and make his bonds securer:
Seethes the startled sea now from
the surging blade,
Leaps the dark ship forth, as well, with hearts
grown surer,
Eyes averse and war-worn
faces made afraid,
O'er
the waste and warm reaches drive our prow sea-cleaving
Past the luring death, into
the folding night:—
Home shall hold us yet—and cease our wives from
grieving—
Safe from storm, and toil,
and flame, and clanging fight."
Surely
now it is plain to all who have followed us that
a singer has risen in Canada of whom any nation,
or any literature, might be proud. Let us
with such glorious verse as this hear no more
of "hog wash," or be told again that
"native literary fruit is wrapped yet in
the future." Space forbade us to show
our reader anything of "A Blue Blossom,"
the "Epistle to Bliss Carman," the "Ode
to Drowsihood," the latter perhaps containing
a subtler and intenser note than any other poem
in the book, "One Night," "A Ballad
of Three Mistresses," "Launcelot and
the Four Queens," "Sappho," "Ballad
of the Poet's Thought," and various other
delightful things. We have been a close
student for many years of our modern English singers,
and we now say without fear of refutation that
we have in Mr. Roberts a poet who has a note as
intense, as sweet, as high and as varied as any
singer in the British choir. In strength
he is fully the equal of Browning; and in lyrical
flow and passion,—his fire is not a spluttering
blaze, but a sober, intense glow—he is not surpassed
by Swinburne. Sometimes we find that "lyrical
cry," that sad sweet note that marks such
poems as "Marguerite" and "The
Forsaken Merman" of Matthew Arnold; while
in the curious felicity of expression, such as
"gossiping grass" for an expanse of
sedges and weeds fretted by the wind, the "winnowing
soft gray wings of marsh owls" &c., he
is not surpassed, if equalled, by any of our modern
poets. How Mr. Roberts would adorn one of
our university chairs of English literature!
Surely, if his services are available, Trinity,
which has wakened from her sleep and feels a new
life and impulse in her veins, and decided to
endow a literature chair, might seek his services.
He would, in such a place, draw all the aspiring
and better ones among our young men around him;
or might not our most comprehensive institution,
University College, add to its excellent faculty
this adorning star of native talent, this example
of Canadian possibility?
*
*
*
*
*
*
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*
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Among
our younger writers who show decided promise may
be mentioned Mr. Archibald Lampman, B.A., of Toronto;
and Mr. J.A. Ritchie, of Ottawa. We have
seen in Our Continent, in the Canadian
Monthly and elsewhere verses of these young
gentlemen that justify us in predicting brilliant
things of their future. Mr. Lampman has
an exquisite touch, and has already written some
lines of the very highest merit. Mr. Ritchie
has awakened from the strings of his instrument,
a soft, mellow music, that is large with promise
of admirable things.
In
nearly every school-book we find something from
Mr. Sangster, which is given as a sample of "good
Canadian poetry;" but any of this writer's
verse that we have read, and we think we have
seen it all, was not worth a brass farthing.
His name only appears here that he may not be
confounded with our Canadian poets.
And
now while on this subject let us say that as well
may we hope for "roses in December, ice in
June," as to look for a literature without
a nationality. But in the awakening
of that national life for which we yearn, we may
count on a creative period in our literature;
for the time when our young nation will put on
the intellectual blossoms of romance and song.
Some of those who, while believing that the days
of subordination and inferiority ought soon to
come to an end, still shrink timidly back into
their shell, when asked to take up the question
of our disenthralment practically, on the ground
that our confederation is yet only a tiny thing,
that we would be as a waif among the nations,
forget that at the date of confederation the joint
population of our provinces was greater than that
of any one, of thirty-seven European
Sovereign States, and that at this day our
population exceeds that of either Portugal, Switzerland,
Denmark, Saxony, Greece, or Holland, more than
doubling that of Denmark, and more than trebling
that of Holland. They have forgotten, too,
that the star of empire is moving in our direction;
that we have open doors facing towards the emigrant
of all quarters of the globe; that we have to
the west of us half a continent of wheat land,
capable of sustaining ninety millions of people;
that already railroads have thrown this unrivalled
territory, open to the husbandman; that every
ship that crosses the ocean is laden with human
freight for our new country; that our western
cities are expanding by strides, and that capital,
intelligence, and enterprise are coming from all
quarters of the civilized world to cast in their
lot with us. Neither are we like the Irishman
or the Russian unfit to take the supreme government
into our own hands; for a beneficent educational
system has been for many years shedding its light
among us, that now, the intellectual condition
of the mass of our people is far higher than that
of England herself, or of any other European state.
That a change must soon come in our political
status, no one whose opinion is of any value will
now deny; and to the speculating mind one of three
courses will be open: Federation with the empire,
a scheme which is the birth of a disordered poetic
imagination; annexation with the United States—a
proposal for which we have not the remotest sympathy,
and which, we believe, would be unwelcome to the
people, but which is infinitely preferable to
that disordered plagiarism of Mr. Justin McCarthy
"the plan of a general federation"—and
Canadian Independence. We need not repeat
what we have expressed so often, that for this
latter scheme are we heart and soul; that no other
change will satisfy the manly, yearning spirit
of our young Canadians; and that it is our duty
now to bestir ourselves, to organize, and to tire
not nor rest till our Colonialism shall have become
a thing of the past, and our Canada stand robust,
and pure, and manly, and intelligent, among the
nations of the earth. But we must awake
from our sordid ignominy, our cowardly sloth;
unless, indeed, the chains befit us, and we are
happy in the bondage. If we be, then liberty
is an impertinence upon our lips, and the rights
of free-born citizenship a boon of which we are
not worthy. If we be, then is it the duty
of our press and our public men to stifle the
impulse of manhood, till, coiling the chain about
us, we lie down in our dishonoured rest.
"Freeman
he is not, but slave,
Who stands not out on my
side;
His own hand hollows his grave,
Nor strength is in me to save
Where strength is none to
abide.
Time
shall tread on his name
That was written for honour
of old,
Who hath taken a change for fame
Dust, and silver, and shame,
Ashes, and iron, and gold."
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