As simple as to the shepherd seems his flock: A Something to be guided by ideals— That in themselves are simple and serene Of noble deed to foster noble thought, And noble thought to image noble deed, Till deed and thought shall interpenetrate, Making life lovelier, till we come to doubt Whether the perfect beauty that escapes Is beauty of deed or thought or some high thing Mingled of both, a greater boon than either: Thus we have seen in the retreating tempest The victor-sunlight merge with the ruined rain, And from the rain and sunlight spring the rainbow. Seek we in the poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott for the choice and ineluctable goods of the spirit,—music, color, high thought and serene philosophy—and we shall always be rewarded with Beauty ‘golden and inappellable.’ * * * * * The quotations in this chapter are chiefly from _Beauty and Life_, by Duncan Campbell Scott, (McClelland & Stewart). CHAPTER XI Wilfred Campbell AS AN OBJECTIVE NATURE PAINTER—HUMANIZED SUBSTANCE OF HIS VERSE— PATRIOTISM AND BROTHERHOOD—DRAMATIC MONODY—POETICAL TRAGEDIES AND DRAMAS. In the early nineties of the last century three young Canadian poets, who were employed in the Civil Service Departments at Ottawa, were closely associated in a systematic way as men of letters. They were Wilfred Campbell, Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott. In the Toronto _Globe_ they conducted a department of literary criticism and ‘causerie’ under the caption ‘The Mermaid Inn.’ Oddly, these three young Canadian men of letters were singularly dissimilar in poetic temperament, attitudes, vision, and ideals. As a poet Lampman was an interpreter of the inner meaning of the beauty and moods of Nature. He and Nature communed with each other by reciprocal sympathy, and he cared greatly for style and craftsmanship in poetry. Duncan Campbell Scott loved beauty for its own sake as a spiritual delight or source of ecstasy, but perfection of form, style, artistry—‘art for art’s sake’—pre-empted all other considerations in poetry. Wilfred Campbell occupied a middle ground. He was an objective Nature-painter, with tendencies to be more interested in Nature as a habitat or background of the human spirit which had come from God and was going to God. He was solicitous about form and imagery, color and melody in poetry, but for him these were always a means to an end, never a mere end in themselves. Or, harking back to influences, we may say that Lampman wrote poetry with the eye and the spirit of Keats and Wordsworth; Scott with the eye of Matthew Arnold for naturalistic and moral beauty and chaste artistry; and Campbell in the spirit of Longfellow and Emerson, and, sometimes, of Tennyson.