CREATIVE REFRESHMENT
‘In Gold Lacquer’ by Bliss Carman
‘Sun Dance’ — painting by Susan Alison
‘In Gold Lacquer’ by Bliss Carman*
Gold are the great trees overhead, And gold the leaf-strewn grass, As though a cloth of gold were spread To let a seraph pass. And where the pageant should go by, Meadow and wood and stream, The world is all of lacquered gold, Expectant as a dream.
Against the sunset’s burning gold, Etched in dark monotone Behind its alley of grey trees And gateposts of grey stone, Stands the Old Manse, about whose eaves An air of mystery clings, Abandoned to the lonely peace Of bygone ghostly things.
In molten gold the river winds With languid sweep and turn, Beside the red-gold wooded hill Yellowed with ash and fern. The streets are tiled with gold-green shade And arched with fretted gold, Ecstatic aisles that richly thread This minster grim and old.
The air is flecked with filtered gold, — The shimmer of romance Whose ageless glamour still must hold The world as in a trance, Pouring o’er every time and place Light of an amber sea, The spell of all the gladsome things That have been or shall be.
Bliss Carman was a Canadian poet, although he lived most of his life in the US. He was well-known in the Western world, and well-thought-of, both as a poet and as a person.
Unusually, he made most of his living from his poetry. Sometimes he took on other assignments, as well, as is so often the case with all kinds of artist, but they were always jobs that involved the written word.
He wrote more than fifty books of poetry!
In 1904, Francis Thompson, an English poet, described Bliss Carman as, “a Canadian poet of deserved repute this side of the water, with a lusty and individualized joy in nature.”
It is his poems celebrating nature that I particularly enjoy. Not only that, but I understand them! I find many of the classic poems a little inaccessible. That might make me a bit of a lazy-poetry-reader, but if I have to work too hard to ‘get into’ a poem then I lose the joy in its rhythm and melody.
And I so agree with this quote of his:
“Set me a task in which I can put something of my very self, and it is a task no longer; it is joy; it is art.”
My own creativity is always refreshed by reading the creative works of others — especially some of the classic poems, knowing they were written in a different world at a different time, with a different mindset.
*This poem is in the public domain. Stuff you need to know about the use of other people’s work.
Another Bliss Carman poem:
My favourite classic poem:
It’s autumn!
Stuff you need to know about the use of other people’s work:
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