3	first fruits: a biblical, liturgical and feudal law expression: a thank offering to ensure that the rest of the harvest is as bountiful (L. primitiae); the first year’s income or profits, formerly paid by each new holder of a benefice, or any office or profit, to some superior.

This lapidary dedication is bridged by the Epigraph in Greek (with its Platonic and Keatsian echoes) to "To the Spirit of Song" and anticipates the final poetic "Dedication."

[Epigraph]

A quotation from Plato’s Phaedrus (279). Among the varied and rich themes of that dialogue are rhetoric, myth, love, and the soul. Socrates encounters the youthful Phaedrus outside the walls of Athens after the latter’s intoxicating conversation with the sophist Lysias. The two find a shady spot by the stream of the Ilissos, where Phaedrus reports what Lysias had said. In the course of their conversation the four divisions of the divine madness of inspiration are discussed, corresponding to five gods: prophetic (Apollo), mystic (Dionysus), poetic (Muses), and erotic (Eros and Aphrodite). As the heat of the day eases, Socrates prays to the spirits of the place in the words of the epigraph. Socrates: "O beloved Pan, and any other gods in this place: grant me, I pray, to become beautiful within…and that my external possessions accord with my inner self. May I regard as rich the wise, and possess such riches myself as only the prudent can bear or endure.—Do we require more, Phaedrus? The prayer is enough for me." Phaedrus: "Include me in that prayer, for friends should share."

Of the possession or madness inspired by the Muses, Socrates had earlier said (245): "It takes possession of the pure and gentle soul, awakening it and frenzying it to songs and other poetry; and adorning countless deeds of men it instructs those who come after. But anyone who comes to the gates of poetry without the madness of the Muses (persuaded, I suppose that art alone is sufficient for a poet), is himself inadequate, and the poetry of the sane vanishes away before that of the mad."

As L.R. Early has shown (10), this Platonic epigraph was probably inspired by the prefatory sonnet of Keats, "Dedication To Leigh Hunt, Esq." ("Glory and loveliness have passed away; / …But there are left delights as high as these, / And I shall ever bless my destiny, / That in a time when under pleasant trees / Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free, / A leafy luxury, seeing I could please / With these poor offerings, a man like thee"(1, 9-14). On the use of Pan by the Confederation Poets see Bentley "Pan."

To the Spirit of Song

Printed in reduced type in Orion, and Other Poems as a programmatic preface (proem). Also printed 1880 (CIN), 1883, 1887, 1889, 1901/7 (Pacey 15). 14 lines trochaic (-u-u-u-u-u-(u) [1-8,11,14], (u) -u-u- [9-10], -u-u-u- [12-13]). A trochaic lyric with sonnetal structure.

…written when the poet was but seventeen…. The verse of this youthful period is marked by the note of philosophical mysticism which was to become perhaps the dominant characteristic of the poetry of Charles G.D. Roberts. "A Blue Blossom" and "To The Spirit of Song"…belong[ed] to the philosophical-mystical group. (Pomeroy 30)

The reviewer of Orion, and Other Poems for The Miramichi Advance (November 1880) had probably discussed Roberts’ views on poetry with him, and notes with satisfaction his faith in his own powers—an assurance that the impulse to sing is a genuine inspiration…. Here we have at once the confidence and the humility of genius,—the proud consciousness of power, and the reverent recognition of its source. (cited by Pacey, Collected 371)

His initial invocations to Pan and Apollo are appropriate to the Greek ambience which unquestionably dominates the volume, but which diminishes before countervailing forces as our reading proceeds. (Early 11)

The poem recapitulates the themes of inspiration from the Greek epigraph. The cloud image for the garments of Apollo, Roberts’ "spirit" or "soul" of song (Early 11) is another echo from Keats ("I stood tip-toe upon a little hill"): "…the early sobbing of the morn. / The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn, / And fresh from the clear brook" (7-9). Roberts proclaims a personal epiphany to the poet of the god Apollo, reminiscent of Horace’s epiphany of Bacchus (Odes 2.19), as his own spirit of song: "white…garments…shining limbs…deep thy gaze as morning’s flamed thro’ vapors riven…majesty and wonder, / Beauty, might, and splendor of the soul of song" (1-6). "By intensest music from no throat of bird" (11) echoes Shelley: "Hail to thee blithe spirit! / Bird thou never wert—(1-2)…. Like a poet hidden / In the light of thought / Singing hymns unbidden, / Till the world is wrought / To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not" ("To A Skylark" 36-40 [Palgrave CCXLI]).

Spirit of Song (cf. "Soul of song" 6): Apollo as patron of poets (Early 11). Roberts is likely thinking of the famous statue of the "Apollo Citharoedus" with his elaborate flowing robes and his magnificent lyre (1-2). "Apollo is generally represented with long hair,…as a tall beardless young man, with a handsome shape, holding in his hand a bow, and sometimes a lyre; his head is generally surrounded by beams of light" (LCD 61).

Orion

Also printed 1880 (CIN),1887 (27-32, 53-59), 1901/7, 1936 (Pacey 18-28). Iambic pentameter blank verse (1-237, 294-460); hemiepes [=half dactylic hexameters: -uu-uu-] in 8-line stanzas (238-69) as strophes (A,B) and antistrophes (A,B); dactylic hexameters (270-93).

"Orion," the title-poem, was written at a time when Roberts was greatly under the influence of Swinburne and of the Shelley of "Alastor" and "Prometheus." Although written slowly, as is the invariable custom of the poet, he was so fully possessed by it that one day while waiting for an hour at the dentist’s to have a tooth extracted, he forgot entirely about the ordeal before him and composed six lines of the opening chorus. "Orion" was completed well before the poet attained his nineteenth birthday, yet it can hardly be classed as juvenilia…. (Pomeroy 30)

…epic in form: the blank verse, vigorous and musical, bears the impress of no particular school, certainly not that of the prevalent Tennysonian rhythms. It is thoroughly Greek, and saturated with the spirit of the glorious Greek art. Surely it is like what Keats wrote and Shelley; that is to say, it is true poetry, unmarked by mannerism any more than Shelley is marked by it. (Rev. in the Canadian Monthly 1880. 552)

…the principal poem…is a fragment of classic story in stately blank verse. The onward flow of the story is stayed at times by rhetorical inversions and the beauty of the diction is marred by conceits after the manner of the old masters, but its current is so strong and deep, and its bosom so bedecked with flowers of song that we would not notice the faults if we were not reading to review but merely to enjoy…. its beauties are so many that they cannot be taken in at once. (Rev. in the Miramichi Advance, 1880, cited by Pacey, Collected 373)

"Orion" is a poem which Morris might not disdain, and which has the advantage over that poet’s classic themes that it is not dependent for its interest on a sensuous imagination. (Rev. in the New York Independent cited by Collins 465)

…his "Orion," "Actaeon," and "Pipes of Pan" reflect somewhat the majesty and strength of Homer and the brilliance of those unsurpassed nature poems, the choruses of the Greek dramas. (W. D. MacFarlane. Rev. in the Dominion Illustrated Monthly, November 1891, cited by Pacey, Collected 373)

