Women Writers:
Crawford, Isabella Valancy - Ontario Poet Part 3 Appreciation
Back to Isabella Valancy Crawford - Ontario Poet Part 2 AnthologyAN APPRECIATION
EIGHTEEN years had passed
since the death of Isabella
Valancy Crawford. There was
not a trace of her work save a
few copies of the paper-cov
ered "Old Spookses Pass,"
which had found friends here and there, though
at the time of its author s death there was no
body of opinion to create a sense of its value.
Many of her poems were lost in the old files
of the Toronto daily newspapers.
Then, almost unannounced, there appeared
in 1905 a Collected Edition of her Poems. It
was gathered together by Mr. John W. Garvin,
with the help and assistance of the one sur
viving member of the Crawford family, Mr.
Stephen Walter Crawford. Miss Ethelwyn
Wetherald wrote a delightful Introduction and
the volume was published by William Briggs
of Toronto. It met with enthusiastic reviews
and editorials from one end of Canada to the
other. It is strange to compare these tributes
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ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD
with the scanty comment paid to the same
work two decades before.
This volume contains eighty-six poems, of
which fifty-two appeared for the first tune.
The contents are divided into four sections:
lyrics, narrative poems, blank verses and dia
lect. The editor tells us that "Miss Crawford
preserved few of her poetic compositions in
the original manuscript. Most of the poems
in this volume, other than those printed in the
early collection, were preserved in the form
of clippings from the newspapers in which they
originally appeared. Some of the finest poems
such as The Rose of a Nation s Thanks,
Peace, His Clay, The Rose and Fairy
Toil were discovered in the Toronto Evening
Telegram of the years 1884 to 1887."
Open this book and you find the eternal
poet, no longer thwarted by life but rich amaz
ingly, overflowing with thought and full of ec
stasy an authentic voice of wide range and a
timbre that probably came out of long inheri
tance; brilliant, pure, sophisticated and yet
spontaneous.
In any analysis of the art of Isabella Valancy
Crawford it must be remembered that hers is
the poetry of youth, written in days of struggle
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AN APPRECIATION
and literary obscurity that seem, in their com
parative nearness, incredibly remote. She
was caught in the smoothest decades of Vic-
torianism. The giants existed, and fought
among themselves hi a sort of holy war, but
there was no rush of young insurgents clam
ouring to break new lances. She was far
from the centres of art where camaraderie
naturally exists. Alone she must work out
her methods, the rhythms of world poetry
moving far away in distant lordly strides. But
she possessed in herself the necessary ele
ments: tingling life, imagination rather than
fancy, a sensuous love of beauty, invention,
which always means a large knowledge of the
world s facts, and, as she was no specialist,
the transmutation of more than one gift adding
its subtle power.
Sidney Lanier once said of William Morris,
"He caught a crystal cupful of the yellow light
of sunset, and, persuading himself to dream it
wine, drank it with a sort of smile." But Miss
Crawford s cup contains life, and life that is
heady enough to intoxicate. In fact, she rather
reminds one at times of Walt Whitman s dem
ocrat, who felt himself "taller than the red
woods of California" and "strong enough to
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ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD
handle hell." She is essentially dramatic,
even in her treatment of nature. Her oak is
"a dark loud lion of a tree." In "The Legend
of the Mistletoe" she makes one of her own
striking similes :
What time fierce Winter, like a wolf all lean,
With sharp white fangs bit at weak woodland things,
Pierced furry breasts, and broke small painted wings,
And from dim homes all interlocked and green
Drove little spirits those who love glossed leaves
And glimmer in tall grasses those who ride
Glossed bubbles on the woodland s sheltered tide,
And make blue hyacinths their household eaves.
Her wood flowers are "gay enamelled chil
dren of the swamp," and who but she could
write of "a morn so like a dove with jewelled
eyes"?
Like all creators this poet garnered from the
past but lived vividly in the present. How she
would have moulded the sensitive mercurial
stuff of our day is problematic; what register
of new perceptions it might have awakened it
is perhaps idle to conjecture. Her construc
tive faculty was very great. Immaturity is
evident in a certain lack of perspective, for, in
spite of several dialect poems obviously in
tended to please an unsophisticated public, she
had not lived long enough to acquire the gift of
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humour. With it, she would have been full-
armed. Her work is, of course, the truest
biography. It would seem that she had been
grounded in Dante and had put on Tennyson,
though, as in the case of most disciples, she
outdoes her master hi mannerisms. But while
the early work abounds in imitative methods in
its essence, it is not for a moment derivative.
