EXPLANATORY NOTES
The primary purpose of these Explanatory Notes is
twofold: to explain or identify words and references which might be
unfamiliar to modern readers of The St. Lawrence and the Saguenay and to call attention to phrases
and passages in the poem that derive from or, as the case may be, allude
to the works of other writers. In the latter category, the notes are
intended to complement the Introduction, where emphasis is placed, not
on local debts and echoes, but on the large patterns, assumptions and
ideas that link The St. Lawrence
and the Saguenay with earlier and later developments in the English
tradition and the Canadian continuity. Quotations from Byron, Milton,
and Shelley--the poets most frequently echoed in Sangster's
poem--are from John Jump's corrected edition of Frederick Page's Byron:
Poetical Works (London: Oxford University Press, 1970); George
Edward Woodberry's edition of The
Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Boston and New
York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1901); and Merritt Y. Hughes' edition of John
Milton's Complete Poems and Major
Prose (New York: Odyssey, 1957). Quotations from the prose
writers--Burr, Howison and Lanman--upon whom Sangster makes the most
extensive levies are from the following editions: William Burr, Descriptive and Historical View of Burr's Moving Mirror of the Lakes,
the Niagara, St. Lawrence, and Saguenay Rivers . . . (cover title: Burr's
Pictorial Voyage to Canada, American Frontier, and the Saguenay . . .
(Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1850); John Howison's Sketches
of Upper Canada (Edinburgh: Oliver Boyd; London: G. and W. B.
Whittaker, 1821); and Charles Lanman, A
Tour to the River Saguenay in Lower Canada (Philadelphia: Carey and
Hart, 1848). Quotations from Jacques Cartier are from the 1843 edition
of the Voyages de decouverte au
Canada, entre les annees 1534 et 1542 (Quebec: Societé Littéraire et
Historique de Québec), as reprinted in the Textes et Documents
Retrouvés
series (Paris: Editions Anthropos, 1968). Other quotations are from
standard or definitive editions of the writer's works.
In compiling these notes, extensive use has been made
of the Oxford English Dictionary and
of Sir Paul Harvey's Oxford
Companion to Classical Literature (1937; rpt. 1966), as well as of
numerous, more specialized works such as Robert W. Stuart Mackay's The Stranger's Guide to the Cities and Principal Towns of Canada . . .
(Montreal: C. Bryson et al, 1854),
Me Rodolphe Fournier's Lieux et
monuments historiques de Quebec et environs (Quebec: Editions
Garneau, 1976) and W. F. Ganong, "Crucial Maps in the Early
Cartography and Place Nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada, VI,"
Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 3rd. Ser., 28, Section
2 (1934), 205-264. Considerable use has also been made of the facsimile
reproduction of Sangster's poem in The
St. Lawrence and the Saguenay and Other Poems and Lyrics, Introduction
by Gordon Johnston, in the Literature of Canada : Poetry and Prose in
Reprint series of the University of Toronto Press (Toronto and Buffalo,
1972) and of the revised edition of it in The
St. Lawrence and the Saguenay and Other Poems, ed. Frank M. Tierney
(Ottawa: Tecumseh, 1984); the Notes to the latter have been cited under
the name of Tierney, followed by the pertinent page and note number.
Title
The St. Lawrence and the
Saguenay. The title of Sangster's poem refers, of course, to two of
the great rivers of eastern Canada--the St. Lawrence, which flows
northeast out of Lake Ontario into the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, and the
Saguenay, which flows east from Lake St. John in the province of Quebec
to join the St. Lawrence at Tadoussac. See the Introduction, pp. xl-xlvi
for discussions of the vogue for the scenery of the St. Lawrence and the
Saguenay in Sangster's day and pp. xvii-xviii for a discussion of the
symbolic significance of the two rivers in the poem.
Poem
4 |
|
dove-like
passage A representation of the Holy Ghost, as well as a
symbol of purity and peace, in Christian art, the Dove figures
in two possibly pertinent passages in the Bible: Genesis 8
(where a dove, sent out from the ark by Noah, brings back in the
form of an olive branch evidence that the waters have receded
and that God has made peace with man) and in John 1.32 (where
John sees "the spirit descending from heaven like a
dove" to Christ at the time of his baptism). Cf. Milton, Paradise
Lost, I, 21, where the Holy Spirit is described as
"dove-like". A dove representing the Holy Ghost is
frequently present in depictions of the Annunciation to the
Virgin Mary. passage: movement
from one place to another. |
5 |
|
bower Arbour;
shady recess; shelter made with branches or vines. |
7 |
|
love's
mysterious power Cf. Milton, Paradise
Lost, IV, 750-752: "Hail wedded Love, mysterious Law,
true source / Of human offspring, sole propriety / In Paradise
of all things common else." Statements about the mysterious
(supernatural, or merely extraordinary) power of love are
legion, and neither can nor need be adduced here. As Richard
Burton says in the Anatomy
of Melancholy, III, 2, i, 2: "To enlarge or illustrate
[the] power and effect of love is to set a candle in the
sun." |
8 |
|
languor
Faintness, weariness, lassitude, fatigue, inertia. For this
and the following line, Cf. Milton, Paradise
Lost, I, 22-23: " . . . What in me is dark /
Illumine, what is low raise and support . . . ." |
9 |
|
Lazarus
The story of the raising of "Lazarus from the
tomb" by Christ is told in John 11 and briefly mentioned in
John 12.1. |
10 |
|
Maiden
. . . eyes Cf. Byron, Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage, II, i: "Come, blue-eyed maid of
heaven!--but thou, alas, / Didst never yet one mortal song
inspire-/ Goddess of Wisdom! here thy temple was .. . ." |
10 |
|
intellectual
eyes Gordon Johnson in his Introduction to the 1972 reprint
of The St Lawrence and the
Saguenay, and Other Poems, Hesperus and Other Poems and Lyrics suggests
that Sangster here ". . . uses `intellectual' in one of its
secondary meanings[:] `that appeals to or engages the intellect,
apprehensible or apprehended only by the intellect.' So the
phrase `intellectual eyes' has to do with [a] speechless form of
communication . . . ." It may also (or alternatively) be,
however, that the maiden's eyes indicate her possession of a
high degree of intelligence or understanding, or her
participation in the pursuits of the intellect. |
12 |
|
Plume Furnish
with feathers; prepare for flight. Cf. (with 14: "Conduct
its flight . . . ") Milton, Paradise
Lost, I, 12-14: ".
. . I thence / Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous Song, /
That with no middle flight intends to soar .. . . |
17 |
|
exulting
Greatly rejoicing. |
18 |
|
guile Deceit,
treachery, insidious cunning. |
19 |
|
bark Barque:
a sailing vessel. The geography and biographical context of the
poem strongly suggest Kingston or its environs as the point of
departure for the journey down the St. Lawrence and up the
Saguenay. |
19 |
|
love
fraught Laden or filled with love. |
19-20 |
|
the sea
/ Lies calm before us Cf. Calder Campbell, "Ossian's
Serenade" (so called because it was popularized in
Sangster's day by the American singer Ossian E. Dodge): ".
. . come with me in my light canoe,/ Where the sea is
calm and the sky is blue." Sangster's "sea" (here
and at 160) is, of course, Lake Ontario, a body of water so
large that, like the other Great Lakes, it has frequently been
considered an inland sea. |
20f. |
|
Many
an isle Just below Kingston, the St. Lawrence passes among
the Thousand Islands,
which are described as follows in Burr's Pictorial
Voyage, p. 20: "Though this extensive group bears the
name of the Thousand
Isles, there are more than 1,500 of them, forming a
perpetual succession of the most romantically beautiful and
picturesque objects that can be imagined. The traveller is
spell-bound [Cf. Sangster's
`charmed mind,' 36], whilst
viewing these matchless combinations of
rock, wood, and water:-- |
|
|
Hail
Lake of Thousand
Isles!
|
Which
clustered lie within thy circling arms,
|
Their
flower-strewn shores kissed by the silver tide!
|
As
fair art thou as aught
|
That
ever in the lap of
nature lay."
|
|
|
|
Between
describing the Thousand Isles as a "fairy scene" and a
"scene of enchantment,"
Burr quotes the passage from Warburton's Hochelaga
which is given at 35, below.
|
21 |
|
verdure
Green
vegetation. Cf. the
quotation from Howison's Sketches
of Upper Canada at 37,
below.
|
21 |
|
stately
Imposing or
majestic in size or proportions.
|
24 |
|
limpid
Clear,
translucent. See also the note to 149, below.
|
25 |
|
cloudlets
Little
clouds. Cf. Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, "First Advent of Love," 1-2:
"O fair is Love's first hope to gentle mind!/As Eve's
first star thro' fleecy cloudlet peeping . . . ."
|
29 |
|
tortuously
In a winding
or sinuous manner.
|
30 |
|
vistas
Views,
especially those seen through avenues of trees or similar openings.
|
30 |
|
smile
Comprise a
pleasant or pleasing prospect or sight.
|
32 |
|
Here
nature, lavish of her wealth, did strew See
Howison, Sketches of Upper
Canada, p. 31: "Nature seems here [in the Thousand
Islands area] to have thrown sportively from her hand a
profusion of masses of
the material world, that she might perceive what
combinations of scenery
would be produced, when they assumed their respective positions
in the bosom of the
waters."
|
33 |
|
panting
islets Cf. the
stanza quoted by Burr in the note to 20f.,
above.
|
33-34 |
|
breast
/ Of the admiring River Cf. the
quotation from Howison at 32,
above.
|
34 |
|
River
The St.
Lawrence (and see the note at 37, below).
|
35 |
|
shapes
of Beauty Here,
and in the "Lyric to the Isles" and the surrounding
stanzas (56-97), Sangster's
association of the
Thousand Islands with "Beauty" was
probably inspired by Burr's quotation of the following passage
from [George] Warburton's Hochelaga;
or, England in the New World, ed. Eliot Warburton (1846), I,
216-217 in his Pictorial
Voyage, pp. 20-21: "Now we are among the mazes of the
`Thousand Islands,' and pass so close to some of them that we
can pull the leaves from the bending boughs of the trees, as the
merciless wheels of the steamer dash to atoms their beautiful
reflection in the mirror of the calm blue water. The eye does
not weary to see, but the hand aches in ever writing the one
word, beauty, wherever you steer over this great river--beauty,
beauty still."
|
35 |
|
zest Agreeable
flavour; piquant quality.
|
36 |
|
Visions of
the Blest The "Blest" are those in paradise or
Heaven, specifically the beatified saints, but see also Howison,
Sketches of Upper Canada,
p. 32: "The scene [in the Thousand Islands] reminded me
of the beautiful description of the Happy Islands in the Vision
of Mirzah, and I thought at the time, that if the Thousand
Islands lay in the East, some chaste imagination would propose,
that they should be made an asylum for suffering humanity . . .
." (Mirzah is the fictitious personage, created by Joseph
Addison, who sees an allegorical vision of human life in The
Spectator, No. 159; see also Appendix II, 3, (a), 18 for
Sangster's explicit reference to Mirzah in the stanzas published
in Longfellow's Poems of
Places).
|
37 |
|
Lake As
the stanza quoted by Burr at 20f., above indicates, the stretch
of the St. Lawrence that passes through the Thousand Islands was
known in Sangster's day and earlier as the Lake of the Thousand
Islands (or Isles). Confirmation of this fact can be found in
Howison's Sketches of
Upper Canada (a work almost certainly known to Sangster; see
the notes to 32 arid 33-34, above), p. 31: "We now
entered that part of the river which is called the Lake of the
Thousand Islands. The St. Lawrence expands into a large basin,
the bosom of which is diversified by myriads of islands, and
these are characterized by every conceivable aspect of nature,
being fertile, barren, lofty, low, rocky, verdurous, wooded, and
bare. They vary in size as much as in form. Some are a quarter
of a mile long, and others only a few yards; and I believe, they
collectively exhibit, on a small scale, a greater variety of
bays, harbours, inlets, and channels, than are to be found
throughout the whole continent of America." Echoes of this
passage are found in Burr (see the note to 20f., above);
moreover, the passage is quoted almost verbatim in Hugh Murray's
Encyclopedia of Geography (1834),
II, 1321 (Part III, Book IV, 5631), from which it finds its way
into Samuel Strickland's Twenty-Seven
Years in Canada West (1853), I, 14n..
|
39 |
|
zephyrs Poeticism:
gentle winds; breezes. In Greek mythology, Zephyrus is the
personification of the west wind, the bringer of rain and the
fertility of spring. Cf. Milton, Paradise
Lost, V, 16 (". . . as when Zephyrus
on Flora breathes . . . ") and "L'Allegro,"
19 (". . . Zephyr with Aurora
playing. . . ").
|
41 |
|
birchen tree
Poeticism: birch tree.
|
44 |
|
embossed Presumably
raised or standing out in relief rather than carved or moulded
(except possibly by the hand of God).
|
45 |
|
fantastic Fabulous;
as if created by the imagination.
|
49 |
|
sentinels Sentries,
with perhaps a gesture towards the "cherubim" who
guard the entrance to ("God-Built") Eden after
the Fall in Genesis 3.24.
|
50-55 |
|
Cf Howison, Sketches
of Upper Canada, pp. 28-29: "The noise of the
oars [as the boat ascended the St. Lawrence towards the Thousand
Islands] sometimes startled the deer which were browzing along
the banks, and I occasionally saw them thrust their beautiful
heads through the branches, and then suddenly start away into
the recesses of the forest."
|
53 |
|
rank Vigorous
or luxuriant in growth.
|
57 |
|
wild
enthusiast Someone with an intense, passionate-- even
religious appreciation for untamed nature. Tierney, p. 248 (n.
