At this time of year I can’t resist featuring “A Vagabond Song” by Canadian poet Bliss Carman (1861-1929).
There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood —
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.
“A Vagabond Song” was first published in 1896 in More Songs from Vagabondia, the second of three collaborations with Richard Hovey. It later appeared in The Canada Book of Prose and Verse, Book One, a school reader used across the country in the 1930s through 1950s.
For a detailed (15,000 word) article on Carman’s life, check out this chapter of Confederation Voices: Seven Canadian Poets by John Coldwell Adams.
But be prepared to have your image of Carman shattered.
Adams writes:
“Ironically, Carman and Hovey gained early reputations as men of the open road when both of them preferred their creature comforts to the rigours of life in the out-of-doors. Being neither particularly adventurous nor vigourous, they hardly qualified as “vagabonds,” not even in the narrow meaning of “wanderers.” Nor, other than a walking-tour down the New England coast in the late fall of 1887, was much of their travelling done on foot.”
Regardless of this revelation, “A Vagabond Song” remains one of my favourite autumn poems.
For a shorter bio you could take a look at this entry in the New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia, which ends with a list of secondary sources.
Some primary sources can be viewed in “Bliss Carman: A Life in Literary Publishing” by Thomas B. Vincent on this website.
During my research I discovered that material relating to Bliss Carman is held in archives all across North America.
- Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, Ontario
- Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario
- The University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario
- New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, New Brunswick
- Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia
- Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York
- Smith College in Northhampton, Massachusetts
- Stanford University in Stanford, California
Do you have a favourite autumn poem? I would love to hear.
Thanks for this! I am woefully ignorant of Canadian poets. I appreciate you drawing this one to my attention.
Born and raised in New Brunswick!
Shelley’s famous poem beginning ” O wild west wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing”……..
is far too long to be included here,but worth revisiting!
Beverly troup
Here is a favourite autumn poem:
God’s World
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.
— 1917
I love this poem, too. So much passion.
Another Canadian (Tekahionwake in Mohawk) poet, Pauline Johnson, probably best known for “The Song My Paddle Sings.”, also wrote one of my favourite fall poems, “Harvest Time”, which some think of as “Indian Summer”:
Pillowed and hushed on the silent plain,
Wrapped in her mantle of golden grain,
Wearied of pleasuring weeks away,
Summer is lying asleep to-day,–
Where winds come sweet from the wild-rose briers
And the smoke of the far-off prairie fires;
Yellow her hair as the goldenrod,
And brown her cheeks as the prairie sod;
Purple her eyes as the mists that dream
At the edge of some laggard sun-drowned stream;
But over their depths the lashes sweep,
For Summer is lying to-day asleep.
The north wind kisses her rosy mouth,
His rival frowns in the far-off south,
And comes caressing her sunburnt cheek,
And Summer awakes for one short week,–
Awakes and gathers her wealth of grain,
Then sleeps and dreams for a year again.
That’s lovely! Thanks for sharing.