The key to Duncan Campbell Scott’s genius and poetry is this singular, if not anomalous, spiritual fact that his Art always, corresponds with, and never contradicts, his Thought and Life. In this ‘tri-unity’ of complete ‘correspondence’ of Thought, Life, and Art, Scott’s analogue is Matthew Arnold. The English poet was, above all things, the austere intellectualist. So, too, Duncan Campbell Scott is the austere intellectualist. But, unlike Arnold, Scott’s ‘austerities and rejections’ are not those of the substance of poetry but of its temper and technic. While it is true that Scott is the remorseless idealist as man and active citizen, and while the light that chiefly plays on his poetry is the ‘dry light’ of the intellect or imaginative reason, it is equally true that in his heart there is the warm fire of love of humanity and Nature and all the humanizing arts, and that the dry intellectual light which most notably illumines his poetry is colored, at times delicately or subtly, at times brilliantly, at other times magically, with the substance and color of Nature in Canada and of modern music and painting. As in the man and citizen, as in his Thought and Life, there is a high plane of refined and serene vision, feeling, and deed, so in his poetic Art and Style the outstanding qualities are serene Dignity and exquisite Beauty. It is always a manly and refined art; and its sensuous Beauty is made spiritual by sincerity, delicacy or nobility of thought and by imaginative truth. Never in it is there sentimentality, or vulgarity, but always _humane_ beauty and dignity which derive from delicacy of spiritual vision and sincerity, and from restraint in technical artistry. As an example of these excellences in Duncan Campbell Scott’s poetry—of its dignity and beauty, refinement and restraint—we quote this surpassing compliment to woman’s spiritual loveliness and charm, _Portrait of Mrs. Clarence Gagnon_ (from Scott’s _Beauty and Life_):— Beauty is ambushed in the coils of her Gold hair—honey from the silver comb Drips and the clustered under-tone is warm As beech leaves in November—the light slides there Like minnows in a pool—slender and slow. A glow is ever in her tangled eyes, Surprise is settling in them, never to be caught; Thought lies there lucent but unsolvable, Her curved mouth is tremulous yet still, Her will holds it in check; were it to sleep One moment—that white guardian will of hers— Words would brim over in a wild betrayal, Fall sweet and tell the secret of her charm, Harm would befall the world, Beauty would fly Into the shy recesses of the wood— Be seen no more of mortals, be a myth Remembered by a few who might recall A nerveless gesture, a frail color, a faint stress, Some vestige of a vanished loveliness.