14) suggests Joseph Warton's The
Enthusiast; or, the Lover of Nature as a context for this
phrase, and it is certainly true that the temperament placed on
view in stanza VII of Sangster's poem prefers the ". . .
unfrequented meads, and pathless wilds . . . " that Warton
opposes to ". . . gardens deck'd with art's vain pomps"
(3-4). An alternative context for the phrase is provided
by James Beattie's The
Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius where the poet Edwin is
described as "The lone enthusiast" (I, liv) and simply
"th'enthusiast" (II, lviii). But see also the note to
58-63 and 59, below and Byron's description of "wild
Rousseau" in Childe
Harold's Pilgrimmage, III, lxxvii-lxxviii.
|
58-63 |
|
Cf.
Catherine Parr Traill, The Backwoods of Canada (1836), pp. 153155: "As to ghosts or
spirits they appear totally banished from Canada. This is too
matter-of-fact country for such supernaturals to visit. Here
there are no historical associations, no legendary tales of
those that came before us. Fancy would starve for lack of
marvellous food to keep her alive in the backwoods. We have
neither fay nor fairy, ghost nor bogle, satyr or wood-nymph; our
very forests disdain to shelter dryad or hamadryad. Naiad haunts
the rushy margin of our lakes, or hallows with her presence our
forest-rills .... I heard a friend exclaim . . . `It is the most
unpoetical of all lands; there is no scope for imagination; here
all is new . . . .' This was the lamentation of a poet .... For
myself, though I can easily enter into the feelings of the poet
and the enthusiastic lover of the
wild and the wonderful of historic lore, I can yet make myself
very happy and contented in this country. If its volume of
history is yet blank, that of Nature is open, and eloquently
marked by the finger of God; and from its pages I can extract a
thousand sources of amusement and interest whenever I take my
walks in the forest or by the borders of the lakes."
|
58 |
|
Nymphic
trains Groups or retinues of nymphs, creatures who, in Greek
mythology, are the young and beautiful female personifications
of various natural objects such as rivers and trees.
|
59-60 |
|
pale Ideal
Worshipper / Of Beauty This is a difficult and contentious
phrase, though Sangster seems to be referring pejoratively (the
implication of the word "pale") to those who are
devoted to "Beauty" in the abstract (and in a
classical ["Nymphic"] form), rather than as an
attribute of the real (and the here and now). A possible context
for this passage is provided by some of Shelley's lyric poems,
particularly the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" (and
see the note to 64 and
84, below), where the
poet characterizes himself as ". . . one who worships [the
spirit of BEAUTY], / And every form containing [that Spirit] . .
. " (81-82), and the "Lines Written Among the Euganean
Hills," where he dreams of creating a "healing
Paradise" on a "green" and "flowering"
"isle" in the "deep wide sea of Misery" (1-2,
335 and 355). Another
possible context for the passage is the discussion of the
"Ideal theory" in the Chapter (VI) on
"Idealism" in Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature. See also Howison, Sketches
of Upper Canada, p. 31 ("any person, whose romantic
fancy might inspire him with the desire of possessing one [of
the wilder Thousand Islands] . . . ") and the Introduction,
pp. xxxv-xxxvii for a discussion of stanza VII of
Sangster's poem.
|
60 |
|
Nereids In
Greek mythology, beautiful and benevolent sea-maidens
(hence Sangster's "from the deeps below"). Cf.
Shelley, Prometheus
Unbound, III, ii, 44-46: "Behold the Nereids
under the green sea,/ Their wavering limbs . . . ,/ Their white
arms . . . ."
|
61 |
|
Gnomes Dwarf-like
spirits supposed by certain occultists to inhabit the interior
of the earth and, in the words of Alexander Pope's Dedication to
The Rape of the Lock, to "delight in Mischief."
|
62 |
|
crystal
streams See Pope, Essay
on Criticism, 352: ".
. , Chrystal
Streams with pleasing Murmurs creep . . . ."
|
63 |
|
clustering
Isles The Thousand Islands. clustering:
grouping together; closely connected.
|
64-93 |
|
A Romantic nature lyric with debts to Shelley and,
to a lesser extent, Byron, "Lyric to the Isles" is
written in a stanza form (ababcdcdee4) that echoes, through, as it were, in another key, the
Spenserian stanza form (ababbcbcsc6)
of the poem proper, thus facilitating the first of
the shifts in The St.
Lawrence and the Saguenay from the main narrative to the
interspersed lyrics. See the first note to 35, above for the
possible literary source of the emphasis on the beauty of the
Thousand Islands that reaches a crescendo in "Lyric to the
Isles."
|
64 and 84 |
|
Spirit of
Beauty See Shelley, "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,"
13-15: "Spirit of BEAUTY, that doth consecrate / With
thine own hues all thou dost shine upon/Of human thought or form
. . . ."
|
65 |
|
Jubilee An
occasion for joyful celebration or general rejoicing.
|
70 |
|
galley A
boat propelled by sail or oars, and a word probably chosen for
the purposes of rhyme.
|
72 |
|
cells Lonely
nooks; a cell may be the dwelling of a hermit, a nun (or monk),
or a wild animal--all pertinent associations in this context.
|
74 |
|
Here the
flowers are ever springing Cf. the final verse paragraph
(335-373) of Shelley's "Lines Written Among the Euganean
Hills," with its description of
"flowering," paradisial "isles"
overgrown with "old forests" and "all flowers
that breathe and shine . . . . "
|
76 |
|
Hours In
Greek mythology, the female divinities who preside over the
changes of the
seasons.
|
80 |
|
couch of
violet Either a couch made of
cloth dyed the purplish-blue colour of
the violet flower or a (figurative) couch of
the flowers themselves.
|
83 |
|
Hand in hand
Given the paradisial overtones of
this stanza, a possible allusion to Milton's description of
Adam and Eve walking "hand in hand" in Paradise
Lost, IV, 689.
|
85 |
|
palpitating Throbbing
or quivering, with a suggestion of
the rapid beating of a
heart.
|
86 |
|
amber Yellowish
and translucent.
|
90 |
|
zephyr
trains See the notes at 39 and 58, above.
|
93 |
|
Beauty
dwelleth evermore Cf. John Keats, Endymion,
I, 1: "A thing of
beauty is a joy forever . . . ."
|
94 |
|
the Genius
of Beauty The personification of
beauty, and see also the quotation from Shelley at 64 and
84, above.
|
95 |
|
I worship
Truth and Beauty in my soul. Shelley "worships"
the "Spirit of BEAUTY" in the final stanza of the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" (see the
quotation at 59, above) and, of course, Keats has the urn state
that "`Beauty is truth, truth beauty"' in the final
stanza of the "Ode on a Grecian Urn." See also Mark
Akenside, The Pleasures of
the Imagination, I, 371‑374: "Thus was Beauty
sent from heaven, / The lovely ministress of truth and good / In
this dark world: for truth and good are one, / And beauty dwells
in them, and they in her . . . ." Sangster, it will be
observed, does not identify "Truth" and
"Beauty" but, like Akenside, offers in the remainder
of stanza VIII a distinctly Christian aesthetic of the Book of
Nature.
|
96 |
|
prismatic
Varied or brightly coloured; brilliant.
|
96 |
|
globule
Round drop (of water, presumably).
|
97 |
|
psalmy Psalmic: having the character of a psalm (a sacred or
religious song, specifically one of those in the Book of Psalms
in the Bible).
|
98 |
|
Before
the hurricane Cf. Shelley, Alastor,
311, 314-315: ". . . the wanderer . . . felt the
boat speed o'er the tranquil sea/Like a torn cloud before the
hurricane."
|
98 |
|
scroll Roll of paper or parchment, usually with writing upon it.
|
99 |
|
tomes Books, with the connotation of large, old volumes.
|
100 |
|
The
dew-drop
on the leaf Cf. Milton, Paradise
Lost, V, 746-747: ". . . Stars of Morning, Dew-drops,
which the Sun / Impearls on every leaf . . . ."
|
100 |
|
extol
Praise highly.
|
101 |
|
Spirit-Mars
Mars, named for the Greek god of war and distinguished by
its red appearance, orbits the sun between the Earth (which is
nearer to the Sun) and Jupiter. Like the term
"Victor-Soul" in the ensuing line, the idea of a
spirit-guardian may have been suggested to Sangster by
Philip James Bailey, who writes in the second edition of Festus
(1845) of "spirit-rulers" and
"victor-brethren" (388) and in the third edition
(1848) of "spirit stars" (336).
|
102 |
|
Victor-Soul
See the previous annotation and 1 Corinthians 15.54:
"So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption,
and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be
brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed
up in victory." And cf., in conjunction with the
"Hours" of 76, Tennyson, In Memoriam,
I, 13-14: ". . . the victor Hours should scorn / The
long result of love . . . ."
|
102 |
|
Earth's
prison bars Cf. Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of
Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,"
64-68: ". . . we come / From God, who is our home:/
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!/ Shades of the
prison-house begin to close / Upon the growing Boy . . .
." In this same
stanza of the "Intimations Ode," Wordsworth writes of
the ". . . The Soul [as] . . . our life's Star" (59).
|
103-120 |
|
The
"Brigand Chief' (107) of these lines is the notorious,
Canadian-born pirate Bill Johnston (1782-1870) and the
"stately Maiden" (103) is his daughter Kate. In his Pictorial Voyage, p. 21,
Burr recounts the best-known act of piracy attributed to the
celebrated Bill Johnston: the robbing and burning in 1838 of the
"British Steamer Sir
Robert Peel." Johnston allied himself with the
"patriots" during the rebellions of 1837, and, in
earlier and later years, twice escaped from prison (once in
Kingston, which he planned to attack in 1838, and once south of
the border). His story is told in the chapter entitled "The
Pirate of the Thousand Islands" in Harold Horwood and
Edward Butts, Pirates anal
Outlaws of Canada 1610-1932 (1984), pp. 141-152, where the
following account of his daughter appears: "By the mid
1830s Johnston's gang included his sons . . . and his daughter
Kate. Known to romantics as `The Queen of the Thousand Islands'
(Sangster has `Queen of the Isles!' 112], Kate Johnston was a
young woman who could handle a boat as skillfully as any of her
brothers. From the Johnstons' base in French Creek [now Clayton,
New York] she acted as spy and informant for her father and kept
him supplied with provisions on those occasions when he had to
go into hiding."
|
104 |
|
lightsome Luminous;
radiant with light.
|
104 |
|
skiff Small boat.
|
115 |
|
mien
Bearing, expression, demeanour.
|
121 |
|
Archipelago
The Thousand Islands.
|
122 |
|
matins Morning _ prayer service (Church of England). Cf. Milton, Paradise
Lost, V, 7-8: ". . . Matin Song / Of Birds on every
bough . . . ."
|
128 |
|
lucent Shining, bright, luminous. Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, III, 589: ". . . the Sun's lucent Orb . . .
."
|
129 |
|
choral hymn A song of praise to God sung by a choir (in this case of
birds). Cf. Milton, Paradise
Lost, II, 241-242: ". . . [Angels] celebrate his
throne/With warbl'd Hymns . . . " and, in conjunction with
the remainder of this line, V, 161-162: ". . . Angels
. . . with songs / And choral symphonies . . . ."
|
130-138 |
|
See
the Introduction, p. xxxi for a discussion of the Shelleyan
characteristics of this stanza, and see, specifically, "Adonais,"
stanzas I-III, IX,
XVI, AND XVII-XIX.
|
130 |
|
genial
Conducive to growth; pleasantly warm; enlivening; cheering.
|
132 |
|
Crimsons
Makes crimson (deep red).
|
134 |
|
rivulet
Small river or stream.
|
138 |
|
rills
Rivulets.
|
139-147 |
|
In describing the Ottawa River,
Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 25, refers to the "Canadian
Voyageurs" (French Canadians employed by the fur companies
to transport goods and men between the fur-trading centres
of Lower Canada, especially Montreal, and the remote stations to
the west and northwest); he then quotes a stanza of Thomas
Moore's famous "Canadian Boat Song Written on the St.
Lawrence," commenting that "Many who have never seen
and never will see the `Uttawa's tide' (to which Moore refers in
the final stanza of the "Boat Song") have sung in
cadence to its murmuring, till it has become almost a houshold
word." In his note to "A Canadian Boat Song," The
Poetical Works, ed. A. D. Godley (1915),
p. 124, Moore refers to the "melody" of the
song sung by the "voyageurs"
as they conveyed him down the St. Lawrence "from
Kingston to Montreal" as an "air" (Sangster has
"romantic air," 140)
and writes that ". . . there is not a note of
[this air] which does not recall to [his] memory the dip of . .
. oars in the St. Lawrence, the flight of [the] boat down the
Rapids, and all those new and fanciful impressions to which
[his] heart was alive during the whole of this very interesting
voyage." In the "Boat Song" itself (Poetical
Works, pp. 124-125),
Moore refers both to the "oars" of the
voyageurs and to the "moonlight" of the approaching
night (see Sangster, 141).
|
142 |
|
batteaux
French: the "flat-bottomed boats"
used to transport "stores and goods" (Howison, Sketches of Upper Canada, p. 9)
on the St. Lawrence. Howison comments that such boats
were ". . . rowed up the river [from Lachine], with
incredible labour, by Canadians . . . ."
|
143 |
|
rustic
Of the country (as opposed to the town).
|
143 |
|
debonnair
Happy; pleasant in appearance and demeanour.
|
147 |
|
accents
Tones; sounds.
|
148 |
|
Although past the Thousand Islands
themselves, the boat is probably still in the Lake of the
Thousand Islands (see the note to 37,
above); however, Tierney, pp. 250-251 (n. 26)
suggests that Sangster is referring here to "Lac
St-François 125 Kilometres downstream."
|
149 |
|
pellucid
Translucent, transparent. The transparency of the
waters in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence system was frequently
noted in the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. See Howison, Sketches
of Upper Canada, p. 29, Moore, Poetical
Works, p. 126 (with a reference to Jonathon Carver's Travels
through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766,
1767, and 1768
in n.5) and Adam Kidd, The Huron
Chief, ed. D.M.R. Bentley (1987), 876n.: "So pellucid
are the Lakes in
Canada . . . ." See also ibid.,
p. 79 (n. 238f) for evidence that Sangster knew The
Huron Chief. |
154 |
|
brake A
place overgrown with ferns, shrubs, vines and the like.
|
158-174 |
|
The transition from calm to storm in these stanzas
recalls Shelley, Alastor, 308-351.
