The Coming of the Princess, and Other Poems — Reading Companion

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Authors: MacLean, Kate Seymour Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2004 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Canadian poetry -- 19th century Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 26,553

Reading time 116 min

Text sections 4

For The Coming of the Princess, and Other Poems — Reading Companion, the stored edition analysis reports 26,553 words, 1 hr 56 min estimated reading time, and 4 detected text sections.

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Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Canadian poetry -- 19th century,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #6623

Kate Seymour MacLean's 1874 collection balances formal Victorian verse with intimate domestic scenes, using river currents, children's visions, and a dying mother's return to explore longing, faith, and the Canadian landscape.

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The thought divine within them till it blossomed into stone Forgers of swords and of ploughshares reapers of men and of grain, Their bones and their names forgotten on many a battle plain For faith and love and loyalty were living and sacred things When our sires were those who wrought and yours were the leaders and kings.

For since the deeds that live in Arthur's rhyme Who left the stainless flower of knighthood for all time Down to our Blameless Prince wise gentle just Whom the world mourns not by your English dust More precious held more sacredly enshrined Than in each loyal breast of all mankind, Men bare the head in homage to the good, And she who wears the crown of womanhood, August, not less than that of Empress, reigns The crowned Victoria of the world's domains North, South, East, West, O Princess fair, behold In this new world, the daughter of the old, Where ribs of iron bar the Atlantic's breast, Where sunset mountains slope into the west, Unfathomed wildernesses, valleys sweet, And tawny stubble lands of corn and wheat, And all the hills and lakes and forests dun, Between the rising and the setting sun; Where rolling rivers run with sands of gold, And the locked treasures of the mine unfold Undreamed of riches, and the hearts of men, Held close to nature, have grown pure again. Like that exalted Pair, beloved, revered, By princely grace, and truth and love endeared, Here fix your empire in the growing West, And build your throne in each Canadian breast, Till West and East strike hands across the main, Knit by a stronger, more enduring chain, And our vast Empire become one again.

Art thou not sweet, Oh world, and glad to the inmost heart of thee! All creatures rejoice With one rapturous voice. As I, with the passionate beat Of my over-full heart feel thee sweet, And all things that live, and are part of thee!

Light, light as a cloud Swimming, and trailing its shadow under me I float in the deep As a bird-dream in sleep, And hear the wind murmuring loud, Far down, where the tree-tops are bowed,-- And I see where the secret place of the thunders be

Oh! the sky free and wide, With all the cloud-banners flung out in it Its singing wind blows As a grand river flows, And I swim down its rhythmical tide, And still the horizon spreads wide, With the birds' and the poets' songs like a shout in it!

Oh life, thou art sweet Sweet--sweet to the inmost heart of thee! I drink with my eyes Thy limitless skies, And I feel with the rapturous beat Of my wings thou art sweet-- And I,--I am alive, and a part of thee!

In the beautiful May weather, Lapsing soon into June; On a golden, golden day Of the green and golden May, When our hearts were beating tune To the coming feet of June, Walked we in the woods together.

Silver fine Gleamed the ash buds through the darkness of the pine, And the waters of the stream Glance and gleam, Like a silver-footed dream-- Beckoning, calling, Flashing, falling, Into shadows dun and brown Slipping down, Calling still--Oh hear! Oh follow! Follow--follow! Down through glen and ferny hollow, Lit with patches of the sky, Shining through the trees so high, Hand in hand we went together, In the golden, golden weather Of the May; While the fleet wing of the swallow Flashing by, called--follow--follow! And we followed through the day: Speaking low-- Speaking often not at all To the brooklet's crystal call, With our lingering feet and slow-- Slow, and pausing here and there For a flower, or a fern, For the lovely maiden-hair; Hearing voices in the air, Calling faintly down the burn.

Still the streamlet slid away, Singing, smiling, dimpling down To a mossy nook and brown, Under bending boughs of May; Where the nodding wind-flower grows, And the coolwort's lovely pink, Brooding o'er the brooklet's brink Dips and blushes like a rose.

And the faint smell of the mould. Sweeter than the musky scent Of the garden's manifold Perfumes into perfect blent. Lights and sounds and odours stole, In the golden, golden weather-- Heart and thought, and life and soul, Stole away, In that merry, merry May, Wandering down the burn together.

Ah Valentine--my Valentine! Heard I, with my hand in thine, Grave and low, and sweet and slow, As the wood bird over head, Brooding notes, half sung half said,-- "In the world so bleak and wide, Hearts make Edens of their own; Wilt thou linger by my side,-- Wilt thou live for me alone, Making bright the winter weather, Thou and I and love together?"