The blank verse of "Orion"…has a highly original quality, and at the same time shows a curious mingling of many influences. It is the workmanship of a student of Homer, influenced largely by Milton and Tennyson, somewhat also by Keats and Matthew Arnold…. On the whole it is very fine; probably no better has been done on this side of the Atlantic. (Lampman 411-12)

["Orion"’s] style is still a hollow and overwrought form…it depends almost entirely on a vague impressionism…. This incohate, formless character of the imaginative power…grandiose and empty…. His Arcadian personages, although there are brilliant traits in their make-up, stand for nothing. (Cappon, Roberts 16-17)

Roberts’ "Orion" is typical of early Canadian poetry in its predominantly Romantic form. In attempting to express a vision of human experience in mythological terms, it recalls "Endymion" and "Prometheus Unbound", though it is neither in the same scale nor of the same rank…. Like their narratives, it reinterprets classical myth as a reflection of the time, spiritual forces which condition human life…. The Romantic mythological narrative is not so much a sequence of events as a series of places, or an orchestration of symbols. (Early 12-13)

The classical poems which Roberts produced between his seventeenth and twenty-second year are more akin to "Oenone" and the "Ulysses" of Tennyson than they were to anything else. They are basically monlogues in which the narrator combines emotion with the unfolding of a poignant event against a background of picturesque detail expressed in a dignified, rhythmic language. For this purpose, Roberts’ remarkable command of grammar and his grasp of involved sentence structure—particularly learned in translations into and from the classical languages stood him in excellent stead. (Cogswell, "Introduction" xx)

(For additional critical views see Pacey’s summary [Collected 373-74]).

Structure:

Narrative

Choral Lyrics

Choral Hexameters

Narrative

Ariadne

Also printed 1887 (1-7), 1901/7. (Pacey 10-14) Iambic pentameter 7-line stanzas (abaabab).

Hear then this stanza [xv] 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. (Collins 472-73)

"Ariadne" and "An Ode to Drowsihood" were written shortly after "Memnon" [1877]. (Pomeroy 28)

(Pacey could find no evidence to substantiate the further statement by Pomeroy that "Ariadne" had appeared previously in Scribner’s Magazine [Collected Letters 370]).

"Ariadne" [is] the poorest of Roberts’ mythological pieces. Like "Orion," the poem concerns the union of a betrayed mortal with a god. Once more the contrast between corrupt human relations, as represented by Theseus, and the divine order, identified with Bacchus, is clearly drawn, and Ariadne’s ultimate bliss is pictured in idyllic terms, which recall the resolution of the longer poem…. In "Ariadne," however, the theme is hardly more than an occasion for word painting, and unfortunately the poem is weak at this level…. The descriptive opening stanzas are filled with abstractions which make little impression, and the remainder is largely taken up with Bacchus’ windy speech, at best a cliched pastoral invitation…. (Early 18-19)

The story of Ariadne’s help to Theseus in killing her brother the Minotaur and escaping the Labyrinth, her desertion by him on Naxos, and passionate rescue by Bacchus there is mentioned only briefly by Ovid (Met. 8. 169-82; also Her. 10). The fullest poetic treatment is Catullus 64. (See also Lemprière and Bullfinch.) Roberts might also have been familiar with a "Recumbent Ariadne" sculpture in Boston (copy of an original in the Vatican), and Titian’s sensuous painting. It was a popular subject for poets; Helen Law lists six works between 1832 and 1873 alone (Hunt, Ellsworth, Bennett, Anon, De Tabley and Jackson.) Chaucer and Cartwright (1635) had used the story; between 1886 and 1927 there were eight more versions.

Roberts develops Catullus’ sensuous description of the beautiful Ariadne forsaken on the shore (64. 60-67) into three full stanzas of erotic verse, replete with white limbs and "heart-entangling store of hair," amplified by pathetic fallacy (1-7, 15-21). Theseus himself is reduced to two lines: "Toward Athens stretched her hands,—‘With shouts they bring / Their conquering chieftain home; ah me! Ah me!’"(34-35). Five stanzas describe the approach of Bacchus and her response, six (64-105) to the wooing, two (106-119) to her yielding to the god, and one (120-126) to the moral of the tale, a defence of her yielding: "And who shall say her love was incomplete? / For she was a forsaken maid he wooed" (120, 126).

Structure:

Launcelot and the Four Queens

Also printed 1887 (8-19, 56-66, 275-282). (Pacey 38-46) Trochaic 6-line stanzas: 5 tetrameters + 1 trimeter (aabccb); 3 iambic tetrameter ballad quatrains (abab) as prologues to each of parts I-III; 4 trochaic 9-line stanzas: 8 trimeters + 1 dimeter (-u-) as the song of Launcelot. (This stanza form was probably suggested by Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott").

The story is based on La Mort d’Arthure and the Knights of the Round Table. Compiled by Sir Thomas Malory Knt., ed. Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., 2nd. ed., 3 vols., London: John Russell (1866), Vol. I, Chapters C-CIII; see also Bullfinch 351-353.

"A strain of mediaeval music clad in modern richness of expression." (Rev. in the Canadian Monthly, 1880. 533)

It is Tennyson’s turn in "Launcelot and the Four Queens," where the rhythm, the diction, and even the morality are his. As in Tennyson, the setting quite overshadows the story and the characters. (Pacey, Sir Charles 44)

"Launcelot and the Four Queens" is one of the principal achievements of Orion, second only to the title poem in length, and more successfully executed…. As in Milton’s treatment of the Genesis story, the central issue…is choice… The ‘shadows’ which dim Launcelot’s sleep have their counterparts in the waking consciousness, and the prison to which the queens carry him has its equivalent in bondage to Guinevere. What Roberts conveys here is the ambiguity which clouds all choice in a world where motives remain ultimately obscure and realities shift place with illusions…. Launcelot is indeed ‘the fairest knight’ but he is also an errant knight in more than one sense, and Roberts’ poem is full of hints about his corruption. (Early 19-21)

Structure:

Part I

Part II

Part IIIa

Part IIIb

Part IV

Part V

Ballad of the Poet’s Thought

Also printed 1880 (CM), 1883, 1901/07, 1936 (Pacey 32-33). Ballade form (see below)—first of four ballades.

Did you care for the ‘Ballade of the Poet’s Thought’? Matthew Arnold spoke to me very cordially of that poem. (Letters 14.xii.84)

[Arnold] mentioned several poems with special commendation, particularly "The Ballade of the Poet’s Thought." (Pomeroy 38-39)

Two poems which appear near the the middle of the book, "Ballad of the Poet’s Thought" and "A Ballad of Three Mistresses," describe the poet in more complex tones as caught between his conflicting attachments to love, nature, society, and art. (It is little wonder that Arnold praised the former piece, which deals with the primary tensions in much of his own work). (Early 11)

Roberts correctly altered "Ballad" to "Ballade" for the 1901/07 and 1936 printings of this poem, and would likely have done so for the other three ballades in the collection (poems 6-8) had they ever been reprinted:

The most important of the so-called OF forms and the dominant verse form of Fr. Poetry of the 14th and 15th c. The most common type of b. is made up of three 8-line stanzas rhyming ababbcbC and a 4-line envoi rhyming bcbC.... The b. of the great Fr. Period was imitated in England by Chaucer and Gower.... In the later 19^th c. a group of English poets, including Austin Dobson ["In After Days"], Andrew Lang, and W. E. Henley revived the form with enthusiasm. (PEPP 65)

An exploration of the dilemma of the poet committed to his sacred calling as teacher and comforter to the community. He can neither communicate adequately and win appreciation thereby nor endure the burden of that divine madness; but isolation and retreat to Nature both charge him all the more with it and deprive him of relief in imparting it to others: "Then grieving he fled from the quiet spot, / To where men work, and are weary, and weep" (90-91).

