lyric
cry" thrills all his cadences. If it be true that poetry is the
rhythmical expression in words of thought fused in emotion, then in
his work we are impressed by the completeness of the fusion. Every
phrase is filled with lyric passion. At its best, the result is a poem
which not only haunts the ear with its harmonies but at the same time
makes appeal to the heart and intellect. When the result is less
successful it seems sometimes as if the thought were too much diluted
with words,--as if, in fact, verbal music and verbal coloring were
allowed to take the place of the legitimate thought-process. Even in
such cases, the verse, however nebulous in meaning, is rarely without
some subtlety of technique, some charm of diction, to justify its
existence. But there are poems of Mr. Carman's, wherein what seems at
first to be the obscurity of an over-attenuated thought is really an
attempt to express thought in terms of pure music or pure color. In a
curious and beautiful poem called 'Beyond the Gamut' he elaborates a
theory of the oneness and interchangeability of form, sound, and
color.

In the matter of conception and interpretation Mr. Carman is a
symbolist. This word is not used here in any restricted sense, and
must be divorced from all association with the shibboleths of warring
schools. The true symbolist--and all the supreme artists of the world
have been in this sense symbolists--recognizes that there are truths
too vast and too subtle to endure definition in scientific phrase.
They elude set words; as a faint star, at the coming on of evening,
eludes the eye which seeks for it directly, while unveiling itself to
a side glance. Mr. Carman conveys to us, by the suggestion of
thrilling color or inimitable phrase, perceptions and emotions which a
more strictly defined method could never capture.

In subject-matter Mr. Carman is simple and elemental. He looks at his
themes curiously, often whimsically; but the themes are those of
universal and eternal import,--life, love, and death, the broad
aspects of the outer world, the "deep heart of man," and the spirit
that informs them all. His song is sometimes in a minor key, plangent
and piercing; sometimes in a large and virile major,--as for instance
when he sings the 'War-song of Gamelba.' To his gifts of imagination,
insight, and lyric passion he adds a fine humor, the outflowing
of a broad and tolerant humanity. This is well exemplified in
'Resignation' and 'A More