In its way, _Labor and the Angel_ is as finely and as impressively achieved as Tennyson’s _Princess_. It answers a question which is particularly pertinent to Canada where work—the gaining of material subsistence—necessarily is paramount, because inevitable and pressing. As with Browning, so with Scott, Woman is man’s life-star and inspiration. In the poem _Labor and the Angel_, the Man and the Girl are common humanity, but the Girl, who is also the Angel of Labor, is the man’s companion and helpmate:— Down on the sodden field A blind man is gathering his roots, Guided and led by a girl; Her golden hair blows in the wind, Her garments, with flutter and furl, Leap like a flag in the sun; And whenever he stoops, she stoops, And they heap up the dark colored beets In the barrow, row upon row. Labor, the kind which is mere toil and drudgery, is without meaning and unspiritual. But Woman was designed by God as the power which shall inspire men to spirituality in all things. As Man, every man would be ‘blind’ and purposeless and futile. But as Man, companioned and inspired by Woman and idealizing labor for the end of her companionship and love and the spiritual fruits of that love, every man, who is obedient to the ideal, transmutes the lowliest labor into spiritual purpose, meaning and result:— She offers no tantalus cup To the shrunken, the desperate lips, But she calms them with lethe and love And deadens the throb and the pain. For Labor is always blind, Unless as the light of the deed The Angel is smiling behind. ‘Effort and effort,’ she cries, ‘Up with the lark and the dew, Still with the dew and the stars, This is the heart beat of life, Feel it athrob in the earth.’ Man and Labor, Woman and Love as the star and inspiration of man in all his work—what nobler dignity could any poet give to Woman, and what other consolation of philosophy could he conceive and sing that would, as it does, for men more surely Make mortal flesh seem light and temporal! _Labor and the Angel_ is unique amongst poems by Canadians, and its noble philosophy of the spirit challenges poems of similar quality by Tennyson, Browning, Meredith, and Emerson. Duncan Campbell Scott—austere intellectualist, superb verbal musician, luminous Nature-painter, and impeccable technical virtuoso of verse amongst Canadian poets—it is by him that we are also given in _The Height of Land_ the finest expression of the true spiritual mysticism, the immediate perception of God—an intuition in which Life appears