Bliss Carman

“ As becomes such a poet, and particularly a poet whose birth-month is April, Mr. Carman sings much of the early spring. Again and again he takes up his woodland pipe, and lo! Pan himself and all his train troop joyously before us. Yet the singer's notes for all his singing never become wearied or strident; his airs are ever new and fresh; his latest songs are no less spontaneous and winning than were his first, written how many years ago, while at the same time they have gained in beauty and melody. ”

“ The world shall come unto a council hall,
And in a place of peace pursue the quest
Of wisdom and the finding out of truth,
That there be no more discord upon earth,
But only knowledge, beauty, and good will."
And it was done according to Akbar's word.
There in the wilderness as by magic rose
Futtehpur Sikri, the victorious city,
Of marble and red sandstone among the trees,
A rose unfolding in the kindling dawn.
Palace and mosque and garden and serai,
Bazaars and baths and spacious pleasure grounds,
By favor of Allah to perfection sprang. ”

“ Who gave us our patterns of beauty, our standards of flawless worth?
Mothers, unmilitant, lovely, moulding our manhood then,
Walked in their woman's glory, swaying the might of men.
They schooled us to service and honor, modest and clean and fair,—
The code of their worth of living, taught with the sanction
of prayer.
They were our sharers of sorrow, they were our makers of joy,
Lighting the lamp of manhood in the heart of the lonely boy.
Haloed with love and with wonder, in sheltered ways they trod,
Seers of sublime divination, keeping the truce of God. ”

“ Who set our hands to the toiling, our feet in the field of strife?
Darkly they mused, predestined to knowledge of viewless things,
Sowing the seed of wisdom, guarding the living springs.
Little they reckoned privation, hunger or hardship or cold,
If only the life might prosper, and the joy that grows not old.
With sorceries subtler than music, with knowledge older than speech,
Gentle as wind in the wheat-field, strong as the tide on the beach,
Out of their beauty and longing, out of their raptures and tears,
In patience and pride they bore us, to war with the warring years. ”

“ The violet haze of Indian summer, before its splendor begins to fade,
When scarlet has reached its breathless moment, and gold the hush
of its glory now,
That were a mightier craft than Titian's, the heart to lift and
the head to bow.
I should be lord of a world of rapture, master of magic and gladness,
too,—
The touch of wonder transcending science, the solace escaping from
line and hue;
I would reveal through tint and texture the very soul of this earth
of ours,
Forever yearning through boundless beauty to exalt the spirit with
all her powers. ”

“ With mystery and silence
To deck the dying year;
And many a mystic flower
Of the wildwood I have known,
But Pionia Arnoldi
Hath a transport all her own.
For Peony, my Peony,
Hath strength to make me whole,—
She gives her heart of beauty
For the healing of my soul.
Arnoldus Villanova,
Though earth is growing old,
As long as life has longing
Your guess at truth will hold.
Still works the hidden power
After a thousand springs,—
The medicine for heartache
That lurks in lovely things.
The Urban Pan
Once more the magic days are come
With stronger sun and milder air ”

“ The lure of their laughter shall lead us, the lilt of their words
shall sway.
Though life and death should defeat us, their solace shall be
our stay.
Veiled in mysterious beauty, vested in magical grace,
They have walked with angels at twilight and looked upon glory's face.
Life we will give for their safety, care for their fruitful ease,
Though we break at the toiling benches or go down in the smoky seas.
This is the gospel appointed to govern a world of men.
Till love has died, and the echoes have whispered the last Amen. ”

“ The patience of time shall teach me courage, the strength of the sun
shall lend me poise.
I would give thanks for the autumn glory, for the teaching of earth
and all her joys.
Her fine fruition shall well suffice me; the air shall stir in my
veins like wine;
While the moment waits and the wonder deepens, my life shall merge
with the life divine.
In October
Now come the rosy dogwoods,
The golden tulip-tree,
And the scarlet yellow maple,
To make a day for me.
The ash-trees on the ridges,
The alders in the swamp,
Put on their red and purple
To join the autumn pomp. ”

“ Secrets for a poet's ear.
Mortal, mortal, come with me,
When the moon is rising large,
Through the wood or from the sea,
Or by some lone river marge.
There, entranced, you shall behold
Beauty's self, that grows not old.
Night Lyric
In the world's far edges
Faint and blue,
Where the rocky ledges
Stand in view,
Fades the rosy, tender
Evening light;
Then in starry splendor
Comes the night. ”