Indeed, its spontaneity is infectious. The clear-
flowing lines seem to spring out of some glad,
secret fountain of being. And there is great
verbal colour. Take, as one example out of
many, lines from "Said the Canoe," where a
description of the lighting of a camp fire
occurs :
Streamed incense from the hissing cones;
Large crimson flashes grew and whirled;
Thin golden nerves of sly light curled
Round the dun camp; and rose faint zones,
Half way about each grim bole knit,
Like a shy child that would bedeck
With its soft clasp a Brave s red neck. . . .
Into the hollow hearts of brakes
Yet warm from sides of does and stags
Passed to the crisp, dark river-flags
Sinuous, red as copper-snakes
Sharp-headed serpents, made of light,
Glided and hid themselves in night.
In her way she is an experimenter in form.
You feel her touching the rich embroidery to
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ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD
design new patterns. Sometimes she uses an
irregular rhyme, but seldom an irregular
rhythm. In the poem "March" the amphi
brach foot is used effectively without rhyme,
and it is not an old-fashioned mind that could
write such a line a hundred others might be
quoted as "her laugh a zigzag butterfly of
silver sound." But she has her old-world
moods when the reader gets the impression of
a weaver of mediaeval tapestries. The. forms
and images are quaint hundreds of years old.
She writes of minstrels and wine-bowls, of
steeds and lances and groves and hermits and
golden-tressed maidens, old castles, black
moats and trembling doves. She loves the
adjective "ruddy," and quite overdoes it, and
perpetually she uses the symbol of the rose.
But no matter how ornate a poem may appear
at a first reading, soon comes the piercing
thought that makes short work of mere
"poetic" words, the golden line that carries
one away by sheer magic. A picture-maker
always, more than that a dramatist, she under
stands the value of suspense and withdrawal,
as well as a short, dry attack. The poetry of
to-day is sharper than it was in her day; it
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AN APPRECIATION
makes use of clearer contrast. In many ways
she was a forerunner.
The inclination to classical themes may
have been a means of escape from a colourless
environment. It was also a natural outcome
of early training and reading. Such poems as
"The Helot," "Caesar s Wife," "Curtius" and
"Vashti the Queen" are examples of this phase.
They are written in blank verse, and in this
form Miss Crawford excels, making of it a
magnificent and rarely flexible instrument.
But there is an inherent oriental quality that,
with the exception of Marjorie Pickthall, no
Canadian possesses in anything like the same
degree. Who, having read it, can forget cer
tain lines in "Curtius" where a woman waits
for her lover who has gone to hear news of the
Oracle at Rome :
The very peacocks drowsed in distant shades,
Nor sought my hand for honeyed cake ; and high
A hawk sailed blackly in the clear blue sky
And kept my doves from cooing at my feet.
The concluding lines of the poem, where the
frightened girl recalls the passing of sacrificial
bulls, with silver hides, and their drivers on
the road to the altars, are splendid in sug
gestive power :
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ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD
Then the men
Waved their long goads, still juicy from the vine
And plumed with bronzy leaves, and each to each
Showed the sleek beauty of the rounded sides,
The mighty curving of the lordly breasts,
The level lines of backs, the small, fine heads,
And laughed and said, "The gods will have it thus,
The choicest of the earth for sacrifice,
Let it be man or maid, or lowing bull!"
Where lay the witchcraft in their clownish words
To shake my heart? I know not; but it thrilled
As Daphne s leaves thrill to a wind so soft
One might not feel it on the open palm.
I cannot choose but laugh, for what have I
To do with altars and with sacrifice?
A sense of conscience is not always included
among the singing leaves of a poet s wreath,
but this poet possessed it. In "The King s
Garments" occurs the famous lines:
For Law immutable hath one decree,
No deed of good, no deed of ill can die ;
All must ascend unto my loom and be
Woven for man in lasting tapestry,
Each soul his own.