See also Byron, Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage, III, ii and xcii-xcvii for
descriptions of storms and lightning that may be behind these
and subsequent stanzas.
|
163 |
|
fitfully Irregularly.
|
165 |
|
resound Echo;
ring.
|
166-167 |
|
terror-stricken
clouds / . . . pursuing hurricane See the quotation from
Shelley's Alastor at 98, above and, for the entire stanza (XVI), the third
stanza of the "Good Night" song that follows I, xiii
in Byron, Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage:
|
|
|
Come hither, hither, my little page!
|
Why dost thou weep and wail?
|
Or dost thou dread the billows' rage,
|
Or tremble at the gale?
|
But dash the tear-drop from thine eye;
|
Our ship is swift and strong,
|
Our fleetest falcon scarce can fly
|
More merrily along.
|
|
168 |
|
milky Milk-white.
|
169 |
|
main Ocean.
|
174 |
|
mark Observe,
watch.
|
180 |
|
flaming
arrows Cf. John Keble, Lyra
Apostolica, 215: "Some flame-tipt arrow of the
Almighty falls . . . ."
|
180 |
|
bow of wrath
A Biblical phrase, both "wrath" and a
"bow" (see Genesis 9.13: "1 do set my bow
[rainbow] in the cloud . . . .") being associated with God.
|
181 |
|
pavilioned
Draped, as if by a tent or canopy (here cloud). Cf. Psalm
18.11: "He [God] made darkness his secret place; his
pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds . . .
."
|
184f. |
|
Cf. Byron, Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage, III, xcvii: "Could I embody and
unbosom now / That which is most within me . . . into one
word,/ And that one word were Lightning, I would speak . . .
."
|
186 |
|
glory Rejoice.
|
188 |
|
impulse
Thrust or shock (of lightning or thunder), with a sense of
the impact of these external forces on the mind. Cf.
Wordsworth's markedly more gentle (and less
resonantly Christian) ". . . impulse from a vernal wood. .
." in "The Tables Turned," 21.
|
192 |
|
founts
Fountains.
|
193-220 |
|
Written in the most typical of hymn-meters
(iambic tetrameter) but in a somewhat unusual rhyme-scheme for a
hymn (abba), Sangster's
"Hymn to the Lightning" treats of a frequent theme in
the Calvinist and Anglican tradition of metrical psalmody and
psalm-based hymnody: the insignificance of man in relation to
the vastness of God. Specific parallels may be found in Issac
Watts, Hymns and Spiritual
Songs, II, 22, i ("The Lord Jehovah Reigns," based
on Psalm 97; and see also II, 70 and IIX, 30, iv) and Psalms
of David Imitated, No. 148. For God as thunder see, in
addition to Psalm 97, Psalm 18 (see the note to 200, below), 108
and 148; for biblical comparisons between thunder and lightning
and the wrath or glory of God, see 1 Samuel 7.10 and 12.17-18
and Psalms 29.3 and 77.18. See also Revelation 6.1, 8.5, 10.3-4,
11.19, 14.2-5 and 16.18 for thunder as part of the final
apocalypse.
|
195 |
|
Flame-winged
See the note at 180, above.
|
196 |
|
exultant
Triumphantly joyful.
|
200 |
|
Thy temple
There are many references to the temple of God in the Bible;
see, for example, Psalm 27.4 and Revelation 7.15. Centrally in
the background of the phrase and the ensuing stanza, however,
may be Psalm 18.6-15, where God hears David's "voice out of
his temple" and manifests His "wroth" in the form
of thunder, "arrows" and "lightnings."
|
203 |
|
putrid
Rotten, foul.
|
204 |
|
zone
Belt, girdle. In conjunction with the remainder of this
line, cf. Isaiah 11.5: "And righteousness shall be the
girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his
reins" (two of many uses of "girdle" and its
cognates in the Bible).
|
215 |
|
from
quickest life to death Cf. Acts 10.42 (and related texts): ".
. . God . . . the Judge of quick and dead."
|
216 |
|
atom
A very tiny object. Cf. George Herbert, "Church
Militant", 3: "The smallest ant or atome knows thy
[God's] power."
|
218 |
|
insignific
Insignificant: devoid of importance or moment, trivial;
contemptible. Sangster has apparently dropped the final syllable
of insignificant for the purposes of scansion. The word "insignific"
is not listed in the OED.
|
220 |
|
eterne
Eternal.
|
220 |
|
Thee and
Thine God and, presumably, the Son.
|
223 |
|
harps The
harp is the instrument of the Psalmist and of angels; see Psalm 49.4
and 137.2 and
Revelation 14.2.
|
223 |
|
Thine eyes The
eyes of the Maiden of 1. 10 of the poem; see also 1. 18.
|
223 |
|
grosser Coarser;
more brutish; relatively lacking in decency, delicacy, or
perceptiveness. Cf. Matthew 13.15-16:
". . . this people's heart is waxed
gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they
have closed .... But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and
your ears, for they hear."
|
225 |
|
melodious
whisperings Cf. Milton, Paradise
Lost, V, 196: ".
. . Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his [God's]
praise."
|
226 |
|
Ethereal Heavenly;
of unearthly delicacy or refinement: a word with strong Miltonic
(and some Shelleyan) resonances.
|
231 |
|
pulsations Rythmical
vibrations.
|
233 |
|
complainings
Murmurings.
|
235 |
|
Eternal
symphonies Cf. Milton, Paradise
Lost, V, 161-162: ".
. . Angels . . . with songs/And choral symphonies . . .
." The "Morning Hymn" of Adam and Eve in Paradise
Lost, V, 153-208 (and see the note to 226,
above) appears to lie in the background of this and
surrounding stanzas.
|
237 |
|
treasure up Store
(in the mind and memory); cherish.
|
238 |
|
Zephyrus See
the note at 39, above.
|
238 |
|
visit them
in sleep A Miltonic phrase; cf. Paradise
Lost, III, 30-32 (". . . Thee Sion and the
flow'ry Brooks beneath . . . Nightly I visit . . . ") and
XII, 611 (". . . God is
also in sleep . . . ").
|
239 |
|
Idyls Short
poems of a pastoral character that depict the happy, peaceful
lives of shepherds and other simple country people, idyls were
first written by Theocritus (fl.c. 270 B. C.) about the country life of Sicily.
|
239 |
|
vales Tracts
of land lying between ranges of hills; valleys, dales.
|
242 |
|
swart Dark
in colour; swarthy; tanned.
|
242 |
|
rustic See
the note to 143, above.
|
243 |
|
Anthems Although
anthems may be of a national or religious nature, the context
indicates that Sangster had in mind the latter, and in the
general sense of a song of praise or reverence rather than in
the restricted sense of an arrangement to music of words from
the Bible (usually the Psalms).
|
244 |
|
dirge A song
of mourning or lament; a song sung at a burial.
|
245 |
|
chantings Incantations
with, again (see the note to 243,
above), a religious
connotation suggested by the context, a "chant" being
a short melody to which a psalm, canticle or dirge can be sung
during public worship.
|
246 |
|
Minstrel
In the modern imagination, a minstrel is a medieval singer
who travelled from place to place entertaining audiences by
singing or reciting lyric poetry to the accompaniment of a
stringed instrument.
|
247 |
|
Canzonet See the note to the "Canzonet" at 461-476,
below.
|
247 |
|
Glee
A musical composition for three or more voices in which
words, either happy or sad, are sung either with or--if the
term is strictly used--without accompaniment.
|
248-249 |
|
Psalmody
/ Of Voices This is an unusual usage of
"psalmody," but Sangster's sense seems clear enough:
the sounds or "Voices" of the forest constitute a
collection of Psalms (see the note to 97,
above) or, more broadly, an anthology of hymns, anthems and
other types of sacred vocal music.
|
250 |
|
Choruses
Although other meanings of chorus could be operative here (a
refrain of a song, a simultaneous utterance by several singers),
the context and capitalization suggest that Sangster's
"Choruses" refers to the species of vocal composition
that is written in various parts for a considerable body of
singers (e.g., a Church choir).
|
257-265 |
|
Sangster's
"Spirits of the Storm" resemble Genii (Jinn), the
supernatural creatures of Mohammedan myth who possess angelic or
demonic qualities.
|
261 |
|
weird Supernatural; uncanny.
|
263 |
|
innocent
flowers Cf. Shakespeare, Macbeth,
1, v, 66-67: "Look like the innocent flower / But
be the serpent under't."
|
264 |
|
uproll Move upwards by rolling.
|
265 |
|
obsequies Funeral rites or ceremonies.
|
266 |
|
Thunder-Car
Thunder-carriage: in Scandanavian mythology, a name of the
chariot of the God Thor (the god of thunder).
|
270-272 |
|
The
reference here is, of course, to the first covenant: God's
setting of a rainbow in the sky after the flood (see the
quotation from Genesis 9.13
at 180, above) as
a sign for mankind and a reminder to Himself that ". . .
the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all
flesh" (see Genesis 9.11-17).
|
274 |
|
erst Not long ago.
|
279 |
|
stream Watercourse; river.
|
280 |
|
Like a white dove See the note at 4, above.
|
282 |
|
Nobly Of the two meanings of this word--gallantly, bravely and splendidly,
finely--the latter seems more germane.
|
283 |
|
The Lake The Lake of the
Thousand Islands (see the note to 37,
above).
|
283 |
|
scenes that Fairy hands might weave See the quotation from Burr, Pictorial
Voyage at 20f., above.
Burr's comment (p. 21) on
leaving the Lake
of the Thousand
Islands is also pertinent: "As we emerge from this scene
of enchantment, the river contracts to about two miles in
width." Also
pertinent is the following from Howison's Sketches
of Upper
Canada, p. 32: "When
[the cultivation of some of the Thousand Islands]
takes place, the scene will realize all that fairy loveliness in
which
eastern historians have delighted to robe the objects of the material
world."
|
284-285 |
|
Pale
Hesper . . . Pioneer of Night Sangster's favourite star:
Hesperus: the evening star. Cf. Milton, Paradise
Lost, IX, 48-50
("The Sun was sunk, and after him the star / Of Hesperus,
whose Office is to bring / Twilight upon the Earth . .
."), Shelley, Queen Mab, I, 258-259 (". . . Some [star systems] shed a mild and silver beam /
Like Hesperus o'er the western sea . . ."), and Tennyson, In
Memoriam, CXXI, 1-4:
"Sad Hesper . . . Thou watchest all things ever dim /
And dimmer, and a glory done . . . ."
|
287 |
|
pinions
Wings; more specifically, parts of a bird's or insect's
wings.
|
293 |
|
pensive
Vestal Nun Cf. Milton, "Il Penseroso," 31:
"Come pensive Nun . . . ." Vestal: chaste,
virginal.
|
294 |
|
Hours See the note to 76, above.
|
300 |
|
idyls See the note to 239, above.
|
301 |
|
cherub Angel or angelic creature.
|
301 |
|
zoned Encircled.
|
302-325 |
|
The
collective thanksgiving for God's "wondrous works" (308)
in Sangster's "Twilight Hymn" (especially in the
opening verse) is strongly reminiscent of
Psalm 8 (subtitled
"God's glory magnified by his works . . .") and the
Benedicite (subtitled "Omnia Opera"), but see also the
"Evening worship" in Milton, Paradise
Lost, IV, 720-735
and "Evening" in John Keble, The Christian Year. Keble's evening hymn is a Victorian classic that
may well have influenced "Twilight Hymn" in several
respects; both pieces use the commonplace association between
nightfall and death and, in a manner echoed by Sangster, Keble
is moved by the setting of the sun to meditate upon death and heaven and to trace
"Wisdom, Power and Love" in the earth and sky. As both
a type of the
"Twilight of the
Soul" (325) and a bringer of "Spirit-balin"
(312), Sangster's
twilight is more complex than Keble's evening, however,
and may be the product of a marriage between its evidently
Christian sources and the tendency among certain of the
Romantics (notably Shelley and Keats) to portray death as
curative and even desirable. Formalistically, "Twilight
Hymn" recalls Keble's "Evening" in its metre
(iambic tetrameter), but not in its double-quatrain (ababcdcd)
configuration, an untypical form for hymns that is used,
nevertheless, by John Wesley in the famous "Love divine,
all loves excelling" (though with a trochaic metre).
|
316 |
|
Aaron's
Dove No such creature is mentioned in the Bible; perhaps
Sangster was driven to invent it by the need for a rhyme with
"Love." See Exodus 30.7
(and elsewhere), however, for the use of incense by Aaron,
the brother of Moses and the first High Priest, and Luke 3.24
for the sacrifice of "turtle doves" ". . .
according to that which is said by the Lord . . . ."
|
319 |
|
Glooming Making dark or sombre.
|
327 |
|
philosophic
vision The context indicates that Sangster is using the word
"philosophic" here in the quite rare sense of
scientific; moreover, by "philosophic vision" he seems
to mean the vision made possible by the telescope. The gist of
this stanza is that, because the moon apparently has no air or
"atmosphere" (329), it is devoid of the various visual and aural phenomena that
these things make possible on earth--"Twilight",
"Song," "blue sky," and "echoes."
