Canadian Literature is rich—not relatively but absolutely—in Dirges, Epicedes, Elegies, Threnodies, and Elegiac Monodies. That Canadian Elegiac Monodies, or long ‘In Memoriam’ poems inspired by the death of a real, not a mythical or imagined, person, have genuine distinction, is indisputable. In number they equal the monodies of English Literature; and in manner, in variety of form, and in several qualitative excellences they surpass the monodies of American Literature. Modern English literature possesses five great threnodies or monodies; Milton’s _Lycidas_, Shelley’s _Adonais_, Tennyson’s _In Memoriam_, Arnold’s _Thyrsis_, and Swinburne’s _Ave atque Vale_. American Literature has to its credit two fine and noble monodies: Emerson’s _Threnody_ (for his son) and Whitman’s _When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d_ (for Lincoln). Canadian Literature boasts of six threnodies or monodies, which all enhance New World Literature and at least two of which are a distinct contribution to the elegiac poetry of English Literature. The Canadian monodies are Roberts’ _Ave!_ (to Shelley), Carman’s _A Seamark_ (to Stevenson), Campbell’s _Bereavement of the Fields_ (to Lampman), Duncan Campbell Scott’s _Lines in Memory of Edmund Morris_ (a Canadian painter), William E. Marshall’s _Brookfield_ (to R. R. MacLeod), and James De Mille’s _Behind the Veil_ (which is sort of Dantean ‘Vision’ of the Beloved in Heaven). That Canadian poets should have essayed the Elegiac Monody and have excelled in it is consistent with the genuine, the essential mood, the spiritual attitudes of the Canadian people. For while the literary traditions, forms, and methods of Canadian poets are English, the bases of Canadian culture and civilization are much more New England and Scots than English, or, in short, Puritan and Calvinistic. It was as natural for the 19th century native-born Canadian, as it was for an 18th century New England Puritan and Loyalist and a Scots Calvinist, to be preoccupied with thoughts of ‘otherworldliness.’ The meaning of life and death is almost a _congenial_ subject of reflection to the characteristic Canadian. Fortunately the _habitat_ of the Canadian mind, Nature in Canada, recalled Canadian poets from exclusive occupation with spiritual prosperities and great departures to thoughts of ‘the soul’s inherent high magnificence’ in daily mundane life and to the joys, consolations, spiritual transports, and peace which Nature affords the distracted human spirit. Another factor saved Canadian poets from moralistic preachments when they were moved to express in verse their sorrow over some great departure. They had the example of the form and color of the English elegies, from Milton to Swinburne, to save them from chill gravity and barren moralism. The Canadian monodists, on their own account, also loved fine technic in verse, and strove to achieve it according to their capacity. It was therefore natural that Canadian