Flint and Feather | Page 3

of seeming garrulous, a few sentences in
that article which especially appealed to Pauline Johnson, as she told
me:
"Part and parcel of the very life of man is the sentiment about antiquity.
Irrational it may be, if you will, but never will it be stifled. Physical
science strengthens rather than weakens it. Social science, hate it as it
may, cannot touch it. In the socialist, William Morris, it is stronger than
in the most conservative poet that has ever lived. Those who express
wonderment that in these days there should be the old human
playthings as bright and captivating as ever--those who express
wonderment at the survival of all the delightful features of the
European raree-show--have not realised the power of the Spirit of
Antiquity, and the power of the sentiment about him--that sentiment
which gives birth to the great human dream about hereditary merit and
demerit upon which society--royalist or republican--is built. What is the

use of telling us that even in Grecian annals there is no kind of heroism
recorded which you cannot match in the histories of the United States
and Canada? What is the use of telling us that the travels of Ulysses
and of Jason are as nothing in point of real romance compared with
Captain Phillip's voyage to the other side of the world, when he led his
little convict-laden fleet to Botany Bay--a bay as unknown almost as
any bay in Laputa--that voyage which resulted in the founding of a
cluster of great nations any one of whose mammoth millionaires could
now buy up Ilium and the Golden Fleece combined if offered in the
auction mart? The Spirit of Antiquity knows not that captain. In a
thousand years' time, no doubt, these things may be as ripe for poetic
treatment as the voyage of the Argonauts; but on a planet like this a
good many changes may occur before an epic poet shall arise to sing
them. Mr. Lighthall would remind us, did we in England need
reminding, that Canada owes her very existence at this moment to a
splendid act of patriotism--the withdrawal out of the rebel colonies of
the British loyalists after the war of the revolution. It is 'the noblest epic
migration the world has ever seen,' says Mr. Lighthall, 'more loftily
epic than the retirement of Pius AEneas from Ilion.' Perhaps so, but at
present the dreamy spirit of Antiquity knows not one word of the story.
In a thousand years' time he will have heard of it, possibly, and then he
will carefully consider those two 'retirements' as subjects for epic
poetry."
The article went on to remark that until the Spirit of Antiquity hears of
this latter retirement and takes it into his consideration, it must, as
poetic material, give way to another struggle which he persists in
considering to be greater still--the investment by a handful of Achaians
of a little town held by a handful of Trojans. It is the power of this
Spirit of Antiquity that tells against English poetry as a reflex of the life
of man. In Europe, in which, as Pericles said, "The whole earth is the
tomb of illustrious men," the Spirit of Antiquity is omnipotent.
The article then discussed the main subject of the argument, saying
how very different it is when we come to consider poetic art as the
reflex of the life of Nature. Here the muse of Canada ought to be, and is,
so great and strong. It is not in the old countries, it is in the new, that

the poet can adequately reflect the life of Nature. It is in them alone that
he can confront Nature's face as it is, uncoloured by associations of
history and tradition. What Wordsworth tried all his life to do, the poets
of Canada, of the Australias, of the Cape, have the opportunity of doing.
How many a home-bounded Englishman must yearn for the
opportunity now offered by the Canadian Pacific Railway of seeing the
great virgin forests and prairies before settlement has made much
progress--of seeing them as they existed before even the foot of the Red
Man trod them--of seeing them without that physical toil which only a
few hardy explorers can undergo. It is hard to realise that he who has
not seen the vast unsettled tracts of the British Empire knows Nature
only under the same aspect as she has been known by all the poets from
Homer to our own day. And when I made the allusion to Pauline
Johnson's poems which brought me such reward, I quoted "In the
Shadows." The poem fascinated me--it fairly haunted me. I could not
get it out of my head; and I remember that I was rather severe on Mr.
Lighthall for only giving us two examples