t observe how incessantly the poet's mind--like the
minds of his two great masters, Browning and Whitman--works at this
problem. In "Behind the Arras," the title poem; "In the Wings," "The
Crimson House," "The Lodger," "Beyond the Gamut," "The Juggler"--yes,
in every poem in the book--he takes up and handles the strange thing we
know as, or call, life, turning it now this way, now that, in an effort
to find out its meaning and purpose. He comes but little nearer
success in this than do most of the rest of men, of course; but the
magical and ever-fresh beauty of his expression, the haunting melody of
his lines, the variety of his images and figures and the depth and
range of his thought, put his searchings and ponderings in a class by
themselves.

Lengthy quotation from Mr. Carman's books is not permitted here, and I
must guide myself accordingly, though with reluctance, because I
believe that in a study such as this the subject should be allowed to
speak for himself as much as possible. In "Behind the Arras" the poet
describes the passage from life to death as

A cadence dying down unto its source
In music's course,

and goes on to speak of death as

the broken rhythm of thought and man,
The sweep and span
Of memory and hope
About the orbit where they still must grope
For wider scope,

To be through thousand springs restored, renewed,
With love imbrued,
With increments of will
Made strong, perceiving unattainment still
From each new skill.

Now follow some verses from "Behind the Gamut," to my mind the poet's
greatest single achievement;

As fine sand spread on a disc of silver,
At some chord which bids the motes combine,
Heeding the hidden and reverberant impulse,
Shifts and dances into curve and line,

The round earth, too, haply, like a dust-mote,
Was set whirling her assigned sure way,
Round this little orb of her ecliptic
To some harmony she must obey.

And what of man?

Linked to all his half-accomplished fellows,
Through unfrontiered provinces to range--
Man is but the morning dream of nature,
Roused to some wild cadence weird and strange.

Here, now, are some verses from "Pulvis et Umbra," which is to be found
in Mr. Carman's first book, _Low Tide on Grand Pre_, and in which the
poet addresses a moth which a storm has blown into his window:

For man walks the world with mourning
Down to death and leaves no trace,
With the