The theme of the poet’s burden is continued in the following ballade "Three Mistresses"; and that of the poet’s return to the world of mortal miseries recurs in the "Epistle to Bliss Carman." Roberts "was perhaps inspired by Wordsworth’s ‘Nature and the Poet,’ suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont" (Palgrave 291-92):

Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at a distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for ’tis surely blind.                                  52
But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer

And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here:—
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.                   56

Decisive to this link between Roberts’ and Wordsworth’s poems is Palgrave’s note (332) on the latter:

Written soon after the death, by shipwreck, of Wordsworth’s brother John. The poem should be compared with Shelley’s following it ["The Poet’s Dream"]. Each is the most complete expression of the innermost spirit of his art given by those great poets:—of that Idea which as in the case of the true Painter, (to quote the words of Reynolds,) "subsists only in the mind. The sight never beheld it, nor has the hand expressed it; it is an idea residing in the breast of the artist, which he is always labouring to impart, and which he dies at last without imparting."

See also Tennyson’s "The Palace of Art" for a similar idea.

A Ballad of Three Mistresses

Also printed 1879 (CIN) (Pacey 34-35). Ballade form.

This poem continues the theme (from the previous poem) of the poet’s burden, here in a Bacchic and erotic mode. The heart of the poet is captivated by all three mistresses, Wine, Woman, and Song (1-8); but Woman is more "tyrannous" and "more strong" than Wine (9-16) and Song is stronger and "subtiler" than even Woman, as that of the Lorelei is sweeter than the siren herself (17-24). That enslavement is brought into its sharpest focus in the ballade’s Envoi "Then her I must serve without plea / Who doeth her servants much wrong, / Queen Song of the Jove-given three…" (25-27). The nature of that "wrong" was explained in the refrain of the previous ballade: "…the wealth of the poet’s thought / Is sweet to win, but bitter to keep" (5. 27-28).

This poem may have been inspired by two of Keats’, ("Women, Wine, and Snuff" and "Fill for Me a Brimming Bowl), although the conclusions of the two poets differ radically. In the former, Keats praises all his "beloved Trinity" (6); in the latter he calls for a "brimming bowl" with wine and "some drug, designed / To banish Women from my mind" (1-4)—not for "fond desiring" (6), but for "forgetting." The eroticism here is also similar: "…melting softness of that face, / The beaminess of those bright eyes, / That breast— earth’s only Paradise" (14-16). For Keats, the "Classic page, or Muse’s lore" (20) lost their charms.

Ballad to a Kingfisher

Printed only in Orion, and Other Poems (Pacey 35). Ballade form.

The tale of Ceyx and Alcyone is told in loving detail by Ovid in the Metamorphoses (11. 382-748). Ceyx, the king of Trachiniae, was drowned on a voyage to Claros. His devoted wife Alcyone had longed to accompany him (441). Informed of the wreck in a dream, she discovered his corpse on the seashore and plunged into the sea herself in grief. In pity, the gods changed them both into seabirds (halcyones, kingfishers) so that their love and marriage bond would be eternal; they mated and produced offspring (coeunt fiuntque parentes, 744). In legend, for a period of 7 (or 11 or 14) days at the Solstice the sea is miraculously calm while the Halcyons build their floating nests and raise their young (745-460; see also LCD 37). Hence the expression "Halcyon Days." Keats mentions the kingfisher in his "Imitation of Spenser": "There the king-fisher saw his plumage bright / Vieing with fish of brilliant dye below"(10-11).

This ballade is a sustained Alexandrian allusion to Ovid’s account. The poet’s indignant interrogation is prompted by the sight in winter of a female kingfisher peacefully fishing for minnows alone on a river bank, apparently forgetful of the distant sea and her duty to sailors and her celebrated devotion to her husband. The poet’s scolding of her for that forgetfulness and dereliction is pointed in the refrains of the ballade (8, 16, 24), and concludes in a stern admonition: "Now, Kingfisher, do not forget" (28). Ovid’s authority for these charges is implicit throughout, particularly Alcyone’s protested devotion (Met. 11. 684-707), the very thing she is not to forget! That authority is further reinforced by his appeal to "John Milton the vast, the divine" (23): "The Windes with wonder whist, / Smoothly the waters kist, / Whispering new joyes to the milde Ocean / Who now both quite forgot to rave, / While Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmed wave" ("Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity" 64-68).

Ballad of a Bride

Printed only in Orion, and Other Poems (Pacey 33). Ballade form.

An epithalamium (song at the bridal chamber, with echoes of Catullus 61 and 62) celebrating the beauty and grace of the bride and the joy of the couple as they depart from the wedding. Stanzas one (1-8) and three (17-24) are addressed to the bridesmaids, who are to deck her with orange-blossoms and red roses far less lovely than she (4, 9-14, 19-21); stanza two (9-16), to the garlands themselves. Cf. Cat. 61. 6-7: "Cinge tempora floribus suave olentis amaraci" [sweet marjoram]. As this ballade has a refrain (celebrating the poet’s role in the festivities: "Hearken a little to my lay"), so do both of Catullus’ epithalamia: "O Hymen Hymenaee io / O Hymen Hymenaee" (61) and "Hymen o Hymenaee, Hymen ades o Hymenaee" (62), addressed to the marriage spirit, Hymen. But the bride’s thoughts are on her new husband, not on the poet or his song (15, 23, 27), and there is more than a hint of envy on the poet’s part for the attention he is receiving from her. (The poet is perhaps thinking of his own coming marriage.)

Wedding songs in Greek are found in Homer, Hesiod, Aristophanes, and Theocritus; Sappho’s epithalamia filled the ninth book of her works (Greek Lyric xiii). Ovid, Statius, and Claudian continued the tradition in Latin, and it was revived in the Renaissance (Tasso, Marino; Ronsard, Belleau, DuBellay; Spenser, Sydney, Donne, Jonson, Herrick, Crashaw, Marvell, and Dryden (PEPP 249-50). Spenser coined the term prothalamium ("pre-wedding" song), and that poem is included in Palgrave (LIII). It has a refrain ("Sweet Thames! Run softly till I end my song") and contributes the phrase "Against the bridal day" (34; cf. Roberts, 6) and the word "lay" (87) to Roberts’ refrain. Spenser’s nymphs weave garlands for themselves as bridesmaids decked like brides (13-36, 91-108); Roberts’ bridesmaids weave them for the bride. (Palgrave omits the more famous "Epithalamium" Spenser wrote for his own wedding "as not in harmony with modern manners.")