Cf. William Cowper, The
Task, III, 229-230: ". . . never yet did
philosophic tube, / That brings the planets home into the eye /
Of observation and discovers, else / Not visible . . . /
Discover Him . . . . "
|
334 |
|
hallowed
Sanctified, blessed.
|
334 |
|
Genii See the note to 257-265,
above.
|
340 |
|
diapason Melody, especially a grand burst of harmony.
|
341 |
|
strain
Tune.
|
360 |
|
Anon
In a little while.
|
362 |
|
Carnival
A season or course of feasting and indulgence, specifically
the season preceeding Lent in certain Roman Catholic societies,
when there is held a festive parade of the sort that furnishes
the vehicle for the extended metaphor of stanza XXXII.
|
366-370 |
|
Fisher
. . . piney flambeaux . . . . In The Backwoods of Canada, pp.
159-160,
Traill offers the following description of night fishing in
Canada: "It is a very pretty sight to see . . . little
barks slowly stealing from some cove of the dark pine-clad
shores, and manoeuvering among the islands on the lakes,
rendered visible in the darkness by the blaze of light
cast on the water from the jack--a sort of open grated iron
basket, fixed to a long pole at the bows of the skiff or canoe.
This is filled with a very combustible substance called
fat-pine, which burns with a fierce and rapid flame, or else
with birch-bark, which is also very easily ignited. The light
from above renders objects distinctly visible below the surface
of the water .... I delight in watching these
torch--lighted canoes so quietly gliding over the calm
waters, which are illuminated for yards with a bright track of
light, by which we may distantly see the figure of the spearsman
. . . . When four or five of these lighted vessels are seen at
once on their fishing-ground, the effect is striking and
splendid. The Indians are very expert in this kind of fishing .
. . ."
|
366 |
|
finny
prey A periphrasis for fish that had become a clich6 long
before Sangster's day. See Pope, The Rape of the Lock, Il, 26: ". . . Finny Prey. . . ."
|
368 |
|
mimic
bay Playful imitation of a real bay? Cf. Traill, The Backwoods of Canada, p. 304: ". . . masses of ice . . .
shoot out in long points [into the half-frozen Lake], forming
mimic bays and peninsulas."
|
369 |
|
banditti
Bandits (from the Italian).
|
371-372 |
|
Two
such tales (including that of Bill Johnston; see the note to
103-120,
above) are told in Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 21.
|
372-379 |
|
See
Burr, Pictorial Voyage, p.
23 for a remnant of the Iroquois encountered ". . . on
a small portion of the hunting grounds of their once powerful
nation . . . " at St. Regis, a village situated at the
point where the St. Lawrence ceases to be the border between
Canada and the United States and becomes an entirely Canadian
river.
|
373 |
|
wave-zoned
See the note to 204, above.
|
375 |
|
birchen fleet Birch-bark canoes (and see the note at 41,
above).
|
385 |
|
pic-nic
party Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 29 describes St. Helen's Island (below Montreal
on the St. Lawrence) as a place whose ". . . pleasant green
slopes and shady glens afford . . . delightful situations for
pic-nic parties .. . ."
|
388 |
|
ambuscade Ambush.
|
389-392 |
|
In
Shelley, Alastor,
396-451 the "wanderer" embarks on a
"little shallop" (a shallop being here, as in Sangster,
392, a small
sail-boat) which descends a ". . . black flood on
whirlpool driven . . . As if [by] genii . . . ." Shelley
compares ". . . the white ridges of the chafbd sea . . .
[to] serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp." There is
also a "shallop" in Byron, The Bride of Abydos, I, xix, 1.
|
389 |
|
well-nigh outstripped Very nearly outrun.
|
390 |
|
incurves
Bends
into a curved form; curves.
|
390 |
|
pliant
Flexible; easily bent.
|
397 |
|
pilot
Steer, guide, especially through difficult or dangerous
waters.
|
398-401 |
|
Burr,
Pictorial Voyage, pp.
22-24 offers descriptions of these rapids as they were
in Sangster's day (and before the building of the St. Lawrence
Seaway): "Once more [after passing Prescott and Ogdensburg]
we are on the bosom of the noble river; and confiding in the
skill of an experienced pilot, we fearlessly brave the `GALLOP
RAPIDS,' and, hurried through the plunging, foaming billows,
find ourselves again in smooth water. A succession of these
dangerous rapids extends at intervals from this point to a
little above Montreal; all of them are, however, navigable by steamers
descending; but ascending, they are obliged to pass through a
series of Canals .... [W]e
pass successively the villages of East
and West Williamsburg,
and then for several miles are carried through the dangerous
rapids of the LONG SAULT .... A few miles further [after `an
expansion of the river thirty miles in length and seven in
breadth, called Lake St.
Francis'], the village of the Cedars
is past, and here we behold the mighty St. Lawrence pent
into several narrow channels, among wooded islands, and rushing
fiercely along over its rocky bed: nothing can exceed the
exciting spectacle of the Cedar
Rapids, with its frantic billows capped with snowy plumes
.... Steamboats pass down these rapids, though not without risk as may be imagined, when
the rapid current sweeps them close to rocks and islands ....
Latterly, however, the route has been rendered more safe by the
discovery of a channel, which is said was used long ago by the
French voyageurs. In the Cedar
,end Cascade Rapids there is a difference of sixty feet in
the elevation in about sixteen miles, and the immense body of
water rushes down at the rate of from twenty to thirty miles an
hour . . . . Leaving behind us the Cascade
Rapids, and passing the lighthouse, we find ourselves upon
the bosom of the calm and glassy Lake
St. Louis, another expansion of the River
St. Lawrence, two and a half miles wide at this point."
|
402 |
|
love
freighted Laden or filled with love (see also the note to 19, above).
|
403-415 |
|
Burr,
Pictorial Voyage, p. 26 provides
the following description of the rapids between Lachine arid
Montreal: "After leaving Lachine,
the St. Lawrence contracts, boils up [cf. Sangster's
"the waters boil and leap" (394)],
and foams in a most terrific manner amongst rocks and small
islands, for nine miles, forming the RAPIDS OF LACHINE or Sault
St. Louis. The current is forced through a variety of narrow channels
in many places, at the rate of thirty miles per hour, and the
roaring of the maddened waters may be heard for several miles.
These are the most dangerous rapids along the course of the St.
Lawrence; vessels descend them, although they often suffer
for their temerity . . . ."
|
405 |
|
stentorian
Very loud and far-reaching (see the quotation in the
previous note).
|
411 |
|
As a strong eagle holds an oriole CC the final quotation from
Shelley's Alastor in
the note to 389-392, above. An oriole is a smallish,
colourful bird found in the eastern regions of North America.
|
416-419 |
|
Under
the heading of "MONTREAL, THE CAPITAL CITY OF UNITED
CANADA," Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 27, provides the following description of
mid-nineteenth-century Mount Royal: ". . . in
the rear of the city, Mount
Royal, studded with handsome villas [large houses:
Sangster's `regal dwellings' (418)], looms up majestically to
the height of 600 feet . . . ."
|
420-424 |
|
Burr,
Pictorial Voyage, p. 21
(and see also the quotation at 385, above) describes St. Helen's
Island, ". . . [i]n mid-channel, and one mile from
the city [of Montreal] . . . ," as ". . . clothed with
verdure and interspersed with fine trees, amidst which
field-works and fortifications peep out . . . ."
|
422 |
|
Laved
Bathed, washed.
|
423 |
|
enamored
Full of the passion of love.
|
424 |
|
Hochelga's crest Mount Royal. Burr, Pictorial Voyage, p. 28 explains the connection: "On the second
visit of Jacques Cartier to the country . . . he heard that
there was a large settlement far up the great river called
Hochelaga, and he determined to sail in quest of it. After a
perilous voyage he discovered a fortified town, belonging to the
Huron [in actual fact, the Iroquois] tribe . . . on a beautiful
island, and under the shade of a mountain named Mont Royal,
which time has changed to Montreal." See also Cartier, Voyages, p. 35ff.
|
427 |
|
Nimrod
In Genesis 10.8-10, a "mighty hunter" and
the ruler of a "kingdom... in the land of Shinar."
|
429-430 |
|
the
vast city lay at rest;lIts great heart throbbing gently Cf.
William Wordsworth, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge,
September 3, 1802," 4-5, 13-14: ". . . This city now
doth, like a garment, wear/ The beauty of the morning . . . .
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;/ And all that mighty
heart is lying still!"
|
433 |
|
repose
State of peace and quiet; freedom from disturbing
influences.
|
434-455 |
|
The girl loved by Sangster in
his "Boyhood's days" has yet to be identified.
It is conceivable that there is no biographical basis for these
lines.
|
436 |
|
paraphrase
Practical exemplification. See also the note to 452-460,
below.
|
441 |
|
clime
Realm.
|
442 |
|
sublime Of the highest regions of thought or spirit. In its
reference to the development of Love from the
"beauteous" to the "sublime", the line
recalls Edmund Burke's seminal Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful (1756). See the Introduction, p. xvii for a
discussion of Sangster's association of the Saguenay with the
sublime and the St. Lawrence with the picturesque and the
beautiful.
|
445 |
|
earth a paradise A possible context for this phrase and the
surrounding stanzas is the Earthly Paradise of Dante's Purgatorio, XXVII-XXVIII, where the poet sees four ladies:
Rachel, Leah, Matilda and, finally, Beatrice, the love of his
(early) life.
|
452-460 |
|
The
movement of this stanza does not preclude the possibility that
the speaker's "Boyhood" love and the
"Maiden" are to be identified as one and the same.
|
454 |
|
Afar off
have I worshipped her This is a variation on a common
phrase (`I have worshipped her from afar'--that is, at a
distance), but it has numerous resonances in the tradition of
Petrarchan love (where the lady is frequently remote from the
man), most notably in the relationships of Petrarch and Laura
(see the notes to 494-495 and 496-497, below) and Dante and
Beatrice (the latter as first told in the Vita
Nuova and then resumed in the Earthly Paradise of the Purgatorio
[see the note to 445, above]).
|
459 |
|
yonder Rapid Perhaps the "Rapids
of St. Mary" (Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 29) a little below Montreal on the St. Lawrence.
Cf. Adam Kidd, The Huron
Chief, 172-174: ". . . my affections run as free, / As
yon clear stream that winds along . . . ."
|
459 |
|
serpentine
Having a direction or course that is snake-like;
winding, sinuous, tortuous.
|
460 |
|
Rock
after rock Cf. Byron, Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage, IV, lxx, 6-7: ". . . how the giant
element / From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound . . .
."
|
461-476 |
|
A
canzonet is a brief song for a solo voice and its subject is
usually light and cheerful. While Sangster's
"Canzonet" ends on a positive note, an affirmation of
the persistence of love after death, the poem as a whole
is a complaint, a lyrical statement of the sadness caused by a
lover's lack of response and intensified by the happiness and
vitality evident in external nature. Formalistically,
"Canzonet" is somewhat unusual, both in the
configuration of its four quatrains (abc4b3),
and in the fact that "tree" and "thee"
furnish the rhymes for the entire poem.
|
461 |
|
balmy
Mild, fragrant and soothing.
|
466 |
|
ardent
Glowing with desire; passionate; eager.
|
470 |
|
flush
Cause to blush or glow; suffuse or adorn with glowing colour.
|
478 |
|
Mellifluously
Sweetly.
|
479 |
|
cot
Cottage.
|
486-494 |
|
These
lines (as well as 479-480) are a reworking, and, by turns, condensation and
elaboration of Burr's account of the scenery and inhabitants on
the shores of the St. Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec in Pictorial Voyage, pp. 29-30: "Village after village is
now passed, each with its picturesque church; indeed, the whole
banks of the river hence to Quebec, and 200
miles below that city, appear to be one continuous village,
being thickly dotted with the white cottages, churches, and long
white barns of the simple habitans.
The French Canadian remains to this day in all his customs,
as were his forefathers a century back: he makes no improvement
either in the tilling of his land or his household habits. On
his saint's day, or the Sabbath, he repairs to his village
church clothed in the same style as his ancestors. During the
summer he cultivates his land, and when the snows of winter
cover the earth, he harnesses his little ponies, and accompanied
by his happy family, visits his neighbours, and, seated round
their large square stoves, made in the style of a past century,
passes his long winter evenings in happiness, amusing himself
with tales of `La Belle
France.' Kind, hospitable, contented, he asks for no change
of his condition, but only desires to be allowed to do as his
fathers did before him. He dies--and his children divide
his land, each taking a `nidlet'
and live over the same old scenes again. There dwells not on
the face of the earth a more happy, contented and honest
people." It is worth noting that where Burr employs the
word "picturesque" to describe the churches on the
North and South shores of the St. Lawrence, Sangster (488-489) uses a stock device of picturesque description: the
"Here"/ "There" direction.
|
490 |
|
Arcadian
Arcadia is a mountainous area of Greece that has been
conceived since classical times as an ideal region of rural
contentment.
|
490-492 |
|
Sangster's
theme of a rural/ retirement based on an "elegant Sufficiency"
(James Thomson, "Spring," 1161) that is above poverty
but below excess has many Augustan and post-Augustan precedents.
|
492 |
|
inordinate
Immoderate; intemperate; excessive (and see the previous
note).
|
493 |
|
felicity
Happiness (and see the quotation at 488-489, above).
|
494-495 |
|
even
he I Of lonely Vaucluse Probably Petrarch (Francesco
Petrarca; 1304-1374), the Italian poet, who for some years after
he moved there in 1337 (ten years after his first sight of Laura
[see the note following] lived a life of solitary study in
Vaucluse in the south-east of France. In Vaucluse,
Petrarch apparently had two children by an unidentified
woman--the "fair Psyche [whose] winning smile" tempted
him "From his pure love's Penelope" (496-497)? It is
possible, however, that Sangster mistakenly thought that another
Italian poet and lover, Dante (1265-1321) lived at some time in
Vaucluse, a suggestion prompted by the fact that, after the
death of Beatrice in the Vita Nuova
(see the note to 1261, below), Dante is briefly distracted
from the contemplation of his "pure love's Penelope"
by a young and very beautiful woman (the so-called "lady of
the window"). See the ensuing note for further discussion
of the identities of "Psyche" and
"Penelope."
