Snowflakes and Sunbeams, by
Rev. William Wilfrid Campbell (St. Stephen, N.B.: St. Croix Courier,
1888).
Mr. Campbell’s poetry is one of the latest results
of that nascence of the literary spirit which is taking place in Canada
now that Canadians begin to feel themselves a people. The tiny work
before us—a delightful specimen of the bookmaker’s art—does not
contain verse of quite the same high excellence as that which Mr.
Campbell has recently given us in certain of the American periodicals,
but it does not display all the promise of which the lyric splendor of
"The Winter Lakes" and "A Lake Memory" may be
regarded as a fulfilment. Mr. Campbell’s note is not as yet one of any
great range; but it has intensity and persistent individuality. In power
of lyric description it seems to me that this poet must occupy a very
distinctive place in the narrow front rank of Canadian singers. No other
Canadian, to the best of my knowledge, has so rendered both the spirit
and the form of our winter scenes,—unless, perhaps, Mr. Lampman in one
or two instances. The sublime landscapes of the Great Lakes Mr. Campbell
has pre-empted as his own peculiar field; and he is likely to hold sway
there without a rival, by reason of the Swinburnian resonance and
breadth of his rhythmic phrases, combined with his deep and subtle
insight into external nature in her most impressive aspects. Mr.
Campbell is one of those who have drunk at the perennial fountain of
Keats,—a draught which always brings a blessing with it. He has also
studied Poe with admirable results to his technique. He shows the
instincts of the craftsman imbued with right reverence for his craft;
and at the same time he shows a sympathy for the common joys of heart
and hearth which should secure his verse a warm place in the general
regard. Such a quality appears in the following lines entitled:
CANADIAN FOLK SONG.
The doors are shut, the windows
fast;
Outside the gust is driving past,
Outside the shivering ivy clings,
While on the hob the kettle sings.
Margery, Margery, make the tea,
Singeth the kettle merrily.
The streams are hushed up where they flowed,
The ponds are frozen along the road,
The cattle are housed in shed and byre,
While singeth the kettle on the fire.
Margery, Margery, make the tea,
Singeth the kettle merrily.
The fisherman on the bay in his boat
Shivers and buttons up his coat;
the traveller stops at the taver door,
And the kettle answers the chimney’s roar.
Margery, Margery, make the tea,
Singeth the kettle merrily.
The firelight dances upon the wall,
Footsteps are heard in the outer hall;
A kiss and a welcome that fill the room,
And the kettle sings in the glimmer and the gloom.
Margery, Margery, make the tea,
Singeth the kettle merrily.
The limitations of this little
collection, as to range and subject matter, we may regard as due, in the
main, to its character as an offering of firstfruits. Yet we may
reasonably prophesy that Mr. Campbell’s chief honors as a poet will be
won in the field of impassioned interpretation of nature. The field is
one of boundless resources, and no one need ever feel cramped therein.
That Mr. Campbell brings to the working of it a fine and pure-toned
lyric faculty is evident from the following lines, called
RHODODACTULOS.
The night blows outward
In a mist,
And all the world
The sun has kissed.
Along the golden
Rim of sky,
A thousand snow-piled
Vapors lie.
And by the wood
And mist-clad stream
The Maiden Morn
Stands still to dream.
That he brings fervor of utterance and
sensitiveness to the pathos of earth, is made plain by the lines
"To a Robin in November," which open as follows:—
Sweet, sweet, and the soft
listening heaven reels
In one blue ecstasy above thy song—
And that the seeing eye is not wanting
to his equipment no one can doubt who reads this lovely sonnet on
THE MEADOW SPRING.
Here, in a deep blue cavern of the
sun,
Like some lost jewel, in the tangled grass
I lie, where cloudlets ever pass and pass,
And o’er my breast the unseen breezes run.
Deep in my crystal heart, fallen one by one
From out the burnished quiver of the sky,
The sunbeams’ golden-shafted arrows lie.
O dreamer of the summer lands, but come,
And, bending down, gaze on my silent face,
When from the sky’s high dome all clouds are furled,
And I will show you, by the season’s
grace,
What I by subtlest
charm have conjured here,—
A universe of beauty
in a tear—
A mirrored glimpse of all the glowing world.
Like others of our stronger and more
original writers, Mr. Campbell is finding it necessary to win
recognition at home by first securing it abroad. This is unavoidably the
case in a young country with its literature just struggling into
existence; for in such a case the standards by which one must be judged
are for the most part outside of ourselves. |