But I like better the careless dismissal, as of
an account closed, with which she wills away
the flesh in a poem called "His Clay" :
The flesh that I wore chanced ever to be
Less of my friend than my enemy.
So bury it deeply strong foe, weak friend
And bury it cheaply and there its end.
Of love of country this poet wrote in her
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own strange bright language. There was a
day when lines like these met the casual
gaze of readers of a Toronto newspaper :
If destiny is writ on night s dusk scroll,
Then youngest stars are dropping from the hand
Of the Creator, sowing on the sky
My name in seeds of light. Ages will watch
Those seeds expand to suns, such as the tree
Bears on its boughs, which grow in Paradise.
No poet long maintains this plane of rap
ture. Shakespeare and Dante sustained it in
repeated measures. Keats and Shelley in
brief lyric songs, every real poet in certain
magic lines. It is the last thought of the
writer to compare the magic lines of this Can
adian poet with those of any other, much
less with the masters of English song. One
can only stress the obvious fact that she did
leave rare and beautiful snatches of poetry,
marked by her own original imprint, which
always bore a certain splendour rather akin
to the clear colours of the Ontario landscape
that she knew and loved.
In this anthology the collection has been
chosen to show the remarkable versatility of
the poet. Her sea songs are few and rarely
quoted, hence "Good-Bye s the Word," which
is as fresh as though written yesterday. "Be-
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ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD
tween the Wind and the Rain," "The Butter
fly" (the original title of "The Mother s Soul"),
"The Camp of Souls" and "Laughter," to men
tion only a few of the lyrics, take us worlds
away one from the other, hi concept and
mood. It is interesting to compare the de
lightfully simple "Who Sees a Vision" and
its opening couplet:
Who sees a vision bright and bold
Hath found a treasure of pure gold,
with the much-quoted lines of the American
poet, Anna Hempstead Branch, in "The Monk
in the Kitchen" written nearly thirty years later :
Whoever makes a thing more bright
He is an angel of all light.
The fact that the present writer happens to
know that Miss Branch had never seen or
heard of the work of the Canadian poet at the
time she wrote makes the coincidence of con
siderable interest.
Lines from "Malcolm s Katie" cannot be
omitted in any summary of the poet s output.
Here one gets a vivid imagination at work on
a foundation of actual experience. The life
of the woods is the drama, with a somewhat
insipid love-story used as a connecting link.
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AN APPRECIATION
In "Gisli the Chieftain," an old Norse Saga
is converted into a narrative poem that for
sheer dramatic imagery would have made the
writer notable, had no other work been pub
lished. The pictures are superb unforget
table. Gisli, the Chieftain, invokes the help
of Lada, the goddess of spring and love, to give
him a passionate human affection. His galleys
seek the land of Brynhild and his spear the
breast of her husband. The poem is written
in four parts, entirely different one from an
other in movement and pattern. The first is
the prayer to Lada. In the second the figure
of Gisli emerges :
From harpings and sagas and mirth of the town
Great Gisli, the Chieftain, strode merrily down.
His ruddy beard stretched in the loom of the wind,
His shade like a dusky god striding behind.
As crests of the green bergs flame white in the sky
The town on its sharp hill shone brightly and high.
In part three the quest of Gisli is the theme,
and the flight of an eagle from his arrow is
described :
Unfurled to the northward and southward
His wings broke the air, and to eastward
His breast gave its iron; and godward
Pierced the shrill voice of his hunger.
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ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD
Bared were his great sides as he laboured
Up the steep blue of the broad sky,
His gaze on the fields of his freedom;
To the gods spake the prayers of his gyres.
Bared were his vast sides as he glided,
Black in the sharp blue of the north sky,
Black over the white of the tall cliffs,
Black over the arrow of Gisli.
Then comes the remarkable part four, de
picting the soul of Gisli s victim which begins :
A ghost along the Hel Way sped ;
The Hel shoes shod his misty tread;
A phantom hound beside him sped.
Beneath the spandrels of the Way
Worlds rolled to night from night to day;
In Space s ocean suns were spray.
Grouped worlds, eternal eagles, flew;
Swift comets fell like noiseless dew;
Young earths slow budded in the blue.
The waves of Space, inscrutable,
With awful pulses rose and fell,
Silent and godly terrible.
