Literary critics in the United States, in reviewing Marshall’s _Brookfield_ signalized both its sensuous and spiritual beauty as extraordinary, and in line with the quality of the best English elegiac monodies. In Canada it received high praise from Sir Andrew MacPhail, who sponsored it by publishing it in _The University Magazine_, and from Dr. Archibald MacMechan. ‘No such poem,’ said the latter, ‘has appeared in Canada since Roberts’ _Ave!_ In dignity and depth of feeling the _Ave!_, De Mille’s _Behind the Veil_, and _Brookfield_ stand together—a noble trio.’ Marshall’s _Brookfield_ is Canadian in subject and setting and is indeed a beautiful and noble application of ideas to life—a genuinely original contribution to the creative poetic literature of Canada. James De Mille’s _Behind the Veil_, published posthumously in 1892, is a kind of elegiac monody. The poet himself does not so sub-title it. He designates it simply as ‘A Poem.’ Whether the ‘Loved One’ who has been lost to the poet was a real person or an imagined companion of the spirit, it is impossible to surmise from the poem. But the poem itself is concerned with life and death and yearning for union with the Beloved in Heaven, and is thus a spiritualized elegy. Essentially, however, it is a reflective or philosophical poem. If it is reflective, it is also highly melodramatic both in substance and in form. Part of its melodramatic quality derives from its metrical structure which suggests Poe’s _Raven_. It is written in stanzas of five lines in trochaic tetrameter—a form totally unsuited to its intended high spiritual dignity of theme. A taste of its quality is afforded from the following stanzas:— Through the darkness rose a vision, Where beneath the night I kneeled, Dazzling bright with hues Elysian— Congregated motes of glory on an ebon field And a form from out that glory to my spirit stood revealed. ‘Son of Light’—I murmured lowly— ‘All my heart is known to thee— All my longing and my yearning for the Loved One lost to me— May these eyes again behold her?’—and the Shape said, ‘Come and see.’ It is impossible to read one hundred and twenty-five stanzas or 625 lines like the preceding, in which the feminine endings make fixed caesural pauses that prevent enjambement and thus inhibit rhythmical variety, without the reader’s feeling himself in the realm of the musically melodramatic. So that the high seriousness of the poem suffers a loss in impressiveness because of the metre and rhythm of the poem. It is plain that De Mille was not an adroit verbal musician. The spiritual dignity and seriousness of the poem can be commended, but on the whole, it is not poetry, and is not a significant contribution to the Canadian monody. ----- [1] _A Seamark_ is found in the collection _Ballads and Lyrics_, by Bliss Carman (McClelland & Stewart: Toronto).