Flint and Feather | Page 3

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 of a poet so rare--so full of the spirit of the open air.
Naturally I turned to his introductory remarks to see who Pauline Johnson was.