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Kate Seymour MacLean's The Coming of the Princess, and Other Poems (1874) opens with a preface by G. Mercer Adam, who frames the volume as a contribution to Canada's emerging national literature. The poems themselves, however, often turn inward, dwelling on personal loss, spiritual yearning, and the natural world. MacLean's diction shifts between the ornate—'amaranths of paradise'—and the plainspoken, as in 'River Song,' where the river is both a mechanical force 'turning the wheels and the spindles' and a 'silver-shod lover.' This tension between industrial and pastoral, public and private, runs through the collection.

In 'The Return,' a dying mother describes her journey home from a southern land, her voice alternating between gratitude and fading breath. The poem's structure—short, rhymed quatrains with refrains—creates a lullaby-like rhythm that underscores the theme of maternal love enduring through death. MacLean often uses children as figures of pure perception, as in 'The Child's World,' where they possess 'the dual vision / Of the baby and the seer.'

Diction and the Natural World

MacLean's vocabulary draws on both Romantic nature imagery and concrete Canadian details. In 'River Song,' the river is 'swift and silent and strong,' moving through a 'smoke-grimed city' where it 'turns the wheels and the spindles.' The poem juxtaposes the river's natural origins—'forest-learnt ditty'—with its industrial labor, a contrast that recurs in the collection. Elsewhere, she uses precise botanical terms: 'lime and the myrtle,' 'amaranths,' 'bobolinks.' These are not generic landscapes but specific, observed settings. The river's 'silver-shod lover' personification is typical of her tendency to animate nature with human attributes, yet she avoids sentimentality by grounding the image in the river's physical force.

Dialogue and the Dramatic Monologue

Several poems adopt a first-person speaker addressing an implied listener, creating a sense of intimate confession. In 'The Return,' the dying mother speaks directly to her children: 'Come closer to my side, / Your eyes are as clear and true.' The imperative 'Come' and the repeated 'Oh' exclamations give the poem a pleading, breathless quality. MacLean uses dashes and line breaks to mimic faltering speech—'Farewell your faces fade— / Fade—fade—and disappear.' This technique, also seen in 'River Song' where the river's movement is echoed by enjambed lines, suggests a voice struggling to articulate experience. The preface notes that MacLean's poems were first published in periodicals, which may explain their occasional reliance on direct address to engage a reading audience.

Structure and Repetition

MacLean frequently employs refrains and anaphora to build emotional intensity. 'River Song' repeats the opening line of each stanza—'Swift and silent and strong,' 'Blithe and merry and sweet'—creating a cumulative rhythm that mirrors the river's flow. In 'The Return,' the phrase 'Oh, friends!' and 'Oh God!' recur, marking moments of heightened feeling. The poems are typically short, with regular rhyme schemes (ABAB or AABB) and consistent meter, reflecting Victorian conventions. Yet within these formal constraints, MacLean varies line length and uses internal rhyme ('low-browed arches,' 'noisome and smoke-grimed city') to add texture. The result is a controlled emotional arc, particularly in poems about death, where repetition suggests a speaker clinging to familiar patterns as a comfort.

The Child as Seer

Children appear in several poems as figures of innocence and spiritual insight. In 'The Child's World,' the speaker envies children who 'look with the dual vision / Of the baby and the seer,' seeing 'stars and the angels' and 'the amaranths of paradise.' This Romantic notion of the child as a conduit to the divine is tempered by MacLean's focus on the mother-child bond. In 'The Return,' the dying mother's longing for her children—'the faces of my little ones, / And the touch of their tender hands'—grounds the spiritual in the physical. The children are not abstract symbols but specific, embodied presences. MacLean's portrayal avoids idealization; the children's 'crystal clear' eyes are both literal and metaphorical, suggesting a clarity of perception that adults have lost.

Readers approaching The Coming of the Princess, and Other Poems will find a poet working within Victorian conventions while infusing them with a distinctly Canadian sensibility. MacLean's attention to the sounds of language—the 'swish of the wind in the wheat,' the 'bound of the church-bells'—rewards reading aloud. The collection's shorter lyrics, particularly those on domestic and natural themes, are more successful than its longer narrative poems. Pay attention to how MacLean uses repetition and direct address to create intimacy, and how her diction shifts between the colloquial and the elevated.

Reading about the river currents in this collection, I remembered sitting by the window one gray afternoon, watching my own mother fold laundry, her hands moving like the poem’s rhythm. A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems — A Closer Reading once gave me that same ache—a quiet sense of things passing, held gently between familiar walls.