Poetry
Among the Millet and Other Poems
Archibald Lampman · 1888
Opening lines
The dew is gleaming in the grass,
The morning hours are seven,
And I am fain to watch you pass,
Ye soft white clouds of heaven.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
A collection of one hundred and fifty-two pages published in Ottawa in 1888, in two parts: poems, then a sequence of twenty-nine sonnets. The landscapes of the Ottawa Valley dominate: the white road under the midday sun in “Heat”, the clouds seen from a millet field, the voice of the frogs, a morning in a canoe on the Lièvre, the October autumn. Alongside them, pieces on distant subjects, three pilgrims on their way to Rome, an Arab camp, an Athenian reverie, and sonnets on love, truth or the city.
Context
The author published the book at his own expense in 1888, from J. Durie & Son in Ottawa, thanks to an inheritance that came to his wife, to whom he dedicates it. Charles G. D. Roberts, who had published one of his sonnets in the first issue of the Toronto review he edited, reviewed it favourably, and the American novelist W. D. Howells praised it in Harper's in 1889. E. W. Thomson also praised it in a Toronto daily.
Who it is for
A short collection, easy to read, in which the sonnets can be taken one by one; the 1888 text is online.
Prizes and reception
The volume contains “Heat”, one of his best-known poems, and its author is regarded as the most accomplished of the Confederation poets.
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