“ The deep red cones of the sumach
And the woodbine's crimson's sprays
Have bannered the common roadside
For the pageant of passing days.
These are the oracles Nature
Fills with her holy breath,
Giving them glory of color,
Transcending the shadow of death.
Here in the sifted sunlight
A spirit seems to brood
On the beauty and worth of being,
In tranquil, instinctive mood;
And the heart, filled full of gladness
Such as the wise earth knows,
Wells with a full thanksgiving
For the gifts that life bestows ”

“ Carman's speculations upon life's meaning and the mystery of the future cannot but appeal to the thoughtful-minded, it is as an interpreter of nature that he makes his widest appeal. Bliss Carman, I must say here, and emphatically, is no mere landscape-painter; he never, or scarcely ever, paints a picture of nature for its own sake. He goes beyond the outward aspect of things and interprets or translates for us with less keen senses as only a poet whose feeling for nature is of the deepest and profoundest, who has gone to her whole-heartedly and been taken close to her warm bosom, can do. ”

“ On the trail of golden hours.
Over intervale and upland
Sounds the robin's interlude
From his tree-top spire at evening
Where no unbeliefs intrude.
Every follower of beauty
Finds in the spring solitude
Sanctuary and persuasion
Where the mysteries still brood.
Now the bluebird in the orchard,
A warm sighing at the door,
And the soft haze on the hillside,
Lure the houseling to explore
The perennial enchanted
Lovely world and all its lore;
While the early tender twilight
Breathes of those who come no more. ”

“ And though all-dying nature
Should teach him to deplore,
The ruddy fires of autumn
Shall lure him but the more
To pass from joy to stronger joy,
As through an open door.
He shall have hope and honor,
Proud trust and courage stark,
To hold him to his purpose
Through the unlighted dark,
And love that sees the moon's full orb
In the first silver arc. ”

“ If we be the builders of beauty, if we be the masters of art,
Theirs were the gleaming ideals, theirs the uplift of the heart.
Truly they measure the lightness of trappings and ease and fame,
For the teeming desire of their yearning is ever and ever the same:
To crown their lovers with gladness, to clothe their sons
with delight,
And see the men of their making lords in the best man's right. ”

“ For they who would find peace must conquer fear
And ignorance and greed,—the ravagers
Of spirit, mind, and sense,—and learn to live
Content beneath the shade of Allah's hand.
Who worships not his own will shall find peace."
Then Akbar answered, "I have set my heart
On making beauty, truth, and justice shine
As the ordered stars above the darkened earth. ”

“ From the Book of Myths is made up of work of that sort, every poem in it being full of the beauty of phrase and melody of which Mr. Carman alone has the secret. The finest poems in the book, barring the opening one, "Overlord," are "Daphne," "The Dead Faun," "Hylas," and "At Phædra's Tomb," but I can do no more here than name them, for extracts would fail to reveal their full beauty. And beauty, after all is said, is the first and last thing with Mr. Carman. As he says himself somewhere:
The joy of the hand that hews for beauty
Is the dearest solace under the sun. ”

“ The truth is, he is aware of them as only one with the sensitive organism of a poet can be; but he does not feel that he has a call or mission to remedy them, and still less to sing of them. He therefore leaves the immediate problems of the day to those who choose, or are led, to occupy themselves therewith, and turns resolutely away to dwell upon those things which for him possess infinitely greater importance.
"What are they?" one who knows Mr. Carman only as, say, a lyrist of spring or as a singer of the delights of vagabondia probably will ask in some wonder. ”

“ Where in all our English literature will one find the life history of man summed up more briefly and, at the same time, more beautifully, than in that wonderful line? Now follows a companion verse to those just quoted, taken from "Lord of My Heart's Elation," which stands in the forefront of From the Green Book of the Bards. It may be remarked here that while the poet recurs again and again to some favorite thought or idea, it is never in the same words. His expression is always new and fresh, showing how deep and true is his inspiration. ”

“ A living tapestry, rich and glowing with blended marvels, vermilion
and dun,
Hung out for the pageant of time that passes along an avenue
of the sun!
The crown of the ash is tinged with purple, the hickory leaves
are Etruscan gold,
And the tulip-tree lifts yellow banners against the blue for
a signal bold;
The oaks in crimson cohorts stand, a myriad sumach torches mass
In festal pomp and victorious pride, when the vision of spring
is brought to pass. ”