Perhaps no biographer can hope to summon
very vividly a figure out of the near past. Those
of a century ago seem strangely clear by com
parison. And the most difficult test as to the
quality of work lies in this matter of distance.
I believe that this poet will stand the test-
that Housman might have written of her :
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AN APPRECIATION
And when the bird with the voice of gold
Whether he sound the day or the night
With his plummet of song that bell-like tone
Rings like the resurrection light!
And up from the tomb, with its weight of stone
Raises to life a heart once dead.
At the voice of the bird, stone becomes bread
Food for the living!
There is an ancient myth that poets thrive in
poverty and neglect and that the tongues and
pens of hostile critics are so much fuel to then-
flame. Witter Bynner, the American poet,
has recently said "One had to be a poet indeed
a quarter of a century ago to endure the at
tacking obloquy." Judging from the criticisms
of the day, however, women, with the possible
exception of Mrs. Browning, who had been
bold enough to write "The Cry of the Chil
dren," a protest against juvenile labour in the
factories and mines of England, were not even
dignified by "attacking obloquy." They were
merely "poetesses." Isabella Valancy Craw
ford was never a "poetess," and perhaps her
work refutes the theory that to have great ar
tists there must be great audiences. One of
the robust race whom no circumstance, how
ever untoward, can altogether quell, she goes
singing on in lines that may, or may not, be
better known to-morrow than they are to-day.
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ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD
A small trunk full of her manuscript stands
before me as I write. Not, alas, of poems
newly discovered, but of old stories, short
stories and novelettes written out in her clear,
delicate handwriting on paper now yellow with
age. The trunk is crammed with them ; there
are hundreds of closely-written pages : themes
carefully invented and in some cases cleverly
carried out. A quotation, opening paragraphs
from a short story of the French Revolution,
called "La Tricoteuse," illustrates the quality
of the prose, though it does not convince one
that Miss Crawford s gift lay as richly in this
direction as in poetry. But it is a beautiful
rhythmic prose another example that goes to
strengthen the theory of many critics that
while mastery in the technique of prose does
not, as a general rule, effect the sheer-drawn
fabric of poetry, something in the practice of
the scales and exercises of poetry often reacts
on a poet s prose, increasing its flexibility and
colour.
Five years before the head of Louis rolled in the
sawdust to a roulade of drums there was prophecy of
tragedy in the kennels of Paris. But not then, or in
deed until much later, was it felt in air perfumed from
the Jessamine farms of Sorbraie that bordered the
chateau of Monsieur le Comte Fabrian de St. Broie.
Here the peasants danced in scarlet camisoles and
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AN APPRECIATION
wooden shoes, in holiday blouses and barbaric ear
rings. The great dove-coloured oxen, turned adrift
from the vintage wains, dozed half buried in the rich
grass. The air was heavy as the hand of a genii with
the odour of the Greek-born glory of the rose of Prov
ence, the fine shafted incense of the jasmine from the
neighbouring farms of Sorbraie sous Montagne and
Sorbraie sur Montagne. The air was drowsy with the
hum of golden bees, it was fanned by the gorgeous
wings of butterflies, it was mellow with the sun of
Provence, it was cool with silver dews. It was an air
to expand dusky physical beauty, to ripen a certain sen
suous genius, to make of labour a golden loitering in
the sun. If poverty lolled on the peasant s threshold
the sun gilded her. Morin might have painted her
in glorious dyes amongst the dancing peasants on
his rose du Barre vases of Sevres and her rags would
have shone in gay splendours, her eyes would have
laughed as well as wept. Poverty, where goat s milk
cheeses, black bread and purple grapes were plentiful
as gnats over a silver pool, was a different thing to
poverty in the gutters of Paris, slinking from the cuffs
of gilded lackeys and crooning the first mad music of
the reign of terror, behind skeleton hands.
The wrapper in which this evidently re
turned manuscript was discovered bears a
New York postmark. The editor or reader
had not troubled to sort the pages. As I drew
the folded, tangled mass from the old envelope
the word "Finis" appeared at the bottom of
the first page that met my eye. And just above
this word was the concluding sentence of the
story. It happened to be a quotation : "Hush,
hush thoughts are safest, like young birds,
in the nest."
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