Love Days

Also printed 1887 (with 6-10, 16-20 omitted) (Pacey 46). 5-line iambic stanzas: pentameter x4, trimeter x1 (abbab).

"Love Days" extends the world of eroticism and lover’s fulfillment from the preceding epithalamium to all loves of a singing, harmonious nature: sea, wind, and trees (1-6). The poet himself cannot sing, however, for of all those loves his alone are unfulfilled: "My only hope deferred and waitings long / Keep silent; me these rich completions wrong: / Ah! When shall I have leave my lips to gild / With a sweet marriage song?" (7-10). Glad wedding songs from down the ages ring in his ears, but their torches bring tears of envy to his eyes (11-15). All loves are satisfied, homes chosen, vows made—except for theirs (16-20). The poem ends with a carpe diem appeal to his beloved for many kisses, an echo of lines 1-2 ("sweet-mouthed shore…winds are joyous with their kissing chime") and of the kisses-poem of Catullus (5), as escape from the pain of delay and insurance against an uncertain future. Roberts later omitted stanzas two and three in the version printed in The Canadian Birthday Book (1897), for they refer with youthful ingenuousness to his own longing for marriage, and by 1897 that marriage had certainly gone sour. "Love Days" was probably composed in Chatham in the spring of 1880, while he was separated from his fiancee May Fenety.

Memnon

Also printed 1879, 1901/07 (Pacey 5-9). Spenserian stanzas (iambic pentameter 9-lines: ababbcbcc). Written in 1877 (Pomeroy 28).

Entering the rectory study one day he showed his father some verses he had written beneath a tree on his way down from college. His father saw at once that they were good but intimated that more verses were necessary to complete the poem. His father suggested that he try to get it published and was somewhat surprised to be told that a letter to this end was already written and addressed to Scribner’s Magazine. The poem was sent, and in a few weeks the the young poet was agreeably surprised to get a letter from the editor enclosing a check in payment and a statement to the effect that it was the best poem he had received in three months, and that other productions of like quality would be readily accepted. (University Monthly, December 1904)

With graduation in June came another triumph to crown his work of the last three years. His poem "Memnon" (126 lines in all) appeared in The Century, one of the foremost North American monthlies of the day. (Adams, Sir Charles God Damn 21)

Roberts is virtually original in taking [Memnon] for his central figure…. There are several…allusions [to Memnon] in Tennyson which I note because in "Memnon" Roberts emulates Tennyson’s characteristic treatment of myth…. The structure…is identical to that of Tennyson’s "Oenone"…. We are given a vivid picture reminiscent of Shelley’s "Ozymandias," of desolate reaches of rock, sand, and palm, strewn with the rubble of ancient idols…. The suggestion that Memnon’s soul is imprisoned in the statue and that his mother is somehow responsible, is Roberts’ idea…. Memnon, like his father [Tithonus] is consigned to a limbo between mortality and immortality…. As the tale of a figure tormented by his link to divinity, "Memnon" ironically qualifies th vision of "Orion" and "Ariadne"…a parable about the human spirit fated to grieve itself forever (Early 21-23)

Bulwer Lytton had also written a poem about Memnon in 1855. Ovid, Apollodorus, and other ancient writers mention him. Lemprière (LCD 455) gives a synthesis of details from these sources:

The Ethiopians, over whom Memnon reigned, erected a celebrated statue to the honour of their monarch. The statue had the wonderful property of uttering a melodious sound every day, at sun rising, like that which is heard at the breaking of the string of a harp when it is wound up. This was effected by the rays of the sun when they fell upon it. At the setting of the sun and in the night, the sound was lugubrious…. This celebrated statue was dismantled by order of Cambyses, when he captured Egypt…. (LCD 455)

Structure:

Prelude

Lament

Rondeau—"Hesper Appears"

Also printed 1879, 1880 (twice), 1887 (1-9), 1915 (Pacey 29). First of 3 rondeaus (poems 11-13) in Orion, and Other Poems.

Probably inspired by Byron’s lines on the Angelus in Don Juan III. 1-40: "Oh, Hesperus! Thou bringest all good things— / Home to the Weary, to the hungry cheer" (25-32)… "Sweet hour of twilight" (17), "Soft hour" (33). Roberts evokes the colours of both sunset and "purple gloaming…down low orient hills" (5-6). The cri du coeur of a lonely young man. See Catullus 62.1-2: "Vesper adest: iuvenes, consurgite Olympo / expectata diu vix tandem lumina tollit" (See also 62.26-31.)

Rondeau: 15-line (originally 13) iambic tetrameters with two rimes, stanzas of 5, 4, 6 lines (9 and 15 = refrain of first two feet of V. 1). "Aside from the occasional r. in English as early as the 18th c., the form did not flourish until it attracted the attention of Swinburne, Dobson [‘In After Days’], and other poets who experimented with the Fr. forms" (PEPP 722). A well-known example of a rondeau in English is "In Flanders’ Fields" by John McCrae.

Rondeau—"Without One Kiss."

Also printed 1891 (Pacey 51).

Like "Hesper Appears" this poem evokes separation, but here with a wry humour. "Parting one night at the gate of Linden Hall [the Fenety residence] after a little tiff, she [May Fenety] walked haughtily into the house while the college boy went on his way laughing repeatedly, ‘Without one kiss she’s gone away’" (Pomeroy 39). Cf. the incident reported by Adams (20) in which she hurled Charles’ gift of a specially bound copy of Shelley to the floor in a tantrum—she was expecting jewellery.

Rondeau to A.W. Straton

Only in Orion, and Other Poems (Pacey 51).

Andrew Straton (1858-1890) was an older cousin of both Roberts and Bliss Carman, and a brother of Barry Straton, their close school friend, and a fellow poet (Pomeroy 15; Pacey, Collected 386).

The refrain "To fledge the hours" is a nice conceit, glossed in line 2: "And wing their feet"; cf. also "Miriam.—II" 21-22: "Ah! But full were the hours, full to their heart’s desire;…golden their flying feet"

The Flight

Printed once more in 1889 (Pacey 37-38). Meter: dochmiacs (a Greek tragic meter used to express agitation) uu-u-u- : 8-line stanzas ababccab.

"The Flight" and "One Night" are entirely imaginative, founded upon nothing more substantial than a mood. (Letters [14.vii.1884] 40)

Swinburne may be the principal inspiration also for "The Flight" and "One Night," which are anomalies not only in Orion but in Roberts’ whole oeuvre. They evoke the dark side of romanticism, its gothic delineations of mental states and fearful violence, but are not particularly good specimens, lacking the impact and insight of such kindred pieces as Browning’s "Porphyria’s Lover," Rossetti’s "Sister Helen" and Swinburne’s "The Leper." (Early 24)

The story is obscure, and its spirit certainly gothic. Stories by Walpole, Radcliffe, Lewis, Maturin, Le Fanu and the Brontës could have suggested this setting and mood to the youthful Roberts.

