The painted seasons in their pageantry,
The silvery progressions of the moon,
And all their infinite ardors unsubdued,
Pass with the wind replenishing the earth

Incredulous forever I must live
And, once thy lover, without joy behold,
The gradual uncounted years go by,
Sharing the bitterness of all things made.

Mention must be now made of _Songs of the Sea Children_, which can be
described only as a collection of the sweetest and tenderest love
lyrics written in our time--

the lyric songs
The earthborn children sing,
When wild-wood laughter throngs
The shy bird-throats of spring;
When there's not a joy of the heart
But flies like a flag unfurled,
And the swelling buds bring back
The April of the world.

So perfect and complete are these lyrics that it would be almost
sacrilege to quote any of them unless entire. Listen however, to these
verses:

The day is lost without thee,
The night has not a star.
Thy going is an empty room
Whose door is left ajar.

Depart: it is the footfall
Of twilight on the hills.
Return: and every rood of ground
Breaks into daffodils.

There are those who will have it that Bliss Carman has been away from
Canada so long that he has ceased to be, in a real sense, a Canadian.
Such assume rather than know, for a very little study of his work would
show them that it is shot through and through with the poet's feeling
for the land of his birth. Memories of his childhood and youthful
years down by the sea are still fresh in Mr. Carman's mind, and inspire
him again and again in his writing. "A Remembrance," at the beginning
of the present collection, may be pointed to as a striking instance of
this, but proof positive is the volume, _Songs from a Northern Garden_,
for it could have been written only by a Canadian, born and bred, one
whose heart and soul thrill to the thought of Canada. I would single
out from this volume for special mention as being "Canadian" in the
fullest sense "In a Grand Pre Garden," "The Keeper's Silence," "At Home
and Abroad," "Killoleet," and "Above the Gaspereau," but have no space
to quote from them.

But Mr. Carman is not only a Canadian, he is also a Briton; and
evidence of this is his _Ode on the Coronation_, written on the
occasion of the crowning of King Edward VII in 1902. This poem--the
very existence of which is hardly known among us--ought to be put in
the hands of every child and yo