|
496-497 |
|
Psyche
. . . Penelope In classical mythology (see Apuleius, The
Golden Ass, IV-VI), Psyche (whose name means soul) is
a young woman who is so beautiful that Venus is jealous of her
and Cupid becomes her lover. Since Psyche does not figure in the
story of Ulysses' slow and circuitous return to his wife
Penelope in Homer's Odyssey,
it is possible that Sangster confused Psyche with Circe, the
enchantress who indeed "tempt[s]" the Greek hero
temporarily to interrupt his voyage home. If the "he / Of
lonely Vaucluse" (494-495) is Petrarch, then his
"Penelope" is presumably Laura, the woman who became
his abiding inspiration when he saw her in a church in Avignon
on April 6, 1387. Petrarch's Canzoniere
indicate that, like Penelope, Laura was a married woman, and
that his relationship with her was not intimate--hence
Sangster's "pure love" (497). See the previous note
for other possible referents for "Penelope,"
"Psyche" and "he / Of lonely Vaucluse."
|
497-500 |
|
Immediately
following the passage quoted at 486-494, above, Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 30 describes "Varennes,
on the south bank of the St. Lawrence, . . . [as] a
delightful place, famous for the mineral springs in its
vicinity."
|
498 |
|
guile
See the note to 18, above.
|
499 |
|
yon
aged pile The "here" / "yon" (there)
structure of 497-500
suggests that the old building to which Sangster is
referring is not in Varennes (which does, however, have a chapel
built in 1692 at its
centre) but elsewhere--perhaps in Boucherville (also on the
south shore and also mentioned by Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 29), where there was and is a relatively large
and elaborate church with "bright spires"--the
Church of Sainte-Famille, built in 1801.
|
501-507 |
|
Overlooking
the St. Lawrence at Varennes is a gigantic wooden Calvary (the
figure of Christ is on a cross nearly thirty metres high; the
crosses of the two thieves are only marginally smaller) that was
sculpted in 1776 by
Michel Brisset. Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 30 does not give a name, as Sangster does, to the
hill on which Brisset's Calvary is located, but he provides what
is clearly the basis of the poet's description of "the HOLY
MOUNTAIN OF ROUVILLE": "In the distance, the holy
mountain, its summit crowned with the pilgrim's cross, which may
be seen for many miles, imparts a grandeur to the scene. The
cross was erected by the Bishop of Nancy. It is made of timber
100 feet high [an exaggeration], and covered with tin, which, in
the dry atmosphere of this country, always retains its
brightness, and many a pious habitant
devoutly crosses himself when he beholds this emblem of his
faith shining like burnished gold in the rays of the setting
sun."
|
506 |
|
pinnace
A small, light, sailing vessel generally with two masts.
|
508-521 |
|
Most
of the landscape features referred to by Sangster in these lines
are mentioned or described in Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, pp. 30-31: "Fifteen miles further [along
the south shore after the `holy mountain'], the St. Lawrence
receives the Richelieu
River . . . .Continuing through a cluster of wooded islands,
we enter Lake St. Peter .
. . another expansion of the mighty river [as Tierney, p. 265
n. 151 suggests,
Sangster's `St. Pierre' is probably the Village of
Saint-Pierre (-les-Becquets), on the south
shore opposite Batiscan] . . . .On the north shore we now pass Cape Sante [Sangster's "CAP SAINTE"] . . . .The banks of
the river have now almost a perpendicular elevation of from 100-300
feet, and from them extends back a beautiful level plain
["THE PLATEAU"] covered with the richest
verdure." W. D. Hamilton, Charles
Sangster (1971), p. 55 suggests that the poet has confused
"L'AVENIR," a village not mentioned by Burr for the
simple reason that it is not proximate to the St. Lawrence but
"south-east of Drummondville, Quebec" (Tierney, p. 265
n. 152), with
Lotbini6re, a village
which is located on the south shore down river from St. Pierre
and before Cap Sante (both the cape and the village).
|
510 |
|
strands
Shores.
|
522 |
|
Whippoorwill A nocturnal goatsucker found in eastern Canada and the
United States, the whip-poor-will (a name onomatopceic of what
Sangster calls its "solitary triple cry" [525]) is a
recurring "symbol of loneliness" (R. E. Rashley, Poetry
in Canada: The First Three Steps [1958; rpt. 1979], p. 49)
in early Canadian writing. In this stanza and the ensuing
"madrigal," the poet expands the plaintive and
haunting character of the whip-poor-will's song in various
directions.
|
527 |
|
Ophelia The daughter of Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet,
Ophelia loves Hamlet but is driven mad by his treatment of
her and by her father's death. She kills herself by drowning in
a river.
|
528 |
|
remorseless
Devoid of regret or repentence; pitiless; cruel.
|
530 |
|
madrigals
Short lyric poems, usually dealing with love or nature, that
are intended or suitable for singing.
|
531-585 |
|
In
an extended stanza (ababcdcdeee4)
characteristic of Elizabethan madrigals (which, however,
seldom exceed one such stanza in length), "The
Whippoorwill" tells the story of a Maiden's betrayal by her
lover and her forgiveness of him. In the final stanza, the
"patience" of Jeannie and her forgiveness of Willie
(for many modern readers, these diminutives will give the poem a
bathetic effect) serve to exorcise the "noisy
Whippoorwill" whose song "heartlessly" (545)
reflects her feelings earlier in the poem.
|
532 |
|
tripped
Walked, skipped, or ran with a light and lively motion.
|
533 |
|
fields
of barley Cf. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Lady of
Shallot", 1-2 and 74: "On either side the river
lie / Long fields of barley and of rye . . . " and "He
[Sir Lancelot] rode between the barley sheaves . . . ."
|
544 |
|
silly
Lacking in judgement or common-sense; foolish, with a
possible allusion to the "silly women" of 2 Timothy
3.6.
|
546 |
|
Nevermore A word bearing the signature of Edgar Allen Poe's
"The Raven" (which "Quoth . . .
`Nevermore"'). Whereas in "The Whippoorwill" the
bird is exorcised (see the note to 531-585, above) in
Poe's poem the raven takes possession of the speaker's soul.
|
546 |
|
gloaming
Evening; in the evening twilight.
|
577 |
|
silly The context suggests that the
adjective now has more positive connotations than it does in 544
(see the note above). Tierney, p. 266 n. 159 suggests that in
both places the word refers to Jeannies's "unsophisticated,
simple attitude (the OED gives plain, simple, rustic and
homely as one sense of silly] which expresses joy, contentment,
pardon, and patience--values taught in the New
Testament . . . ." Cf. Milton, "On the Morning of
Christ's Nativity," VIII for the "silly thoughts"
of the Shepherds about ". . . their loves, or else their
sheep . . . ."
|
586 |
|
inconstant
moon See Shakespeare, Romeo
and Juliet, II, ii, 109-111 (Juliet is speaking):
"Oh, swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon,/ That
monthly changes in her circled orb,/ Lest that thy love prove
likewise variable." This allusion constitutes a bridge
between "The Whippoorwill" and the main narrative.
|
587 |
|
CAPE
DIAMOND On the north shore of the St. Lawrence, Cape Diamond
rises above the city of Quebec and the Plains of Abraham (see
the note to 601-603, below). Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, pp. 32-33
refers repeatedly to Cape Diamond, noting that "THE
CITADEL OF QUEBEC [o]ccupies . . . [its] highest point . . .
being elevated 350 feet
above the river, and presenting almost perpendicular cliffs
towards the water."
|
587 |
|
bust
A piece of sculpture representing a person's head, shoulders
and chest.
|
589-594 |
|
pillar
. . . Wolfe Burr, Pictorial Voyage, p. 32 describes the location of the
"cenotaph" commemorating the victory and death of
General James Wolfe (1725-1759)
on the Plains of Abraham during the siege of Quebec in 1759:
"Two miles above Quebec we reach WOLFE'S COVE, the spot
where, after so many risks and difficulties, he landed his
gallant army, and won a glorious grave in the arms of victory.
The track is discerned by which he ascended the Plains
of Abraham, and not far from the martello
tower that stands before us [between the Plains--now
Battlefields Park--and the river], is a monument erected by
a grateful nation on the very spot where the lamented hero fell
in his hour of triumph." An impressive stone column
surmounted by a laurel, a sword and a Roman helmet, the monument
that Burr and Sangster saw was erected in 1849
by the British Army in Canada. According to the inscription
on its base, it is built above the remains of a much smaller and
simpler monument that was erected in 1832 and subsequently "broken and defaced" as a result, in
Sangster's view, of "the rebel's lust / For
spoliation" (592-593).
|
594 |
|
Fane
Temple.
|
597 |
|
sanguinary Bloody; characterized by slaughter.
|
601-603 |
|
France
. . . England The British and the French
were, of course, the
principal adversaries in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). The
Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the subsequent fall of
Quebec constituted a major defeat for France and a major victory
for Britain in the North American segment of the Seven Years'
War.
|
604 |
|
MONTCALM The Marquis de Montcalm (1712-1759) was the commander
of the French forces during the siege of Quebec and was mortally
wounded in the Battle of Abraham's Plains.
|
610 |
|
One graceful column to the noble twain The monument to Wolfe and
Montcalm erected in 1828 at the suggestion of Lord Dalhousie.
"This is a chaste and well-proportioned obelisk . . . built
of grey stone, standing within the [Government or Public] garden
. . . , and on the slope that is open towards the river, so that
it is distinctly visible from thence," wrote James S.
Buckingham in 1843; "A Latin Inscription [on its
sarcophagus] records their [Wolfe's and Montcalm's] equal
bravery, and similar death, and dedicates this monument of their
common fame, to history and posterity" (Canada,
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Other British Provinces in
North America, with a Plan of National Colonization, [1843],
p. 233).
|
611 |
|
a
nation's gratitude See the quotation from Burr at 589-594,
above.
|
613-624 |
|
Behind
these lines are two passages quoted by Burr, Pictorial Voyage, pp. 34-35 in his description of Quebec. The first
is from Buckingham's Canada,
pp. 164-165: "`As the weather was beautifully fine, and
the country still verdant all around, the sight of so many ships
[below Quebec] . . . with the fine extent of the country
opposite, thickly dotted with villages and hamlets of the purest
white, and the grandeur of the mountains in the distance . . .
was beautiful and magnificent beyond expression."' The
second is from Warburton's Hochelaga,
I, 39: "`Take mountain and plain, sinuous river and
broad tranquil waters, stately ship and tiny boat, gentle hill
and shady valley, bold headland and rich fruitful fields,
frowning battlements and cheerful villa, glittering dome and
rural spire, flowery garden and sombre forest--group them all
into the choicest picture of ideal beauty your fancy can
create,--arch it over with a cloudless sky, light it up with a
radiant sun, lest the scene should be too dazzling, hang a veil
of light haze over all, to soften the light and perfect the
repose--you will then have seen Quebec on this September
morning."'
|
621 |
|
POINT
LEVI . . . at the foot of the Old Hill Pointe Levi, now Levis, is
the town on the south shore of the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec.
It is overlooked by heights occupied by four forts.
|
622 |
|
Gardens and the Terraces Perhaps Sangster had particularly in mind
the Government (or Public) Garden (see the note to 610, above)
and the Durham Terrace, described as follows in Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, pp. 33-34: "Quebec possesses one of the
most beautiful promenades imaginable; it occupies the site of
the Castle of St. Louis, of which [Samuel de] Champlain laid the foundation [and which was destroyed by fire in
1834] . . . . Lord Durham had
the site cleared of . . . ruins, and the whole area floored with
wood, and converted into a beautiful platform, commanding one of
the most panoramic views that can be imagined."
|
627 |
|
Loire Loire is a specific area in central France, but Sangster may
have had in mind all the regions of western as well as central
France through which the Loire River flows.
|
628 |
|
and
n. Quebec is located on the site of the old Indian town of
Stadacona, visited by Cartier in 1535 and 1541, and first
settled by Champlain as a trading post in 1608. Although this
information was common knowledge in Sangster's day, the poet may
well have gleaned it from the edition of Cartier's narratives
published in 1843 by the Quebec Literary and Historical Society;
see Cartier, Voyages, p. 40n. and elsewhere.
|
628-630 |
|
For
several weeks before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (see
the notes to 589-594 and 601-603, above) the French forces in
Quebec and the English forces at Pointe Levi pounded each
other's positions with cannon fire.
|
631-634 |
|
Montmorency
Falls, located about ten kilometres down river from Quebec on
the north shore of the St. Lawrence, are described as follows in
Burr, Pictorial Voyage, p.