Printed only in Orion, and Other Poems (Pacey 49). Iambic tetrameter 4-line stanzas (abab).

Possibly inspired by Thomas Hood’s strange poem "The Dream of Eugene Aram" (1839). P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster recollected (in the first of the Jeeves stories) "as a kid having to learn by heart a poem about a bird by the name of Eugene Aram…. But I recollect the poor blighter spent much of his valuable time dumping the corpse into ponds and burying it and what not, only to have it pop out at him again," ("Jeeves Takes Charge" in Carry on Jeeves 11-12). Bulwer Lythor had published his novel Eugene Aram in 1831.

Printed only in Orion, and Other Poems (Pacey 55). Dactylic 8-line stanzas, 2 2 2 2 4 2 2 3 (abcadbcd).

Partly inspired by Shelley’s "To The Night" (Palgrave, CLXXXVIII), but Roberts celebrates the virtues of Night and Day, while Shelley’s melancholy rejects Dawn and Day both.

"Memnon" & "Drowsihood" were printed in old [1879] Scribner’s. (Letters [14 vii 84] 40)

"Ariadne" and "An Ode to Drowsihood" were written shortly after "Memnon"…. (Pomeroy 28)

Also worth noting are the "Ode to Drowsihood" and "Ode to Night," both so redolent of the stanzas, music and imagery of Keats’ odes as to approach pastiche. Roberts was fond of the former poem, reprinting it in 1901 and again in 1936. Undeniably ‘derivative stuff’, these various lyrics nevertheless convey a certain ebullience and panache. It is almost as though Roberts was determined to make up at a dash poetic ground which Canadian writers had largely ignored. (Early 24-25)

"Ode to Drowsihood" continues the sentiments of "Song of Morning" (1-8) and "Hesper Appears," and is followed by "Ode to Night." Palgrave had provided Roberts with a number of poems to Sleep, Evening, and the Evening Star, by Daniel, Campbell, and Wordsworth, and Shelley’s "To The Night" (CLXXXVIII). He would also have known Keats’ sonnet "To Sleep" and "Sleep and Poetry." His poem is also greatly indebted to Ovid (Met. II. 585-709), in a long section incorporated into the story of Ceyx and Alcyone (see notes to "Ballad to a Kingfisher" above). There Juno sends Iris to the cave of Sleep (Somnus) to arrange for a dream to be sent to Alcyone telling her her husband is dead. That cave is near the cavern-dwelling Cimmerians. He is called "ingnavus Somnus" (‘lethargic Sleep’). Even Phoebus cannot enter (595). Slumber-inviting Lethe flows up from its depths (602-04); poppies and other herbs grow from which Nox compounds sleep for mortals (607). Iris flatters him as "Rest of all things, most mild of the gods, Sleep, peace of the spirit, from whom care flees, who soothest bodies weary from hard service, and preparest them once more for their toil" (623-25). Then Morpheus is picked from Sleep’s thousand sons to carry the dream to Alcyone, for he specializes in human shapes (633-34), while Icelus does animals (638-41) and Phantasus the inanimate (641-43). Then Somnus droops his head in soft drowsiness (molli languore) once more (647-49).

Another obvious poetic model for "Ode to Drowsihood" was Keats’ "To a Nightingale" (Palgrave CCXLIV) ("…a drowsy numbness pains my sense…and Lethewards had sunk…Was it a vision or a waking dream?…Do I wake or sleep?"). Keats praises Sleep in "Sleep and Poetry" as bringer of the visions of poetry: "Also imagining will hover / Round my fireside, and haply there discover / Vistas of solemn beauty, where I’d wander / In happy silence, like the clear Meander / Through its lone vales (71-75)….yet I must not forget / Sleep, quiet with his poppy coronet: / For what there may be worthy in these rhymes/ I partly owe to him" (347-50). Roberts’ "drowsihood" is Ovid’s mollis languor, the soft prelude to sleep. His flow of visions (14-51) from "aged Druid" (15) to "arms and lips / Cream-white and crimson" (50-51) is akin to Keats’ ("Sleep and Poetry" 354-95). The "poppy baths, juices expressed / In fervid sunshine" (34-5) are Ovid’s (11. 605-6) and Keats’ "Baiae’s skies" (45) are directly from Keats ("To Charles Cowden Clarke," 29). The framing image of Roberts’ poem is the "Moth-winged seducer, dusky-soft and brown (7)…. / Fain would I hold thee by the dark wing-tips/ Against a grievous season" (54-55).

Printed only in Orion, and Other Poems (Pacey 48). Iambic 11-line stanzas: 5 5 3 5 5 5 5 3 5 5 5 (abbabcdcddc).

See Early’s remarks (24-25).

This is an invocational (kletic) hymn to the goddess of Night. Like Sappho’s "Hymn to Aphrodite" it concludes in praise of and longing for the poet’s beloved. Roberts resumes the motif of the "Moth" from "Ode to Drowsihood," no longer as "drowsihood," but "My spirit’s wings." The countervailing motif is Night’s mystic rites for the poet (6, 14-15), lush with perfumes of syringa and the zephyr (10, 7-8), heart’s ease and bitter marigolds (22). For his beloved’s lips and cheeks, Night with her "feather-sandaled-feet" will tread out, in spurts of colour like new wine from a vat, "rosy flushes" from the "dying crimson of the day" (23-27). She is his only refuge from the world’s Folly, Envy, and Spite (30-33), and Night will speed him to her arms (33).

Another poem of the same period [his first college year] was "Amoris Vincula." "It was inspired more or less by a poem of Charles Pelham Mulvany, which had appeared in The Canadian Magazine [sic], and whose haunting cadences stayed with me for days." Although the poet did not include "Amoris Vincula" in his Collected Edition, its craftsmanship justifies attention in any stage of the poet’s early development. (Pomeroy 26)

During his second year at College, Roberts joined the Seventy-First Battalion. At that time Colonel Maunsell was head of the Militia Department of New Brunswick and of the Military School. Roberts attended the school and passed successfully the examinations qualifying him for Captain in the Militia. (Pomeroy 29)

Then there was a moth-eaten scarlet tunic in the attic that told you that father had once been a soldier in the brave militia. But that was long, long ago, and people didn’t go to war any more, you were happily certain. (Lloyd Roberts 23)

Anomalies of a different sort are "Love-Days" and "Amoris Vincula," which reach back beyond the nineteenth century to the Cavalier style of Herrick and Lovelace. (Early 24)

In a note in his biography, Scott says that his friend Dr. Tuke of Dublin has a lock of Stella’s hair, enclosed in a paper by Swift, on which are written, in the Dean’s hand, the words: "Only a woman’s hair." An instance, says Scott, of the dean’s desire to veil his feelings under the mask of cynical indifference.
     See the various notions of critics! Do these words indicate indifference or an attempt to hide feeling? Did you ever hear or read four words more pathetic? Only a woman’s hair—only love, only fidelity, only purity, innocence, beauty; only the tenderest heart in the world stricken and wounded, and passed away now out of reach of pangs of hope deferred, love insulted, and pitiless desertion;—only that lock of hair left; and memory and remorse, for the guilty, lonely wretch, shuddering over the grave of his victim. (350)

Roberts’ title, "Amoris Vincula" (‘Bonds of Love’) refers to "These fetters of caressing hair" (4) which neither "gall" nor "smart" (5). That hair is the symbolic antithesis to the world of war and separation, like the tress Swift kept to the end of his life.