“ Through unfrontiered provinces to range—
Man is but the morning dream of nature,
Roused to some wild cadence weird and strange.
Here, now, are some verses from "Pulvis et Umbra," which is to be found in Mr. Carman's first book, Low Tide on Grand Pré, and in which the poet addresses a moth which a storm has blown into his window:
For man walks the world with mourning
Down to death and leaves no trace,
With the dust upon his forehead,
And the shadow on his face. ”

“ Wherever man might dwell.
And to each he apportioned a fragment of song—
Those broken melodies that belong
To the seraphs' chorus, that we might learn
The healing of gladness and discern
In beauty how all is well.
So music dwells in the glorious throats
Forever, and the enchanted notes
Fall with rapture upon our ears,
Moving our hearts to joy and tears
For things we cannot say. ”

“ The April stars and autumn sunsets know—
Soothed me and calmed with solace beyond reach
Of human ken, mysterious and low.
Who can read or listen to those moving lines without feeling that Mr. Carman is in very truth a poet of nature—nay, Nature's own poet? But how could he be other when, in "The Breath of the Reed" (From the Green Book of the Bards) , he makes the appeal? ”

“ One of those other claims is as a writer of sea poetry. Few poets, it may be said, have pictured the majesty and the mystery, the beauty and the terror of the sea, better than he. His Ballads of Lost Haven is a veritable treasure-house for those whose spirits find kinship in wide expanses of moving waters. One of the best known poems in this volume is "The Gravedigger," which opens thus:
Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old,
And well his work is done.
With an equal grave for lord and knave,
He buries them every one. ”

“ The April of the world.
So perfect and complete are these lyrics that it would be almost sacrilege to quote any of them unless entire. Listen however, to these verses:
The day is lost without thee,
The night has not a star. ”

“ Now follow some verses from "Behind the Gamut," to my mind the poet's greatest single achievement;
As fine sand spread on a disc of silver,
At some chord which bids the motes combine,
Heeding the hidden and reverberant impulse,
Shifts and dances into curve and line,
The round earth, too, haply, like a dust-mote,
Was set whirling her assigned sure way,
Round this little orb of her ecliptic
To some harmony she must obey.
And what of man? ”

“ What—to take a verse from the following pages at random—could be more pellucid, more crystal clear in expression—what indeed, could come closer to that achieving of the impossible at which every real poet must aim—than this from "In Gold Lacquer" (page 12) ?
Gold are the great trees overhead,
And gold the leaf-strewn grass,
As though a cloth of gold were spread
To let a seraph pass.
And where the pageant should go by,
Meadow and wood and stream,
The world is all of lacquered gold,
Expectant as a dream. ”

“ Trail through the cañon, and the mountain stream
Sounds his sonorous music far below
In the deep-wooded wind-enchanted cove.
Hemlock and aspen, chestnut, beech, and fir
Go tiering down from storm-worn crest and ledge,
While in the hollows of the dark ravine
See the red road emerge, then disappear
Towards the wide plain and fertile valley lands.
My forest cabin half-way up the glen
Is solitary, save for one wise thrush,
The sound of falling water, and the wind
Mysteriously conversing with the leaves. ”

“ It may not possess the force and vigor of the work which preceded it; but anything seemingly missing in that respect is more than made up for me by increased beauty and clarity of expression. The mysticism—verging, or more than verging, at times on symbolism—which marked his earlier poems, and which hung, as it were, as a veil between them and the reader, has gone, and the poet's thought or theme now lies clearly before us as in a mirror. ”

“ Bliss Carman was from the first too original and individual a poet to be directly influenced by anyone else; but there can be no doubt that his friendship with Hovey helped to turn him from over-preoccupation with mysteries which, for all their greatness, are not for man to solve, to an intenser realisation of the beauty and loveliness of the world about him and of the joys of human fellowship. ”

“ First of all, the poet, as thousands more of our young men of ambition and confidence have done, went early to the United States, and until recently, except for rare and brief visits to his old home down by the sea, has never returned to Canada—though for all that, I am able to state, on his own authority, he is still a Canadian citizen. Then all his books have had their original publication in the United States, and while a few of them have subsequently carried the imprints of Canadian publishers, none of these can be said ever to have made any special effort to push their sale. ”

“ In "The City of the Sea" (Last Songs from Vagabondia) Mr. Carman speaks of the seabells sounding
The eternal cadence of sea sorrow
For Man's lot and immemorial wrong—
The lost strains that haunt the human dwelling
With the ghost of song. ”