Properly Isabel Ecclestone Mackay belongs to the minor poets of the Systematic Period. For in 1904 she published her first volume of verse, _Between the Lights_. But with that, she turned to writing fiction, and did not publish any books of verse till the appearance of _The Shining Ship and Other Poems_ (1919) and _Fires of Driftwood_ (1923). Her first venture in verse was not better than passable or than good journalistic verse. But in _Fires of Driftwood_ she disclosed a real mastery of form, color, and music, along with a spiritual sentiment which is new in Canadian poetry. She is occupied most with the vicissitudes and meaning of life, but occasionally she paints objective Nature with winning color and music. It is, however, in her poetry _of_ childhood (rather than _for_ children), as in _The Shining Ship_, that Isabel Ecclestone Mackay most displays original genius and has achieved genuine distinction. The poems in _The Shining Ship_ are marked by the rarest of psychological gifts in a poet—insight into the real heart and mind and imagination of children, and by a diction and phrasing which appeal to the child mind as immediately and as winningly as do the child poems of Eugene Field and R. L. Stevenson. In fact, as Stevenson’s _A Child’s Garden of Verse_ is to English Literature, so Isabel Ecclestone Mackay’s _A Shining Ship and Other Poems_ is to Canadian Literature. * * * * * Sources of quotations in this chapter: _The Hayfield_ is found in _The Last Robin_, by Ethelwyn Wetherald (Ryerson Press: Toronto). Quotations from Jean Blewett’s work, in _Jean Blewett’s Poems_ (McClelland & Stewart: Toronto). From Francis Sherman’s _Matins_ (Copeland and Day: Boston). From Albert E. S. Smythe’s _Grave and Gay_; and from _The Garden of the Sun_ (Macmillan Co.: Toronto). CHAPTER XV Elegiac Monodists THE ELEGIAC MONODISTS OF CANADA—CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS—BLISS CARMAN—WILFRED CAMPBELL—DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT—WILLIAM MARSHALL —JAMES DE MILLE.