Roberts knew Richard Lovelace’s "To Lucasta, On going to the Wars" from Palgrave (LXXXIII). Lovelace’s Cavalier sentiment ("I could not love thee, Dear, so much, / Loved I not honour more" 11-12) is quite the reverse of that of "Amoris Vincula," Roberts’ ironic refutation of it: "Ah, I too had girded me / And stood among the strong and free,— /…But a girlish voice saith nay,… / Bids me stay, and I must stay: / …" (13-14, 21-22). It would appear, however, that the shift from Lovelace’s focus on the beloved’s "chaste breast and quiet mind" (3) to those "fetters of caressing hair" was inspired by this poem of Mulvany.

(See Appendix III for the text of Mulvany’s poem "Stella.")

Published again in 1880 (CM), 1901/7 (Pacey 29). Sonnet (abbaabba cdecde).

Pomeroy (35) records this poem as the first written at Chatham, where Roberts was appointed headmaster of the grammar school (1879-1880): "a carefully-wrought sonnet with lines of considerable beauty…exceedingly serious note…but a mood or a passing phase…." James Cappon (Influences 18-19) wanted to find "a mournful farewell to Arcadian legend" here, produced by the poet’s growing awareness that he now had to choose between "high traditional" literature and the more popular types. (For the thought, compare Keats’ "To George Felton Mathew" 24-25.)

The unnamed speaker is a lyric poet who can sing no more ("fallen the lyre, / And sobs in falling," 9-10), whose violet eyes ("purple glow") are faded (10-11) and who no longer finds Apollo and his Muses’ inspiration in the mountain groves (12-13), or Pan ("pipings," 4) in green meadows, and doubts that they will ever be seen again (14). The wind once blew upon this poet from Thessaly (1), along with morning music (3) and pipings from meadows by the sea (4-5). No goddess or dryad sings now amid the laurel (6-8). Who is this singer? The sigh of "Ah me!" (1) strongly suggests a woman (cf. "Ariadne" 35, John E. Logan’s "A Blood-Red Ring Hung Round the Moon" from "Barry Dane" [Songs of the Great Dominion 35]), and W.S. Gilbert’s ballad "Ah me!": "Yet all the sense / Of eloquence / Lies hidden in a maid’s ‘Ah me!’"—although Keats uses it of a man [End. 4.71]). The purple glow of the speaker’s eyes also suggests a woman, recalling Keats’ "Woman, when I behold thee" ("Light feet, dark violet eyes and parted hair" 15); compare also Pindar’s epithet for Aphrodite, ioblepharos "violet-lidded" (cited by Lucian, Imagines 8). Keats also uses this colour image, too: "Light feet, dark violet eyes and parted hair" ("Woman, When I Behold Thee" 15). Such a speaker should be Sappho herself. The Thessalian wind used to blow upon her on Lesbos: the setting of the poem may anticipate that of "Sappho": Leucadia was the island on the coast of Epirus where Sappho would later throw herself into the sea after her rejection by Phaon. The story was most fully told by Ovid in his Heroides (15. 195-198): "dolor artibus obstat, / ingeniumque meis substitit omne malis/ non mihi respondent veteres in carmina vires; / plectra dolore tacent, muta dolore lyra est." See also Met. 15. 201: "Daughters of Lesbos, where love has made me of ill-repute, throng no more to hear my lyre." For both Sapphos (Ovid’s and Roberts’), grief (dolor) was the cause of the failure of poetic powers. (If it also reflects Roberts’ own feelings, there could again be loneliness on the separation from his fiancee May Fenety, who had remained at home in Fredericton with her family, leaving the young poet-lover without inspiration.)

At Pozzuoli

The temple of Jupiter Serapis at Pozzuoli (Fig. 958) was originally 134 feet long by 115 wide; and the roof was supported by forty-six columns, each forty-two feet high, and five feet in diameter. Three of the columns are now standing: they bear evidence, however, that they were once for a considerable time submerged to half their height. The lower twelve feet is smooth: for nine feet above this, they are penetrated by lithodomous or boring shells; the remains of the shells (a species now living in the Mediterranean) were found in the holes. The columns, when submerged, were subsequently buried in the mud for twelve feet, and were then surrounded by water nine feet deep. The pavement of the temple is now submerged. Five feet below it, there is a second pavement, proving that these oscillations had gone on before the temple was deserted by the Romans. It has been recently stated that, for some time previous to 1845, a slow sinking had been going on, and that since then there has been a gradual rising.

Illustration of Pozzuoli from Dana’s Manual of Geology.

Sappho

One evening over the wine, Exechestides, nephew of Solon the Athenian, sang a song of Sappho’s which his uncle liked so much that he asked the boy to teach it to him. When one of the company asked in surprise, "What for?" he replied, "I want to learn it and die!" (Aelian qtd. Lyra Vol. 1, 140; Greek Lyric Vol.1, 12)

Contemporary with Pittacus and Alcaeus was Sappho—a marvel! In all the centuries since history began we know of no woman who could be said with any approach to truth to have rivalled her as a poet. (Strabo qtd. Lyra Vol. 1, 142; Greek Lyric Vol. 1, 8)

A Lesbian of Mitylene, a lyre player. She threw herself from the Leucadian cliff for love of Phaon of Mitylene. Some authorities say that she composed lyric poetry. (Suda Lexicon qtd. Lyra Vol. 1, 142; Greek Lyric Vol. 1, 6)

They say of those who are attractive and haughty, "You are a Phaon"; that this Phaon was loved by many women, among them Sappho, not the poetess but another woman of Lesbos, who, failing to win him threw herself from the Leucadian cliff. (Suda Lexicon qtd. Lyra Vol. 1, 152)

Her tender passions were so violent that some have represented her attachments to three of her female companions, Anactoria, Atthis, and Megara, as criminal…. She conceived such a passion for Phaon, a youth of Mitylene, that, on his refusal to gratify her desires, she threw herself into the sea from mount Leucas….who for the sublimity of her genius was called the tenth Muse…. One of these pieces, the Ode to Anactoria, occurs in Dioysius of Halicarnassus and is imitated by Catullus in Latin [Carm. 51]; the other, an Invocation to Aphrodite, is in Longinus. [ Lyra Vol. 1, 182; Greek Lyric Vol.1, 52-54] (LCD 687)

And Sappho, with that gloriole / Of ebon hair on calmëd brows— / O poet-woman! None forgoes / The leap, attaining the repose. (E. B. Browning, "A Vision Of Poets" 318-21)