31: "At a distance, this magnificent cataract
appears like a motionless streak of snow upon the
precipitous bank of the river; but now we are abreast of it, we
see a mighty torrent projected with incredible velocity over the
perpendicular rock . . . ." The loud noise of Montmorency
Falls is a phenomenon frequently reported by early writers about
Canada.
|
635-644 |
|
After
describing Montmorency Falls, Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 36 offers the following account of the he
d'Orl6ans, the large island downriver from Quebec: "The
lovely Island of Orleans, nineteen miles in length and about five in
breadth, here divides the river into the north and south
channels. The upper part of it is covered with noble forest
trees, while cultivated fields and beautiful gardens slope down
to the water's edge at some points, and bold perpendicular banks
are presented at
others."
|
644-657 |
|
These
lines rely heavily on the passage from Burr's Pictorial Voyage quoted at 486-494, above.
|
655 |
|
blanching
Whitening.
|
668 |
|
glancing
Gleaming, shining.
|
671 |
|
and
n. The he d'Orleans was named for Bacchus (in Roman Mythology,
the god of wine) by several early explorers and cartographers,
including Richard Hakluyt and Jacques Cartier. See Cartier, Voyages,
p. 35: ". . . y [ a la dite] Isle trouvasmes force
vignes, ce que n'avions vu par ci-devant en toute la terre;
et pour ce, la nommasmes L'Isle
de Bacchus [`Aujourd'hui L'lle
d'Orleans'] . . . ."
|
671-672 |
|
boon / Companion Cheerful comrade; drinking buddy.
|
674 |
|
vestments
Garments, particularly those worn by aristocrats and
ecclesiastics on ceremonial occasions.
|
678 |
|
the
lone Isle The Île d'Orleans.
|
678 |
|
lee
A nautical term: the side of the boat that is sheltered from
the wind.
|
685-708 |
|
The
three octave stanzas (aabbccdd4)
of "Parting Song" are composed of tetrameter
couplets that recall in form, usage, and content Byron's The
Bride of Abydos, particularly in such lines as the following
(spoken by Zuleika's father when he orders her to marry a man
she has never met):
How
dear this very day must tell, |
When
I forget my own distress,
|
In
losing what I love so well,
|
To
bid thee with another dwell
|
Another!
and a braver man
|
Was
never seen in battle's van.
|
(I,
vii, [194-199])
|
|
|
|
An
oriental cognate of the story of Romeo and Juliet, The
Bride of Abydos ends with both Zuleika and her true love
Selim dead, he by her father's sword and she of a "broken
heart" (II, xxvii, [640]). Despite its title, "Parting
Song" is a passionate rebuttal of the notion that the
lovers are "doomed to sever" (688), either in this
world (the context suggested by 680-684) or in the world to come
(the context suggested by the line "Rivers meet and mix
forever" [687] and by the eschatological dimension of such
phrases as "the heav'n of love" [697] and "our
hope in hope" [700]). See the Introduction, pp. xii-xiii
for a discussion of Sangster's hope for the continuation of
personal love after death.
|
690 |
|
droop
and languish Sink down and grow weak.
|
691 |
|
fiat
From the Latin, `let it be done', with the general sense of
an authoritative pronouncement or order, and a particular sense,
perhaps, of a command from God (whose first fiat was the
"Let there be light... " of Genesis 1.3).
|
699 |
|
an
iron tongue hath spoken See Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, V, i, 370-371: "The iron tongue
of midnight hath told twelve./ Lovers to bed, 'Tis almost fairy
time."
|
700 |
|
hope
in hope A phrase with strong Christian resonances (see, for
example, Titus 3.7 and
Romans 4.18) that
suggest a hope for the life to come--a hope for eternal
love within the hope for eternal life?
|
705 |
|
rend Tear.
|
707 |
|
lie
The echoes among the opening and closing lines of the first
stanza and the closing lines of the second and
the third stanzas of "Parting Song" suggest that the
"lie" is an assertion or suggestion that the lovers
will be parted at death.
|
|
709 |
|
CAPE
TORMENTE See Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 37: "We are now [below the he d'Orleans] in
sight of Mount Ton and
Cape Tourment, bold promontories rising to the height of 2000
feet [on the north shores of the St. Lawrence]."
|
712 |
|
dells Deep valleys, usually with tree- or foliage-covered sides;
ravines.
|
713 |
|
night-vapors Fog, mist.
|
713 |
|
swells Protruberances, bulges; uplands.
|
715-718 |
|
See
the quotation from Burr, Pictorial
Voyage at 486-494,
above.
|
724 |
|
Some
Recluse The Recluse is the long philosophical poem that
Wordsworth only partially completed.
|
724 |
|
holiday
Holy day. See the quotation from Burr, Pictorial
Voyage at 486-494
above (a passage that is also pertinent to 725-726).
|
727 |
|
the
Cape Cape Tormente.
|
727-740 |
|
See
Burr, Pictorial Voyage, p.
37: ". . . here [in the vicinity of Cape Tormente] . .
. the northern shore increasing in elevation, and covered with
the forest, presents a wild and rugged appearance . . . .The
scenery increases in interest [below Cape Tormente] . . . ; the
lofty shores studded with cheerful residences, while hill above
hill, and mountain above mountain rise up in the distance."
Perhaps "the last" "group of dwellings" (731)
is the village of Cap-Tourmente.
|
728 |
|
vassal
Subject, subordinate.
|
741-742 |
|
GROSSE
ISLE [and] . . . / Its subject-islands
See
Burr, Pictorial Voyage, p.
37: "Grosse Island, thirty miles below Quebec, is a
quarantine station....Crane Isle, a fertile spot, is
passed, and Goose Island
.... And now we see the Pillars,
a group of rocky isles . . . ."
|
747 |
|
glowing An unusual usage, but presumably warm, as if by passion.
|
748 |
|
Quickens Animates; restores; enlivens.
|
750 |
|
Orion
The constellation named for the giant hunter of Greek
mythology. Cf. Tennyson, "Locksley Hall," 7-8:
"Many a night . . . / Did I look on great Orion sloping
slowly to the West."
|
751 |
|
She
wanders, like a Beauty Cf. Byron, "She Walks in Beauty,
like the Night . . . " (the first line of one of the
best-known of the Hebrew
Melodies). The Roman goddess Diana is associated with the
moon and with chastity (see the "lonely couch" of 752).
|
754 |
|
and
n. See Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 37: "Near St. Paul's Bay [Baie-St.-Paul on
the north shore of the St. Lawrence], sixty-five miles from
Quebec, is the Isle aux
Coudres, (Isle of Filberts), which received its name from Jaques
[sic] Cartier, on account of the profusion of these
delicious nuts which he observed on landing." See also the
quotation from Burr in the following note, and Cartier, Voyages,
p. 33: ". . . y a plusieurs Coudres franches que
trouvasmes fort chargees de Noizilles . . . . Et pour ce la
nommanes L'Isle a Coudres." Richard Hakluyt had earlier
named the island for the "Filberds" found there.
|
763-780 |
|
Cf.
Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, pp. 37-38:
"Continuous ranges of hills can now [downriver from
Baie-St.-Paul] be seen in every direction. The grand and lofty
mountain peaks of Cape Eagle [Cap L'Aigle] and Cape Salmon [Cap
Saumon] here come into view . . . .Altogether, it is such a
scene as cannot be met with in any other part of America, and
probably not on the globe."
|
780 |
|
swells See the note at 713, above.
|
781 |
|
and
n. EBOULEMENTS Les
Eboulements, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence, is not
mentioned in Burr's Pictorial
Voyage, perhaps because it is located a little distance from
the river. The cottages of 790 cannot be those of Les Eboulements.
|
789 |
|
gem-like
beauty Lanman, A Tour
to the River Saguenay, p. 138 describes Trinity Point and
other landmarks on the Saguenay mentioned by Sangster later in
the poem as ". . . perfect gems of scenery . . . ."
|
793 |
|
tremulous Tremblingly sensitive; responsive.
|
794 |
|
and
n. Tierney, p. 278 n. 237
notes that "[t]here is no official name Les Caps in
this area . . . [but] [t]here are a series of mountains such as
Cap Martin, Cap Aux-Oles . . . ," and so on (none of which
is mentioned in Burr's Pictorial
Voyage).
|
794-795 |
|
The
moonlight gleams l Full on the mossy slopes and banks Cf.
Shakespeare,
The Merchant of Venice, V,
i, 54: "How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this
bank!"
|
796 |
|
beseems
Befits: suits in appearance.
|
798 |
|
wherefore
ask In view of 586 (see
the note above), a possible echo of Shakespeare, Romeo
and Juliet, II, ii, 34: ". . . wherefore art thou
Romeo?" (wherefore: for
what purpose. Why?).
|
807 |
|
beyond
the veil In the next world. Hebrews 6.19 provides the context for this phrase and for the assertions
about "Love" and "Hope" earlier in the
stanza: "Which hope [of eternal life in the world to come]
we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and
which entereth into that within the veil." See also
Tennyson, In Memoriam, LVI,
27-28: "What hope of answer, or redress?/ Behind
the veil, behind the veil." In his note to these lines in The
Poems of Tennyson, Christopher Ricks observes that "[t]he
word [veil] was a favorite of Shelley's."
|
808 |
|
and
n. The town of La Malbaie (in Sangster's day it was a large
village) is situated on the north shore of the St. Lawrence,
some hundred and fifty kilometers downriver from Quebec. Towards
the end of the eighteenth century, an attempt was made to change
the name of La Malbaie (which was bestowed by Champlain in 1608)
to Murray Bay, in honour of James Murray, General Wolfe's
successor. The attempt was neither officially successful nor, as
Sangster's note indicates, entirely unsuccessful.
|
812 |
|
His
chariot In Roman mythology, the sun was held to be the
chariot of Phoebus (`the bright') Apollo. See also the notes to 917-920
and 1216, below.
|
819-820 |
|
one
/ Pale, solitary watcher The planet Venus when visible in
the east before sunrise. Cf. (in conjunction with 812-813),
Milton, "Song: On May Morning," 1-2:
"Now the bright morning Star, Day's harbinger, / Comes
dancing from the East . . . ." On the basis of Revelation 22.16
("I am the root and offspring of David, and the bright
and morning star"), the morning star is sometimes
identified with Christ, an association that the "meek
glance" of 821 (see Matthew 11.29: ".
. . I am meek and lowly in heart . . . .") suggests may be
operative here.
|
824 |
|
Jove
A poetical name for Jupiter, the highest of the ancient
Roman gods, who is associated with the sky, light, and
lightning. Clearly, Sangster is using "Jove" in
reference to the Christian God.
|
825 |
|
His
sovereign Will The will of God, with many biblical
resonances (for example Matthew 6.10
and John 6.39).
|
828 |
|
Master-Artist God, or David (the putative author of the Psalms)?
|
830 |
|
quenched
in Unbelief Extinguished by religious disbelief. There are
strong Carlylean resonances to Sangster's phrase and to the
stanza(s) surrounding it. See particularly the following from
the Chapter (VII) entitled "The Everlasting No" in
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus: "He himself says once, with more justice than
originality: `Man is, properly speaking, based upon Hope, he has
no other possession but Hope; the world of his is emphatically
the `Place of Hope'. What, then, was our Professor's possession?
We see him, for the present, quite shut out from Hope; looking
not into the golden orient, but vaguely all round into a dim
copper firmament .... Alas, shut-out from Hope, in a
deeper sense than we yet dream of! For as he wanders wearisomely
through this world, he has now lost all tidings of another and
higher. Full of religion, or at least of religiosity, as our
friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, in those
days, he was wholly irreligious: `Doubt had darkened into
Unbelief,' says he; `Shade after shade goes grimly over your
soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black."'
Sangster's unnamed "man" (826)
follows Professor Teufelsdrockh's journey from "The
Everlasting No" of "Unbelief' to the "Everlasting
Yea" of a strong faith.
|
830-831 |
|
like
a palm / He flourished See Psalm 92.
12: "The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree
...."
|
832 |
|
The
Great 1 AM See Exodus 3.14:
"And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM . . . ."
|
833-834 |
|
new
light . . . dark world These phrases and images have
numerous biblical echoes (see, for example John 3.19 and 2 Peter 1.19).
|
835 |
|
Orient
East. See the quotation from Carlyle's Sartor
Resartus at 830, above.
|
836 |
|
pitchy
Intensively dark.
|
837-843 |
|
These
lines have numerous echoes in the Bible and the Book of Common
Prayer, as well as in Milton and other Christian writers. See,
for example, Paradise
Lost, XII, 469-473:
O
goodness infinite, goodness immense! |
That all this good of evil shall produce,
|
And evil turn to good; more wonderful
|
Than that which by creation first brought
forth
|
Light out of darkness!
|
|
|
|
A
catalogue of the scriptural and scripturally-based echoes of the
language and imagery of Sangster's lines would be both tedious
and pointless.
|
844 |
|
Morning
Star The capitalization here could be seen as support for
the allegorical reading of the morning star suggested at 819-820,
above.
|
845 |
|
Herald Forerunner, precursor.
|
846 |
|
riven Split, torn.
|
847 |
|
lawn A kind of fine linen cloth.
|
848 |
|
saffron Reddish orange.
|
850 |
|
erst Earlier.
|
853-902 |
|
In
a manner reminiscent of Milton and other
Christian-humanists, Sangster here expounds a Christian
theme in a classical form, a paean being originally a Greek
choral lyric whose name derived from its invocation and refrain
addressed to Apollo, the
god of light (see the note to 812,
above). "Paean to the Dawn" employs a refrain as
the closing couplet in stanzas whose configuration (ababcdcd4ees)
resembles that of "Lyric to the Isles" (see the
note to 64-93, above),
but has even more the appearance of a truncated Spenserian
stanza (or Shakespearian sonnet). Thoroughly Christian in its
association of ordinary light with divine light, "Paean to
the Dawn" has an obvious source for its treatment of Edenic
love in Milton's depiction of the relationship of Adam and Eve
in Paradise Lost, IV,
689-775, where the couple is seen in their
"blissful Bower" (cf. the "Eden's bowers" of
864). See also John
Keble's hymn "The voice that breathed o'er Eden"
(". . . The primal marriage blessing . . .").
|
854 |
|
gorgeous
rose A reference perhaps to the rose of Dante's Paradiso,
XXXI and f.
|
855 |
|
Evangel
Proclaimer of the Christian gospel. Sangster is apparently
referring to angels rather than evangelists.
|
861 |
|
starry
round Cf. Milton, Paradise
Lost, IV, 649 (". . . her starry train. . . ") and
V, 709 (". . . starry
flock. . .").
|
863-864 |
|
primal
waking / . . . Eden's bowers See the quotations from Milton
and Keble at 853-902,
above.
|
866-867 |
|
Eden's
flowers; / . . . Eden-nectar There are several
references to flowers and nectar in Milton's descriptions of
Eden in Paradise Lost; see, for example, IX, 192-193 (". . . sacred Light began to dawn in Eden
on the humid Flow'rs . . . ") and IV, 239-241
(". . . under pendant shades / Ran Nectar . . . and fed
/ Flow'rs worthy of Paradise . . .").
