One will seek far in English poetry for a picture of the human figure limned as graphically as it is in Marjorie Pickthall’s line:— With the herded cloud before her and her sea-sweet raiment blown; and one will seek far in English poetry to find a line musically so in harmony with the spiritual picture of ‘all the little sighing souls’ eyeing, wistful and afraid, the wonder of the shining spectacle of Heaven, as her line:— Frighted of the glory gates and the starry stair. Not once, or even for a moment, could the earthward vision of the Vaudevillian poets conceive, and much less could they write, such a poem of the pure in heart who shall see God as Marjorie Pickthall’s _The Lamp of Poor Souls_, and its subdued, sacramental music, ending thus:— Shine, little lamp, fed with sweet oil of prayers. Shine, little lamp, as God’s own eyes may shine, When He treads softly down His starry stairs And whispers, ‘Thou art Mine!’ Shine, little lamp, for love hath fed thy gleam. Sleep, little soul, by God’s own hands set free. Cling to His arms and sleep, and sleeping, dream, And dreaming, look for me. Francis Thompson or Alice Meynell could have written the whole poem possibly with a more immaculate artistry, but not with any finer appeal to the religious or mystical imagination, and not with a melody a whit more winning as an end in itself. Having thus tasted the chief engagements of Marjorie Pickthall’s poetry, we must in a more detailed way disclose her genius and art as they appear in her lyrical poems in _The Drift of Pinions_ (1913), _The Lamp of Poor Souls_ (1916), and the posthumous volume _The Wood Carver’s Wife_ (1922)—the last of which contains a lyric drama (the title-poem of the volume) and several lyrics. It is as an adroit and exquisite craftswoman (or ‘artist’), rather than for originality of imaginative conception, that, from her first printed essays in verse to the last, Marjorie Pickthall appeals as a specially gifted poet in Canada, and must be accorded an honorable, possibly high, place in Canadian poetic literature. Technically, her poetry is distinguished by an extraordinarily successful use of color epithets and verbal melody, especially alliteration. The defects of her poetry are not, on the whole, technical, but are defects, or rather limitations, of genius. Broadly viewed, her poetry lacks breadth of range and eloquence of style. By ‘style’ is not meant Matthew Arnold’s conception or formula of what he called ‘the grand style.’ Marjorie Pickthall’s verse is free, flowing, airy, graceful, tripping, musical; in a word, feminine. But by thus much does it lack originality and seriousness in the substance of its style, the qualities which give us the sense of having met with beauty which is not a mere finely distilled essence of loveliness, but which has strength, and dignity, and power over the heart and the imagination.