Poetry
Orion and Other Poems
Opening lines
White as fleeces blown across the hollow heaven
Fold on fold thy garment wraps thy shining limbs;
Deep thy gaze as morning's flamed thro' vapors riven,
Bright thine hair as day's that up the ether swims.
Text quoted from canadiana.ca
Synopsis
The long poem placed at the head of the collection retells a Greek fable. On Chios, the hunter Orion, son of a god, has delivered the island of its wild beasts in order to win Merope; the king and priest Oenopion, who does not want to keep his word, drugs him with a draught from Colchis and has poison poured into his eyes as he sleeps on the shore. The Nereids mourn him, and a man come from a forge guides him towards the heights, facing east. Around this piece, other ancient subjects, ballads and rondeaux, and a few pieces in which the Bay of Fundy and the Miramichi appear.
Context
Archibald Lampman, a student at Trinity College, borrowed a copy one evening in May 1881, spent the night reading and rereading it in a state of extreme exaltation, and went out at daybreak into the college park finding everything transfigured. What amazed him, he said, was that a Canadian, a young man, one of their own, had written such verse. He told this ten years later in a lecture given in Ottawa. The collection had appeared in Philadelphia, from Lippincott, with a dedication signed at Fredericton in July 1880. In 1902, Willa Cather judged the author's first collections pedantic and imitative.
Who it is for
A short collection, in an ornate language in the manner of Tennyson, which requires some knowledge of ancient mythology.
Prizes and reception
It is said to be the starting point of a renewal of Canadian poetry, and its author one of the major figures of the group known as the Confederation poets.
Sources for this page 9
The pages consulted to check this page.