That all the tributes of her contemporaries show reverence not less for her personality than for her genius is…sufficient also to warrant our regarding the picturesque but scarcely edifying story of her vain pursuit of Phaon and her frenzied leap from the Cliff of Leucas as nothing more than a poetic myth, reminiscent, perhaps, of the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis—who is, indeed, called Phaon in some versions…. It is a myth which has begotten some exquisite literature, both in prose and verse, from Ovid’s famous epistle to Addison’s gracious fantasy and some imperishable dithyrambs of Mr. Swinburne. But one need not accept the story as a fact in order to appreciate the beauties which flowered out from its coloured absurdity. (C.G.D. Roberts, Introduction to Sappho vii-viii)

In "Sappho," the last and briefest classical narrative in Orion, and Other Poems, Roberts made only a mediocre contribution to the voluminous literature on this subject…Roberts’ poem of 1880, whatever his intentions, falls short of the exquisite and scarcely avoids the indignity of crude melodrama…. The rich colours which abound in the lyrics seem merely gaudy here. As represented by Roberts, perhaps she is the first of the many ‘doomed poets’ in Canadian literature. (Early 23)

Roberts’ main narrative source for this lyric poem is (as he suggests in his introduction to Carman’s collection) Ovid’s Heroides XV, a fictional epistle in elegiac couplets from Sappho to Phaon, the charming (Venus had favoured him with irresistible beauty through the gift of a magical unguent) ferryman of Lesbos. It is not likely that Roberts knew much more than the poems and fragments of Sappho that had survived through quotations in ancient authors, since the newly-discovered papyri were not published until 1882. The dramatic-lyric form chosen, complete with choral sections for chorus and semi-chorus, was perhaps inspired by Swinburne’s "Atalanta in Calydon" (the "dithyrambs" Roberts was referring to above?), Keat’s "Endymion," and Shelley’s dramas Swellfoot the Tyrant, Hellas, and Prometheus Unbound. Part one (1-94) covers the moments before her leap (1-50), the leap (51-53), and the response of the sea and the sea nymphs who bear her to the shore (54-94). Part two is the concluding choral lament (95-end) for her by the young people of Lesbos.

Miriam—I

Sapphics

Printed only in Orion, and Other Poems (Pacey 47). Sapphic stanzas (first of two poems in Aeolic meters).

The Sapphic metre is known from antiquity in the works of Sappho (for whom Roberts knew the then two surviving poems plus fragments), Catullus, Horace, and Seneca. It consists of three Sapphic hendecasyllables (-u—-uu-u— x3) +one Adonic (-uu—). Swinburne and Tennyson included Sapphics among their classical meters (PIPP, 737), as D.C. Scott and Lampman were to do.

An account of a mystical walk with "Miriam" on a summer’s noon, where bright-coloured flowers, scents, sunlight and birdsong are transformed by the glow of first love. But Miriam grows weary of the way, and tired and cross, a reaction the poet cannot understand as he pleads with her to continue. Miriam (Hebrew for Mary) likely represents May Fenety, whose perverse behaviour and hostility to poetry was quite incomprehensible to her beau ("Without One Kiss": Pomeroy, 39; Adams 1986, 20). If this poem refers to a flare-up between the young lovers, it does so through a sustained allusion to the Orpheus and Eurydice myth (Vergil, Georg. 4.453-527; Ovid, Met. 10. 1-163). In both versions Eurydice fades and slips away from the singer Orpheus when he steals his forbidden glance back, and vainly stretched out his arms to grasp her. Eurydice did not upbraid her foolish lover, however, who erred on the side of love: "iamque iterum moriens non est de coniuge quicquam / questa suo (quid enim nisi se queretur amatam)" (Met. 10.60-61), but Miriam does: "Cease thy upbraiding! / Cease thy upbraiding, ah, my widowed spirit!" (20-21). Roberts’ images of sun, moon and flowers seem Elysian (for example, Aen. 6.846-81), and the simile of the falling autumn leaves also has its archetype in Vergil (Aen. 6.637-41), evoking the swarms of shades thronging the Styx. Uncertain moonlight is a simile describing Aeneas’ progress through Hades. Whereas Miriam is herself decribed as "bright one" (8, 24), Dido is described as a new moon behind a cloud bank (Aen. 6. 451-54).

The sapphic meter, the Orphic-epic imagery, and the myth itself lend a weird aura to the lovers. He finds his girl weary, bored, and irritated that he has brought her so far. His final response is sad but gentle, his love undiminished by her petulance and peremptory refusal to go on. This Miriam is very much the stormy young woman of the kissless goodnight and the petulantly spurned volume of Shelley’s poems. (See note on "Without One Kiss.")

Miriam—II

Choriambics

Printed only in Orion, and Other Poems (Pacey 47-48). — -uu- -uu- u- (x3), -uu- u- (second of two Aeolic poems: Sapphics and Choriambics). This specific meter is the second Asclepiad.

Various choriambic meters were used by Sappho, Alcaeus, and Horace. Roberts’ models in English were probably Swinburne’s Choriambics.

…a more interesting poem although it begins unpromisingly enough as a late entry in a tradition hackneyed at this point in the nineteenth century. A humble wildflower inspires an epiphany which illuminates the universe…. Discovery of profundity in the commonplace and the idea of the privileged moment are familiar enough in Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning. Roberts’ lyric, however, becomes a commentary on this tradition, specifically upon the limitations of the epiphany at the heart of so much nature poetry…. His conclusion, however, tempers this vision with a strong measure of Victorian perplexity. (Early 25)

Pomeroy couples this poem to a Forget-me-not blossom with "To the Spirit of Song" as an illustration of the "note of philosophic mysticism which was to become perhaps the dominant characteristic of the poetry of Charles G.D. Roberts" (30). Roberts had no shortage of "To a Flower" poems to serve as his models in his school reader, Palgrave’s Golden Treasury: "Diaphenia" (Constable), "To Blossoms" and "To Daffodils" (Herrick), "To the Daisy" and "The Daffodils" (Wordsworth—Roberts’ phrase "A flash, a momentary gleam" (5) shows a link to this last). The flower is one of the "shapes of Beauty" that speak of "past scenes of paradise" in a tongue we have long forgotten.

