Canadian Poetry

THE DEVELOPMENT OF

CANADIAN NATURE POETRY

”Canadian poetry is at best a poetry of incubus and cauchemar, the source of which is the unusually exposed contact of the poet with nature which Canada provides” . In this Chapter, the development of English Canadian nature poetry from the time of the first English settlers to the end of the nineteenth century will be ilustrated. Excerpts from the works of poets who best characterize each of the stages of this development will be used to exemplify the periods considered.

1.1 EARLY SETTLER PERIOD

”From its beginnings the ’literature’ of Canada was stamped by a struggle against the climate and against the land itself” . Nowhere is the truth of this statement more evident than in the poetry of the early settlers. Each new wave of early immigrants faced the same problems, particularly the cold winter. Northrope Frye writes that ”the outstanding achievement of Canadian Poetry is in its evocation of stark terror. Not a coward’s terror, of course, but a controlled vision of the causes of cowardice. The immediate source of this is obviously the frightening loneliness of a huge and thinly settled country” (p. 138). It is of interest to note the settler’s creative response to the hostile environment they encountered.

Joseph Stansbury (1740-1809) emigrated to the thirteen colonies from England; due to political pressures, he fled to Nova Scotia in 1777. Voiced in the following excerpt from a love poem written to his wife, Cordelia, is a representative expression of the terror experienced by many United Empire Loyalists living alone in a strange land.

To Cordelia

Believe me, Love, this vagrant life

O’er Nova Scotia’s wilds to roam

While far from children, friends, or wife,

Or place that I can call a home

Delights me not; - another way

My treasures, pleasures, wishes lay.

In piercing, wet, and wintry skies,

Where man would seem in vain to toil

I see, where’er I turn my eyes,

Luxuriant pasture, trees and soil.

Uncharm’d I see: - another way

My fondest hopes and wishes lay.

Oh could I through the future see

Enough to form a settled plan,

To feed my infant train and thee

And fill the rank and style of man:

I’d cheerful be the livelong day;

Since all my wishes point that way.

But when I see a sordid shed

Of birchen bark, procured with care,

Designed to shield the aged head

Which British mercy placed there –

’Tis too, too much: I cannot stay,

But turn with streaming eyes away.

Oh! how your heart would bleed to view

Six pretty prattlers like your own,

Expos’d to every wind that blew;

Condemn’d in such a hut to moan.

Could this be borne, Cornelia, say?

Contented in your cottage stay.

’Tis true, that in this climate rude,

The mind resolv’d may happy be;

And may, with toil and solitude

Live independent and be free.

So the lone hermit yields to slow decay:

Unfriended lives – unheeded-glides away.

Separated from family and friends and all that was familiar to him, Stansbury naturally felt as if he was a hermit in a desolate land. He found some measure of release through his verses which ”are all evidences of [his] dissatisfaction with the present life” . Stansbury’s poetic expression seems an appropriate and representative comment on the hardships endured by the early settlers, many of whom were forced to emigrate from their homelands.