"The darkness brings no quiet here, the light No waking; ever on my blinded brain The flare of lights, the rush, the cry, and strain, The engines' scream, the hiss and thunder smite: I see the hurrying crowds, the clasp, the flight. Faces that touch, eyes that are dim with pain: I see the hoarse wheels turn, and the great train Move labouring out into the bourneless night. So many souls within its deep recesses, So many bright, so many mournful eyes: Mine eyes that watch grow fixed with dreams and guesses; What threads of life, what hidden histories, What sweet or passionate dreams and dark distresses, What unknown thoughts, what various agonies!" Bliss Carman has long been recognised by the critical lover of poetic art as a poet of unusual distinction and grace. When, in the days of his early youth, his poem _Low Tide on Grand-Pré_ appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_, all connoisseurs in poet-lore felt the magical touch. Over all the barren reaches on which the sun had gone down the poet saw the "unelusive glories": "Was it a year or lives ago We took the grasses in our hands. And caught the summer flying low Over the waving meadow lands, And held it there between our hands? * * * * * * "And that we took into our hands-- Spirit of life, or subtler thing-- Breathed on us there, and loosed the bands Of death, and taught us, whispering, The secret of some wonder thing." That the poem is faintly, vaguely reminiscent of Swinburne's _Félise_ is only an added charm. Like a refrain of music lingers the last stanza: {254} "The night has fallen, and the tide ... Now and again comes drifting home, Across these aching barrens wide, A sigh like driven wind or foam: In grief the flood is bursting home!" Mr. Carman has kept faith with the poetic dreams of his youth. Could there be found in the songs of any land a lyric more subtle, more delicately exquisite in expression, than this which he calls _The Unreturning_? "The old, eternal spring once more Comes back the sad, eternal way; With tender, rosy light, before The going out of day. "The great white moon across my door A shadow in the twilight stirs; But now, forever, comes no more That wondrous look of Hers!" Master of many and varied orders of song, Mr. Carman has the rare art of the ballad; and his blank verse, as his lyrical, is enticing. A series of the daintiest lyrics, _Songs of the Sea Children_, call up a very fairyland in which to wander. One of these (the lyrics form a sequence) thus portrays the mysteries of spring: "In the blue mystery of the April woods, Thy spirit now Makes musical the rainbow's interludes, And pink the peach-tree bough. "In the new birth of all things bright and fair, 'Tis only thou Art very April, glory, light, and air, And joy and ardour now." {255}