The article then discussed the main subject of the argument, saying how very different it is when we come to consider poetic art as the reflex of the life of Nature. Here the muse of Canada ought to be, and is, so great and strong. It is not in the old countries, it is in the new, that the poet can adequately reflect the life of Nature. It is in them alone that he can confront Nature's face as it is, uncoloured by associations of history and tradition. What Wordsworth tried all his life to do, the poets of Canada, of the Australias, of the Cape, have the opportunity of doing. How many a home-bounded Englishman must yearn for the opportunity now offered by the Canadian Pacific Railway of seeing the great virgin forests and prairies before settlement has made much progress--of seeing them as they existed before even the foot of the Red Man trod them--of seeing them without that physical toil which only a few hardy explorers can undergo. It is hard to realise that he who has not seen the vast unsettled tracts of the British Empire knows Nature only under the same aspect as she has been known by all the poets from Homer to our own day. And when I made the allusion to Pauline Johnson's poems which brought me such reward, I quoted "In the Shadows." The poem fascinated me--it fairly haunted me. I could not get it out of my head; and I remember that I was rather severe on Mr. Lighthall for only giving us two examples of a poet so rare--so full of the spirit of the open air.
Naturally I turned to his introductory remarks to see who Pauline Johnson was. I was not at all
