Flint and Feather | Page 2

it is with real emotion that I
recur to this article and to the occasion of it. Many years ago--nearly a
quarter of a century--a beloved friend whom I still mourn, Norman
Maccoll, editor of the "Athenaeum," sent me a book called "Songs of
the Great Dominion," selected and edited by the poet, William Douw
Lighthall. Maccoll knew the deep interest I have always taken in
matters relating to Greater Britain, and especially in everything relating
to Canada. Even at that time I ventured to prophesy that the great
romance of the twentieth century would be the growth of the mighty
world-power of Canada, just as the great romance of the nineteenth
century had been the inauguration of the nascent power that sprang up
among Britain's antipodes. He told me that a leading article for the

journal upon some weighty subject was wanted, and asked me whether
the book was important enough to be worth a leader. I turned over its
pages and soon satisfied myself as to that point. I found the book rich
in poetry--true poetry--by poets some of whom have since then come to
great and world-wide distinction, all of it breathing, more or less, the
atmosphere of Canada: that is to say Anglo-Saxon Canada. But in the
writings of one poet alone I came upon a new note--the note of the Red
Man's Canada. This was the poet that most interested me-- Pauline
Johnson. I quoted her lovely canoe song "In the Shadows," which will
be found in this volume. I at once sat down and wrote a long article,
which could have been ten times as long, upon a subject so suggestive
as that of Canadian poetry.
As it was this article of mine which drew this noble woman to me, it
has, since her death, assumed an importance in my eyes which it
intrinsically does not merit. I might almost say that it has become
sacred to me among my fugitive writings: this is why I cannot resist the
temptation of making a few extracts from it. It seems to bring the dead
poet very close to me. Moreover, it gives me an opportunity of
re-saying what I then said of the great place Canadian poetry is
destined to hold in the literature of the English-speaking race. I had
often before said in the "Athenaeum," and in the "Encyclopaedia
Britannica" and elsewhere, that all true poetry--perhaps all true
literature--must be a faithful reflex either of the life of man or of the
life of Nature.
Well, this article began by remarking that the subject of Colonial verse,
and the immense future before the English-speaking poets, is allied to a
question that is very great, the adequacy or inadequacy of English
poetry--British, American, and Colonial--to the destiny of the race that
produces it. The article enunciated the thesis that if the English
language should not in the near future contain the finest body of poetry
in the world, the time is now upon us when it ought to do so; for no
other literature has had that variety of poetic material which is now at
the command of English-speaking poets. It pointed out that at the
present moment this material comprises much of the riches peculiar to
the Old World and all the riches peculiar to the New. It pointed out that

in reflecting the life of man the English muse enters into competition
with the muse of every other European nation, classic and modern; and
that, rich as England undoubtedly is in her own historic associations,
she is not so rich as are certain other European countries, where almost
every square yard of soil is so suggestive of human associations that it
might be made the subject of a poem. To wander alone, through scenes
that Homer knew, or through the streets that were hallowed by the
footsteps of Dante, is an experience that sends a poetic thrill through
the blood. For it is on classic ground only that the Spirit of Antiquity
walks. And it went on to ask the question, "If even England, with all
her riches of historic and legendary associations, is not so rich in this
kind of poetic material as some parts of the European Continent, what
shall be said of the new English worlds--Canada, the United States, the
Australias, the South African Settlements, etc.?" Histories they have,
these new countries--in the development of the human race, in the
growth of the great man, Mankind--histories as important, no doubt, as
those of Greece, Italy, and Great Britain. Inasmuch, however, as the
sweet Spirit of Antiquity knows them not, where is the poet with wings
so strong that he can carry them off into the "ampler ether." the "diviner
air" where history itself is poetry?
Let me repeat here, at the risk