) is among those men whose poetry
is the shining glory of that great English literature which is our
common heritage.

If any should ask why, if what has been just said is so, there has
been--as must be admitted--no general recognition of the fact in the
poet's home land, I would answer that there are various and plausible,
if not good, reasons for it.

First of all, the poet, as thousands more of our young men of ambition
and confidence have done, went early to the United States, and until
recently, except for rare and brief visits to his old home down by the
sea, has never returned to Canada--though for all that, I am able to
state, on his own authority, he is still a Canadian citizen. Then all
his books have had their original publication in the United States, and
while a few of them have subsequently carried the imprints of Canadian
publishers, none of these can be said ever to have made any special
effort to push their sale. Another reason for the fact above mentioned
is that Mr. Carman has always scorned to advertise himself, while his
work has never been the subject of the log-rolling and booming which
the work of many another poet has had--to his ultimate loss. A further
reason is that he follows a rule of his own in preparing his books for
publication. Most poets publish a volume of their work as soon as,
through their industry and perseverance, they have material enough on
hand to make publication desirable in their eyes. Not so with Mr.
Carman, however, his rule being not to publish until he has done
sufficient work of a certain general character or key to make a volume.
As a result, you cannot fully know or estimate his work by one book, or
two books, or even half a dozen; you must possess or be familiar with
every one of the score and more volumes which contain his output of
poetry before you can realise how great and how many-sided is his
genius.

It is a common remark on the part of those who respond readily to the
vigorous work of Kipling, or Masefield, even our own Service, that
Bliss Carman's poetry has no relation to or concern with ordinary,
everyday life. One would suppose that most persons who cared for
poetry at all turned to it as a relief from or counter to the burdens
and vexations of the daily round; but in any event, the remark referred
to seems to me to indicate either the most casual acquaintance with Mr.
Carman's work, or a complete misunderstanding and misapprehension of
the mea