Bliss Carman's Sanctuary
Colum, Padraic
BLISS CARMAN'S SANCTUARY By PADRAIC COLUM THERE is an hour in the day when birds fly close to the hedges and are suddenly present in gardens; when flowers are no longer flaunting, and trees are a...
...The mood that belongs to this hour Bliss Carman renders in the unrhymed sonnets of Sanctuary...
...That wide-brimmed hat he had worn for many seasons...
...He bled easily...
...These last poems were written in "the sun room" as part of an uncompleted collection, and reflect the house in which he had so much peace and content, and the garden that the wild creatures were not shut out of...
...It is a mood in which living and a dream about life are reconciled...
...they were always carefully pressed and spotless...
...Bliss Carman did with the minimum of getting and spending...
...But these last ten years, I have heard him say, found him more robust in health than any time since his early youth...
...there he would spend the day, writing, reading, walking and dreaming, returning to the village at night...
...Bliss Carman was above everything else a sweet-natured man...
...But in the struggle which every visionary must have with the world he had no divided heart...
...he was sensitive over every part of his great frame...
...Little we see in nature that is ours," that noble lament goes on...
...Getting and spending we lay waste our powers," Wordsworth lamented...
...His ever dear native land, Canada gave him its highest honors in his later years...
...It is a region of glittering lakes, rivers and bays, rocky ravines and great forests, abounding in wild life, a paradise of the adventurous canoeist...
...This delightful province was always a treasured memory of the poet's...
...He did nothing of the kind...
...He was a tall man, but that exceptional build was contained in a thin integument...
...King live...
...yet there was always something in his attire that corresponded to the gaiety and color of his mind-a bright necktie, a silver chain, a turquoise ornament that some Indian friend had bestowed upon him...
...Here he died suddenly on the morrow of a quiet working-day...
...when flowers are no longer flaunting, and trees are a dim stature...
...He had too much humor and too much interest in daily happenings to show himself as anything else than a companionable man...
...But his later poetry belongs to New England, to Connecticut, and particularly to "the little valley of the Silvermine...
...I do not mean that he went about showing himself as belonging to that service...
...when the noise of insects in the grasses becomes distinct, and men are seen on their homeward way...
...I am sure that no one ever parted from him without saying to himself, "I hope I shall see dear Bliss Carman again...
...it was a day on which those who were close to him could say as they thought upon him, a verse of one of his own poems: "In patience therefore I await My friend's unchanged benign regard- Some April when I too shall be Spilt water from a broken shard...
...Mary Perry King-a friendship which indeed gave sanctuary to the poet, and unquestionably added to his length of days...
...Then the first young birds were leaving the nests...
...quietly, without any argumentation, he took the side opposite to the world's...
...His health was precarious when he came to New Canaan twenty-two years ago...
...However, that irritability that usually goes with the thin skin was no part of his nature...
...Morris Lee King and Mrs...
...The tweeds that he wore had given him long service...
...Every morning he would leave his rooms in the village and walk to Sunshine House where Dr...
...I have known few poets anywhere, and certainly no poet in America, who had so dedicated himself to the service of poetry as Bliss Carman...
...He was saved from being a solitary by his friendship with Dr...
...In these last poems of his"We linger on entranced by glowing earth, The splendor of the blazoned woods all still, The pattern of the everlasting hours . . . The lone Designer of Indian Summer smiles...
...He was born in New Brunswick- New Brunswick which, as his comrade of the old days, Richard Le Gallienne, in his tribute to Carman, reminded us, "when it belonged to France, went by the more charming name of Acadie, or Acadia, immortalized by Longfellow, and as near to Arcady in its romantic natural features as its name...
...His life had a frugal dignity which was in itself a rare and a fine achievement...
...reflect, above all, the beauty and intimacy of the companionship that strengthened and inspirited him...
...and Mrs...
...Bliss Carman had earned assuredly the right to say these words with less bitterness than most visionaries...
Vol. 11 • December 1929 • No. 8
