Alcyone

Alcyone is a collection of poetry by Archibald Lampman, the Canadian poet who lived from 1861 to 1899 and who is one of the central figures of the late nineteenth century Canadian literary tradition. Alcyone was the last collection Lampman prepared for publication before his early death and was issued posthumously in 1899.

Lampman is generally considered the finest Canadian nature poet of his generation and one of the major figures of the Confederation Poets group that included Charles G D Roberts, Bliss Carman, and Duncan Campbell Scott. He worked as a clerk in the Post Office Department in Ottawa for most of his adult life and wrote poetry in the evenings and on weekends, with most of his serious composition produced during the long Canadian summers when he could spend time in the countryside outside Ottawa.

The poems in Alcyone reflect Lampman’s characteristic interests and his mature voice. There are landscape poems set in the country around Ottawa, with careful detailed observation of the seasonal changes in the woods, the rivers, and the smaller agricultural settlements of eastern Ontario. There are meditative poems on themes of memory, loss, and the slow passage of time. There are several poems that engage with the social and political questions that increasingly preoccupied Lampman in his later years, including questions about industrial labour, urban poverty, and the moral cost of modern commercial society.

Lampman wrote in the broadly Romantic tradition that dominated late nineteenth century English language nature poetry, with influences from Wordsworth, Keats, and Matthew Arnold particularly visible in his work. His Canadian setting gave his nature poetry a particular quality that distinguished it from the British and American work he was reading. The Canadian landscape with its long cold winters, its short intense summers, and its vast undeveloped wilderness offered Lampman material that the more settled English Romantic tradition could not quite reach.

The collection is best read in small selections rather than straight through. For readers interested in nineteenth century Canadian poetry, Lampman is one of the essential figures. It pairs naturally with his earlier collections Among the Millet and Lyrics of Earth.