|
869 |
|
midnight's spectre Cf. Milton, Paradise
Lost, IX, 158-159: ". . . thus [Satan]
wrapt in mist/ Of midnight vapor . . . ."
|
870 |
|
hallowed
Consecrated; sanctified.
|
879 |
|
shriven
Confessed and forgiven.
|
883-884 |
|
River
. . . / . . . crystal sea Cf. Milton, Paradise
Lost, IV, 261-263: ". . . a Lake . . . Her
crystal mirror holds . . . ."
|
888 |
|
the
changing purple screen Presumably the mist.
|
889 |
|
rills
Small streams.
|
894 |
|
Loiter, hand in hand Cf Milton, Paradise
Lost, XII, 636f., where "Our ling'ring Parents"
pass "hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,/ Through
Eden . . . ."
|
900 |
|
anthems of the spheres Cf. Milton, Paradise Regained, IV, 593-594: ". . . Angelic Choirs/
Sung Heavenly Anthems of his victory . . . ." According to
Pythagoras, the heavenly bodies ("spheres") produced a
music imperceptible to human ears.
|
903-907 |
|
The
Song of Solomon, which includes a reference to "the singing
of birds" (2.12), probably lies in the background of these
lines.
|
909 |
|
crystal
gates Cf. Milton, Paradise
Regained, I, 81-82: ". . . Heav'n above the
Clouds / unfold her Crystal Doors . . . ."
|
910 |
|
wan
Pale; gloomy; sickly.
|
912f. |
|
Behind
Sangster's conception here and elsewhere in the poem of the
"Sun" as a "Witness" to the existence of God
lies a long Christian tradition of comparisons between ordinary
and divine light (not to mention the sun/Son pun), but his
sublime response to the light and hinterrain of the Saguenay
appears to owe a particular debt to such passages as the
following from Lanman's Tour
to the River Saguenay, pp.128-129: "On again
turning my eyes upward, I discovered that . . . the entire sky
was covered with a crimson color, which resembled a lake of
liquid fire, tossed into innumerable waves. Strange were my
feelings as I looked upon this scene, and thought of the unknown
wilderness before me, and of the Being whose ways are past
finding out, and who holdeth the entire world, with its cities,
mountains, rivers, and boundless wildernesses, in the hollow of
His hand."
|
916 |
|
as a dew-drop to the boundless sea Cf. Shakespeare, Antony
and Cleopatra, III, xii, 8-10: ". . . as petty to
his ends / As is the moon dew on the myrtle leaf / To his grand
sea."
|
917 |
|
plaudits
Applause; praise.
|
917-920 |
|
In
these lines Sangster expands on the classical notion of the sun
as the chariot of the god Apollo to envisage the advent of the
sun as a victory over other stars of equal magnitude
("myriads of compeers") in a
cosmic chariot race.
|
926-927 |
|
the
Hand Divine/ . . . waved thee into being See Genesis 1.16:
"And God made two great lights; the greater light to
rule the day . . . . "
|
930-931 |
|
See
the quotation from Lanman's Tour to the River Saguenay at 912f.,
above.
|
931-933 |
|
Cf.
Lanman, Tour to the
River Saguenay, p. 37 (shortly before the ascent of
the Saguenay): ". . . hill above hill, and mountain
above mountain rise up in the distance . . . .Continuous ranges
of hills can now be seen in every direction." See also p. 133:
"The shores of this river [the Saguenay] are composed
principally of granite,
and every bend presents you with an imposing bluff . . . ."
|
934-938 |
|
Cf.
Lanman, Tour to the
River Saguenay, pp. 135-136: "The wilderness
through which [the Saguenay] runs is of such a character that
its shores can never be greatly changed in their external
appearance. Only a small portion of its soil can ever be brought
under cultivation; and, as its forests are a good deal stunted,
its lumbering resources are far from being inexhaustible. The
wealth which it contains is probably of
a mineral character; and if the reports I hear are correct,
it abounds in iron ore."
|
939-947 |
|
Although
Sangster does not name the village described in this stanza, his
description accords well with Lanman's account of Tadoussac in Tour
to the River Saguenay, p. 138: "It is situated directly
at the mouth of the Saguenay, and commands a fine prospect of that river, as well
as of the St.
Lawrence.... Immediately at the base of the hill upon which the
hamlet stands, is a beautiful bay, hemmed in with mountains of
solid rock. The place is composed of
houses belonging to an Indian trading post, and another
dwelling, occupied by a worthy Scotchman . . . . In a rock-bound
bay, about half a mile north of
. . . [this] residence, is an extensive lumbering
establishment . . . ." Lanman proceeds to describe a
picturesque curiousity in Tadoussac: the supposed "ruin of
a Jesuit religious establishment" at the centre of
which has "grown a cluster of
pine trees . . . ." (pp.
138-139).
See also the quotation from Lanman at 934-938,
above, for the unsuitability for farming of
the Saguenay country. Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 41 offers a description of
Tadoussac that is obviously based on Lanman's, but adds
"several stores, [and] a chapel" to the village.
|
948-954 |
|
Burr,
Pictorial Voyage, pp. 37-38
describes the scene near the confluence of
the St. Lawrence and Saguenay River as follows: ". . .
the noble river is whitened with hundreds of ships . . . ;
numerous shoals
of white porpoises . . . frequent these waters, together with
scores of seals, . . . and now and then a whale [the equivalent
of Sangster's `gay grampus'] scatters the smaller fry as he
approaches . . . ." See also Lanman, Tour to the River Saguenay, p. 135 for descriptions of the
"seals" and "white porpoises," the latter
"rolling their huge bodies along the waters, ever and anon
spouting a shower of liquid diamonds into the air," in the
Saguenay itself.
|
954-956 |
|
Cf.
Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 40: "The tourist, while ascending the Saguenay
and passing along the base of these mountain cliffs, whose
rugged summits seem to penetrate the blue expanse above, is
oppressed by a sense of loneliness and desolation." S. E.
Dawson, Hand-Book
for the Dominion of Canada (1884), p. 265 helps to explain
Sangster's reference to L'Anse a 1'eau: "The entrance to
the river [Saguenay] is somewhat intricate, but once past the
line of shoal, it is not easy to find anchorage, so great is the
depth of water . . . . The harbour [of Tadoussac] is on the
north-east side of the river, and is separated from it by
a rocky peninsula. The steamer does not enter the harbour, but
stops at L'Anse A 1'eau [a small bay and village (see Tierney, p.
283 n. 256)], upon
the river . . . . There are no roads and no carriages. Over the
wilderness of cliffs no roads are possible."
|
957-974 |
|
Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, pp. 39-40 quotes the following passage from
Lanman, Tour to the River
Saguenay, pp. 133-134: "Awful beyond expression,
I can assure you, is the sensation which one experiences in
sailing along the Saguenay, to raise his eye heavenward, and
behold hanging, directly over his head, a mass of granite,
apparently ready to totter and fall, and weighing, perhaps, a
million tons. Terrible and sublime, beyond the imagery of the
most daring poet, are these cliffs; and while they proclaim the
omnipotent power of God, they, at the same time, whisper into
the ear of man that he is but as the moth which flutters in the
noontide air. And yet, is it not enough to fill the heart of man
with holy pride and unbounded love, to remember that the soul
within him shall have but commenced its existence, when all the
mountains of the world shall have been consumed as a
scroll?" Probably inspired by Lanman's account of a storm
on the Saguenay (Tour to
the River Saguenay, pp. 134-135),
Burr, Pictorial Voyage, p. 40, imagines the "sensation of awe"
produced in a "solitary voyageur" when, with
"darkness closing in above like a pall" and turning
"the already leaden-colored waters to the hue of ink,"
he floats between the "gigantic and everlasting hills"
of the Saguenay.
|
961 |
|
iron Hills See
the quotation from Lanman at 934-938,
above, and also Tennyson, In
Memoriam, LVI, 20: ".
. . iron hills?"
|
965 |
|
drear Poeticism: dreary: dismal, gloomy.
|
976-979 |
|
Lanman, Tour to
the River Saguenay, pp. 137-138
writes sadly of the fate of the (Montagnais) Indians of the
Saguenay region: ". . . it is the duty of my pen to record
the fact that, where once flourished a large nation of brave and
heroic warriors, there now exists a little band of about one
hundred families. Judging from what I have heard and seen, the
Mountaineers were once the very flower of this northern
wilderness . . . .The qualities . . . which make the history of
this people interesting, are manifold; and it is sad to think of
the rapidity with which they are withering away, even as the
leaves of a premature autumn." See also Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, pp. 42-43.
|
977 |
|
birchen fleets See
the note to 375, above.
|
977 |
|
inky
waters Burr twice likens the uncannily dark waters of the Saguenay to ink: see
the quotation at 957-974,
above and the following from Pictorial
Voyage, p. 38: "From the inky blackness of its waters,
and the strange, wild, and romantic character of the scenery
along its banks, [the Saguenay] may be considered unquestionably
the most remarkable river on this continent."
|
983 |
|
refrain The burden (or chorus) of a song or poetic
composition.
|
985-992 |
|
Cf. Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 40: "When [the tourist] raises his eyes to
the vast height of the broken and misshapen masses which
overhang and threaten momentarily to overwhelm him, the story of
the Titans seems to be realized, and it appears to him as if
they had succeeded, in this wild and primeval portion of the
globe, in heaping Ossa upon Pelion, and Olympus upon Ossa."
See also, Lanman, Tour to
the River Saguenay, p. 134: ". . . the thought actually
flew into my mind that I was on the point of passing the narrow
gateway leading to hell. Soon, however, the wind ceased to blow,
the thunder to roar, and the lightning to flash . . . ."
|
990 |
|
adamantine
As if made of the hardest iron or steel; impenetrable. In conjunction
with the quotation from Lanman at 977-984
above, see Milton's description of the "Gates" of
Hell as "Adamantine" in Paradise
Lost, II, 853.
|
992 |
|
apace Quickly.
|
993 |
|
Hills piled on rugged hills Cf. the quotation from Lanman's Tour
to the River Saguenay at 931-933,
above.
|
993 |
|
and f. But see
A
common enough locution, but one used by Burr, Pictorial Voyage, p. 40 shortly before his introduction of the Me de Boule, a
remarkable "round mountain" about five kilometres
upriver from Tadoussac and some distance downriver from the
"two PROFILES," "strong outlines on the rocks,
several hundred feet above the water, [that] strongly resemble
the human face" (p. 41).
|
997 |
|
Magi
Holy or wise men, originally with reference to ancient
Persian priests. Sangster's sense would seem to require the
singular "Magus."
|
1002-1113 |
|
See
the Introduction, p. xxx for a discussion of the literary
resonances of this interspersed lyric, and of the
inappropriateness of its anapestic rhythm to the theme of
"Vanished Hopes."
|
1014-1015 |
|
In
conjunction with 1023-1026, cf. Lanman, Tour
to the River Saguenay, p. 129: "Long and intently did I
gaze upon this wonder of the North [the atmospheric effect
described in the quotation at 912ff.]; and at the moment it was
fading away, a wild swan passed over my head, sailing towards
Hudson's Bay, and as his lonely song echoed along the silent
air, I retraced my steps to the watch-fire and was soon a
dreamer."
|
1021 |
|
supine Inclined, sloping. Both Lanman (Tour to the River Saguenay, p. 133) and Burr (Pictorial Voyage, p. 39) comment on the fact that the cliffs rise
perpendicularly from the water of the Saguenay.
|
1023 |
|
One solitary sea gull Cf. Lanman, Tour to the River Saguenay, p. 135: ". . . let your eye follow
an eagle sweeping along his airy pathway near the summit of the cliffs . . . ."
|
1028 |
|
drugged
giant See the quotation from Burr's Pictorial
Voyage at 985-992, above.
|
1029 |
|
dwarfed
pines See the quotation from Lanman's Tour
to the River Saguenay at 934-938, above.
|
1033 |
|
liquid
pearls See the quotation from Lanman's Tour
to the River Saguenay at 948-954, above.
|
1037-1038 |
|
Both
Lanman (see the quotation at 985-992, above) and Burr (Pictorial Voyage, pp. 40-41) report the experience of
a "mariner" passing through a "portentous
storm" on the Saguenay.
|
1039-1049 |
|
CC Lanman, Tour to the River Saguenay, p. 135: "From what I have written,
my reader may be impressed with the idea that this river is
incapable of yielding pleasurable sensations. Sail along its
shores, on a pleasant day, when its cliffs are partly hidden in
shadow, and covered with a gauze-like atmosphere, and they
will fill your heart with
images of beauty.