The ballad of "The Shannon and the Chesapeake" was an early effort which the poet himself criticized severely in later years, but which the late Rufus Hathaway always maintained was one of Roberts’ finest ballads. (Pomeroy 29-30)

The subject is a celebrated naval engagement during the War of 1812 between the frigate HBMS Shannon and the larger American frigate Chesapeake. The American captain, Captain James Lawrence (1781-1813) had served with distinction at Tripoli, and earlier that year (1813) as captain of the Hornet sank HBMS Peacock. Newly promoted to Captain, and in command of the Chesapeake, he unsuccessfully engaged the Shannon off Boston on June 1. Mortally wounded (he died as a prisoner-of-war on the way to Halifax), his cry "Don’t give up the ship!" would become a part of US Naval tradition. The British captain, Philip Bowes Vere Broke (1776-1841, later Rear-Admiral Sir Philip) received a serious head wound while leading the boarding party during a 13-minute engagement, and subsequently retired from active service. Roberts’ chief source for the story could have been the documentary account of the battle by J. G. Brighton: Admiral Sir P.B.V. Broke, Bart., K.C.B., &c.: a Memoir. London: Sampsonbow, Son, and Marston (1866), esp. pp. 153-335. The battle was watched from the American shore and from the many small boats that ventured out from Boston for the event. Roberts’ sentiments in relation to British-American harmony (65-68) do not reflect that source, but his final rallying cry to the Royal Navy (69-77) does: "May the necessity never, never again arise. May Britain’s course henceforth be only one of peace on earth, union with all nations, and love to mankind; but should the All-Supreme ordain it otherwise, and in His all-conquering name send forth our legions and our navies under the sacred British flag, may this generation emulate (exceed they cannot) the skill and bravery of the men who served our country then" (208-209). A challenge to Roberts to produce a poem on the event comes on p. 318: "There was a general stringing of the lyres, in either land, on this occasion, but the feeling between the countries was too bitter for either to produce a poem likely to endure. This which follows, by Lieut. M. Montegue, R.N., is probably the best" (Brighton 318, quotes Montegue’s poem and four others). But this very battle had also been previously incorporated into John S. Cummins’ 1849 novel, Altham (Vol. 1, 264-278). The youthful James Annesley serves aboard the Shannon. Cummins relates the events. He spells the British captain’s name "Brooke." (See MacDonald’s article on this novel.) Palgrave contains two patriotic poems about sea-battles by T. Campbell: "Ye Mariners of England" (CCVI) and "Battle of the Baltic" (CCVII); also A. Cunningham, "A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea" (CCV).

It was during his first year at college that Roberts began writing in earnest. Almost as soon as the term opened he wrote "An Ode to Winter" and "The Maple." The latter was one of the few poems by which his work was represented in Canadian school textbooks for many years. (Pomeroy 26)

On Dec 4, 1892, Roberts wrote to James Elgin Wetherall, who was collecting verse for his edition of Later Canadian Poems (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1893): "Should prefer, also, if you would not use ‘The Maple’ from Orion, and Other Poems, as I don’t like the technique of it. For its sentiment & its lilt I like it, but its change of form is objectionable methinks" (Collected Letters 14 Dec. 1992, 161). Roberts may be referring to the formal shift from the priamel to reflective close (19), narrowing the scope to a single distant tree of memory.

It was during his first year at college that Roberts began writing in earnest. Almost as soon as the term opened he wrote "An Ode to Winter" and "The Maple." (Pomeroy 26)

More than the obligatory poem on the popular Canadian subject or a mere rehearsal of the seasons convention which descends from classical literature via Pope, Thomson and Blake…. Winter, then, is associated with the incorrupt realm of the spheres—or of Orion’s constellation—to which the speaker prefers sublunary life with its plenitude, fertility, and moral difficulty. (Early 26)

Poems by Grey, Campbell, Keats and Shelley on the seasons are found in Palgrave.

Surface links between this poem and "The Maple" are obvious. Both conclude with a celebration of the autumn crimsons of maples as the college term unfolds. "To Winter" begins with carefully measured praise of imperious Winter’s austere beauties, sun on frost, bare trees and snow (1-24). Controlling is the image of Winter as an "intermediate land" (2) between the "bordering realms" (26) of Spring (27-40) and Autumn (64-79, 85-87). These descriptions are far lusher with warmth, colour, sounds and odours, in a kind of pastoral symphony. The rapid tumbling trochees express an endless flow of riches for the senses. Winter deprives the poet’s world of sound: "But what magic melodies…?" (25); he recreates those sounds with words: "liquid sobbing…gurgling rills…lisping wavelets…wooings,…cooings…orchestra of leaves" (27-44). He grants that the very music of the spheres may lurk behind the silence of winter nights (47-55), unheard by his "mortal-cloakéd ear" (63). The final eight lines form a coda or refrain of lines 1-2.

This shrinking from life, this clinging to sheltering walls of tradition and academic retirement is expressed in the "Epistle to Bliss Carman." (Stephen 53)

One of the most important poems in Orion from a philosophic as well as a personal standpoint is "An Epistle to Bliss Carman" which was written in September, 1878, welcoming Carman to the University and paying tribute to Parkin, his master. (Pomeroy 372)

Repudiation of an inauthentic art is also a theme in "Epistle to Bliss Carman," which effectively concludes Orion (the "Dedication," unlisted in the Contents, follows). Appropriately, the "Epistle" is the most distinctive and important poem in the book. Roberts employs heroic couplets in the manner of Keats’ early verse epistles—which also generally deal with nature, poetry and the poet’s relation to his art—but he succeeds in making this form the vehicle of his own form and purpose. The "Epistle" course of the volume and states a considered point of view which is conceived as a starting point.  (Early 26: an indispensable discussion)

The unity this epistle gives to the collection (rightly appreciated by Early) is partly achieved through the themes of autumn and school term ("The Maple," "To Winter"), and uncertainty about his future vocational paths as they lead away from college (46ff—cf. "At Pozzuoli") into the world of men and their sorrows; the "songless ways" diverge from "the only one which lures me, which is sweet" (61): the way through idealistic service to becoming a poet to the common man. "Might I but hope that path belonged to me" (97). The epistolary mode is reaffirmed in lines 97-105 (and by the interrupting asterisks following line 36), with a modest appeal for Carman to overlook his poet-friend’s meandering excesses, his "blots and spots" (103): "Scan not its outer but its inner part; / ’Twas not the head composed it but the heart" (104-05).

Considered singly, the poems in Orion hardly seem to support Roberts’ claim that they reveal his deepest feelings; considered as a sequence they do map out his fundamental commitments. It is appropriate, then, that the volume’s last words, subscribed to the dedicative stanzas, register his own time and place. (Early 29)

Roberts’ choice of the Alcaic stanza for the concluding poem of his collection of thirty poems is programmatically significant. This is ( as the ancients labeled it) the poet’s sphragis, or "seal." The number (30) and the Alcaic meter acknowledge a debt to Horace’ Odes, of which Book III begins with six impressive poems, "The Roman Odes," all in Alcaics, and also contains 30 odes. Roberts’ allusion is to the Theban bees that fed the divine poet Pindar with the honey of inspiration (Aelian 1.12). Horace put his own spin on this image at Odes 4.2.27, an ode extolling Pindar, to project that spirit of the ancient lyric poets. The "first fruits gathered by distant ways" for his father echo his lapidary dedication at the opening of the book, also to Canon Roberts. (Pace Early, however, Roberts’ claim here to have "laid bare his inmost heart" seems altogether justified, and it applies to this poem as much as any.) His individual poems about poetry and the poet and inspiration reflect a devoted and humble reading of the ancient and English classics—and of the Romantics and Victorians. Others (for example, "Epistle to Bliss Carman") reveal his consuming desire to take up the poet’s mantle, his abiding love of nature, his spirit of friendship, his hopes and confusions, his youthful erotic longings, the joys of his college days, his strenuous and lonely life in Chatham, and of course his abiding affection and respect for his father. Those "distant ways" are both diverse and far away. Canon Roberts would have understood that, and it was meant to be clear to Roberts’ contemporaries.