"As long as water ripples And weather is clear and glad, Day after day they are dancing, Never a moment sad.
"But when through the field of heaven, The wings of storm take flight, At a touch of the flying shadows They falter and slip from sight.
"Until, at the grey day's ending, As the squadrons of cloud retire, They pass in the triumph of sunset With banners of crimson fire."
Mr. Carman is pre-eminently the poet of nature, as how else could he be when, in _The Breath of the Reed_, he makes this appeal?
"Make me thy priest, O mother. And prophet of thy mood, With all the forest wonder Enraptured and imbued";
or when he thus expresses himself in _The Great Return_?
"When I have lifted up my heart to thee, Then hast thou ever hearkened and drawn near, And bowed thy shining face close over me, Till I could hear thee as the hill-flowers hear.
"When I have cried to thee in lonely need, Being but a child of thine bereft and wrung, Then all the rivers in the hills gave heed And the great hill winds in thy holy tongue--
"That ancient incommunicable speech The April stars and Autumn sunsets know-- Soothed me and calmed me with solace beyond reach Of human ken, mysterious and low."
Mr. Carman is, however, more than a writer of exquisite lyrics, more even than a painter and hymner of nature in its various aspects and moods. He is more deeply concerned with the mystery which we call life than with anything else, and again and again seeks to understand and express his sense of that mystery. His _Behind the Arras_--described by a recent writer as the most distinctive book of poems issued in English in the past quarter of a century-- is a record of such attempts. We quote here the opening verse of _The Players_:
"We are the players of a play As old as earth, Between the wings of night and day, With tears and mirth."
And here the first verse of _In the Wings_:
"The play is life; and this round earth The narrow stage whereon We act before an audience Of actors dead and gone."
And here are some lines from _Beyond the Gamut_, which for philosophic insight are surely hard to equal in modern poetry:
"As all sight is but a finer hearing, And all colour but a finer sound, Beauty, but the reach of lyric freedom, Caught and quivering past all music's bound;