Or, if you would enjoy a still greater variety, let your
thoughts flow away upon the blue smoke which rises from an Indian
encampment hidden in a dreamy cove . . . ."
|
1040 |
|
frills
Decorates or ruffles, as with an ornamental edging.
|
1040 |
|
coquetting
A word apparently coined by Sangster in place of
coquette-like (A coquette
being a woman who toys artfully with the feelings of men; a
flirt).
|
1041 |
|
two high rocks Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 41 describes "ETERNITY POINT and CAPE
TRINITY" (the former explicitly mentioned by Sangster in
stanza XCV and the latter in the note to C) as ". . . two
tremendous masses of rock . . . rising from the water's edge to
the height of nearly 2000 feet, and so abruptly that ships may
sail close enough to their base for the hand to touch
them."
|
1042 |
|
like Patience at the feet of Death Tierney, p. 284, n.261 suggests
that this simile evokes the following description of Olivia in
Shakespeare's Twelfth
Night, II, iv, 117-118: ". . . She sat like
Patience on a monument, / Smiling at grief . . . ." Since
Shakespeare's lines probably refer to a figural representation
of patience (the virtue of self-sacrificed suffering that
is tested by death) on a tomb-sculpture, Sangster's lines
are true to Olivia's image, but with one important twist: the
suggestion of his allegorical tableau that "Patience"
has been defeated by (or subordinated to) "Death".
|
1042-1049 |
|
Tierney
(p. 284 n.262) glosses these lines with the story of Pandora
(the Greek equivalent of Eve) whose curiosity prompted her to
open a "box" from which escaped all the diseases and
evils that have since afflicted the human race. Pandora was able
to close the box in time to prevent the escape of Hope, man's
solace in the face of suffering (see the first stanza of
"Vanished Hopes" [1002-1113]).
|
1044 |
|
pestilential
Having the nature of the plague or some other infectious and
deadly disease.
|
1046 |
|
subtlest essence A phrase with distinctly occult overtones,
"essence" being, in one of its meanings, the
mysterious substance believed by the alchemists to be present in
all bodies.
|
1047 |
|
sapping
Destroying, as if by some secret, hidden process.
|
1049 |
|
ærial Produced by the (pure) air or atmosphere. Cf. Shelley, Prometheus
Unbound, 11, v, 12-14: ". . . light/ . . . fills
this vapour, as the aerëal hue/ of fountain-gazing roses
fills the water . . . ."
|
1050f. |
|
Cf.
Psalm 23.2: "he maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he
leadeth me beside the still waters."
|
1053 |
|
lave
Bathe.
|
1053 |
|
ambrosial
Delicious; fragrant. In Greek mythology, ambrosia is the food
of the gods, and bestowed immortality on all those who partook
of it.
|
1056 |
|
scathe Injury; harm; damage.
|
1057 |
|
sprite Spirit; specifically, perhaps, a fairy or elf.
|
1057 |
|
sojourns Lives temporarily or as a stranger.
|
1060 |
|
beetling
Jutting, overhanging (often with a reference to prominent eyebrows). Cf.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I,
iv,
70-71: ". . . the dreadful summit of the
cliff/ . . . beetles o'er his base into the sea . . . ."
And see Lanman, Tour to
the River Saguenay,p.
133: ". . . generally speaking,
these towaring bulwarks [the bluffs on the banks of the Saguenay]
are not content to loom perpendicularly into the air, but they
must needs bend over, as if to look at their own savage features
reflected in the deep" and the quotations from Burr, Pictorial
Voyage at, respectively, 1119-1120
and f. and 1185 and
n. below.
|
1062 |
|
phantom Apparition, spectre, ghost.
|
1062 |
|
Scald An
ancient Scandinavian (especially Norwegian or Icelandic) poet.
|
1067 |
|
reverential Characterized
by reverence or, in a less common sense that is not inconsistent
with this context, inspiring reverence.
|
1071-1077 |
|
See the quotation from Lanman's Tour to the River Saguenay at 985-992,
above.
|
1072 |
|
human clay On
the basis of Genesis 2.7, the
human body as distinct from the soul.
|
1073 |
|
knots Hills or summits.
|
1077 |
|
evil
spirits who have seen the sun By
tradition sunlight is inimical to "evil spirits" and
ghosts generally; as Horatio puts it in Shakespeare's Hamlet,
I, i, 149-155: "I
have heard / The cock . . . Awake the god of day,
and at his warning . . . The extravagant and erring spirit hies
/ To his confine."
|
1080-1081 |
|
face to face / Love looks on Love See
1 Corinthians 13. 12: "For
now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face . . .
."
|
1081-1082 |
|
trace / Of Eden Vestige
or indication of man's pre-fallen state. Cf. Cowper, The
Task, III, 41-42 :"Domestic happiness, thou only
bliss / Of Paradise that has survived the fall . . . ."
|
1085 |
|
trace Discover; search out; ascertain by (scientific)
investigation.
|
1086-1118 |
|
In contrast to "Vanished Hopes"
(1002-1113),
the lilting and frequently anapestic rhythms of this
heterometrical "Song" (a4b3cc2b3 dd2e3ff2e4) are appropriate to its "cheerful" subject matter, as are
its strong, even playful, rhymes. Both in its poetic effects and
in its imagery
(". . . dark Night no more/ Will obscure the shore . . .
" [1094-1095], and so on), Sangster's "Song"
recalls the William Blake of the Songs
of Innocence and of Experience, but it is unlikely that the
Canadian poet knew his English predecessor's poems of renovation
(both spiritual and perceptual) through human love.
|
1092 |
|
cope The concave or canopy of the sky, with a suggestion of the
ecclesiastical garment resembling a cloak that is worn at
various sacred functions, including processions, consecrations
and communion (which in the Anglican Church is sometimes
received by the bride and groom at the time of their marriage);
see also 1114 and 1122.
|
1093 |
|
Genius
of Love See the note to 94, above.
|
1098 |
|
reels
Whirls.
|
1098 |
|
astral
lair Starry home.
|
1119-1120 |
|
and
f. Cf. Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, pp. 41-42: "The . . . huge pile of
everlasting granite is well designated by the name Eternity
Point [`Eternity Cape' in Lanman, Tour
to the River Saguenay, p. 135]. Sheltered between these
beetling and overhanging cliffs [Trinity Cape and Eternity
Point] is a delightful recess in the shore, called Trinity
Cove,--its retired and lonely beauty presents a striking
contrast with the towering grandeur of the rest of the
scene."
|
1122 |
|
communion
. . . cope See the note to 1092, above.
|
1126-1127 |
|
These
lines recall the story of Prometheus, the Titan of Greek
mythology, who stole fire from heaven (or hell, in another
version, from Hephaestus) and carried it to the earth for the
benefit of mankind, to whom he taught many arts.
|
1128-1130 |
|
See
the quotation from Burr's Pictorial
Voyage at 957-974 and 1119-1120 and f., above.
|
1134 |
|
piney Of pine trees (and see the note to 366-370, above).
|
1137 |
|
flushed See the note to 470, above.
|
1140 |
|
monad By comparison with other words that Sangster could have used
in this context (for example, "grain" of
"speck"), the term "monad" has strong
philosophical and theological overtones: an ultimate and
indivisible unit of being, it has been applied to the number one
(principally with reference to Pythagoras and other Greek
philosophers) and to the Christian God (the more obvious context
for Sangster's usage).
|
1142-1143 |
|
See
Genesis 1. 26-27 and Milton, Paradise
Lost, VII, 515-516: "...God supreme made him [Man]
chief / Of all his works...."
|
1144 |
|
monotone
Unvaried sound.
|
1145-1154 |
|
See
the quotation from Lanman, Tour
to the River Saguenay at 957-974, above. Burr, Pictorial
Voyage, p. 41 writes that "When the traveller raises
his eyes to [the] vast height [of ETERNITY POINT and CAPE
TRINITY], and then thinks of the deep abyss of waters rolling
beneath him, he 'is overcome with awe, and shrinks as he becomes
convinced of his own nothingness."
|
1155-1160 |
|
Lanman,
Tour to the River Saguenay,
p. 132 describes the church at Chicoutimi (some considerable
distance upriver from Cape Eternity) as occupying ". . .
the centre of a grassy lawn . . . and command[ing] a fine
prospect, not only of the Saguenay, but also of a spacious bay,
into which there empties a noble mountain stream . . . ."
|
1164-1168 |
|
Cf.
Wordsworth, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3,
1802," 1-2, 11, 13: "Dull would he be of soul
who could pass by / A sight so touching in its majesty . . .
.Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep . . . .Dear God! the
very houses seem asleep . . . ."
|
1172 |
|
See the quotation from Burr, Pictorial
Voyage at 1119-1120 and f., above.
|
1174 |
|
umbrageous Shady. Cf. (in conjunction with 1173), Milton, Paradise
Lost, IV, 257-258: ". . . umbrageous Grots and
Caves/ Of cool recess . . ."
|
1175-1181 |
|
Cf
the quotation from Lanman's Tour
to the River Saguenay at 1060, above. In the background of
these lines may be Keats's "The Eve of St. Agnes,"
especially stanzas 27-33 in which Porphyro gazes upon a Madeline
who has succumbed to the "warmth of sleep" (237) after
praying for "heaven's grace and boon"
(219)--"visions of delight,/ And soft adorings" from
her lover--to come to her in the "middle of the night"
(47-49).
|
1180 |
|
fraught See the note to 19, above.
|
1183 |
|
Romans
in the race Possibly a reference to the chariot races that
were held in the Circus Maximus in ancient Rome.
|
1185 |
|
and n. Burr, Pictorial Voyage, p. 41
describes "Trinity
Cape as a "huge pile of everlasting granite" (and
see also the quotation at 1041, above) with "three peaks on
its summit resembling human heads."
|
1187 |
|
the great Samson of the Saguenay See Introduction, p. xxv for a
discussion of the significance of "Silence" in the
final stanzas of The St.
Lawrence and the Saguenay.
|
1200-1205 |
|
N.A.Woods,
The Prince of Wales in
Canada and the United States (1861), pp. 81-82, provides a
description of Capes Trinity and Eternity that corroborates
these lines and sheds light on Sangster's other
accounts of them: "Than these two dreadful headlands
nothing can be imagined more grand or more impressive. For one
brief moment the rugged character of the river is partly
softened, and, looking back into the deep valley between the
capes, the land has an aspect of life and wild luxuriance which,
though not rich, at least seems so in comparison with the
previous awful barrenness. Cape Trinity . . . is pretty thickly
clothed with fir and birch mingled together in a colour contrast
which is beautiful enough, especially when the rocks show out
among them, with their little cascades and waterfalls like
strips of silver shining in the sun. But Cape Eternity well
becomes its name, and is the very reverse of all this. It seems
to frown in gloomy indignation on its brother cape for the
weakness it betrays in allowing anything like life or verdure to
shield its wild, uncouth deformity of strength. Cape Eternity
certainly shows no sign of relaxing in this respect from its
deep savage grandeur. It is one tremendous cliff of limestone .
. . inclin[ing] forward . . . , brow-beating all beneath
it, and seeming as if at any moment it would fall and overwhelm
the deep, black stream which flows so cold, so deep and
motionless below. High up on its rough grey brows a few stunted
pines show like bristles their scathed white arms, giving an
awful weird aspect to the mass, blanched here and there by the
tempests of ages, stained and discoloured by little waterfalls,
in blotchy and decaying spots, but all speaking mutely of a
long-gone time when the Saguenay was old, silent and
gloomy, before England was known or the name of Christianity
understood."
|
1203 |
|
glooms
Darkens.
|
1205 |
|
swarthy
crest Dark top.
|
1206 |
|
anatomic form, and triple crown The quotation from Burr, Pictorial
Voyage at 1185 and n., above is obviously pertinent to this
description of Trinity Rock. Other passages of Burr and Lanman
that have already been quoted (for example, at 1060) are
relevant to the stanza as a whole.
|
1209-1210 |
|
the
goal is won . . . we must part. Cf. Byron, Childe Harold's
Pilgrimmage, IV, clxxv: "My Pilgrim's shrine is won, / And
he and I must part--so let it be ...."
|
1216 |
|
young
Phoebus The morning Sun (see the notes to 812 and 917-920,
above).
|
1217 |
|
heart
of rose See the note to 854, above.
|
1219 |
|
exhalted Elevated (in power, dignity,
confidence, character and the like); elated; praised.
|
1222 |
|
Ambrosial See
the note to 1053, above.
|
1222 |
|
celestial Heavenly; supremely excellent or delightful.
|
1229-1230 |
|
syllabl'ing words that bind / Our souls For
a discussion of the epithalamic overtones of the conclusion of The
St. Lawrence and the Saguenay see Introduction, pp. xxii-xxviii.
|
1232 |
|
scale of being Degrees
(or ladder) of existence, from the lowest to the highest
creatures or states.
|
1233 |
|
trifing Frivolous; trivial.
|
1233 |
|
obscure career Imperfectly
illuminated course.
|
1235 |
|
crystalline
Made of crystal, or transparent like crystal. Milton uses the word
"crystalline" three times in Paradise
Lost (see particularly III,
482 and IV, 772), but
more pertinent to Sangster's "crystalline gates" are
Milton's references to the opening of the "Crystal wall of
heaven" in VI, 860 and, in Paradise Regained,
I, 82 to the "Crystal Doors" of the
"Clouds" that open at the time of Christ's baptism.
See also Revelation 4.6,
21.11 and 22.1.
|
1236-1237 |
|
See the quotation from Burr, Pictorial Voyage at 1145-1154,
above, and the following from Lanman, Tour
to the River Saguenay, p. 133: "Imagine for a moment,
an extensive country of rocky and thinly-clad mountains,
suddenly separated by some convulsion of nature, so as to form
an almost bottomless chasm . . . and then imagine this chasm
suddenly half-filled with water . . . and you will have a
pretty accurate idea of the Saguenay."
|
1240 |
|
chamois Goat-like
and extremely agile antelope inhabiting remote mountain regions
in Europe and Western Asia.
|
1248 |
|
hind Female deer.
|
1250 |
|
the
well The definite article suggests an allusion to a specific well, perhaps
one of "the wells of salvation" in Isaiah 12.3 or the "well of . . . everlasting life" in John 4.14.
|
1252-1253 |
|
Cf. Tennyson, In
Memoriam, LV, 13-16:
"I falter where I firmly trod . . . Upon the great
world's altar-stairs/ That slope through darkness up to
God . . ." and [Epilogue], 142-144: ". . . One God, one law, one element,/ And one
far-off divine event,/ To which the whole creation
moves."
|
1261 |
|
new life See
Introduction, p. xxviii for this phrase as a possible echo of
Dante's Vita Nuova (New Life).
|
1262 |
|
. . . Human Love Cf the
final line of Beattie, The
Minstrel, I: "I only wish to please the gentle mind, /
Whom Nature's charms inspire, and love of human kind."
|
|