Sonnet 7

from Sonnets Written in the Orillia Woods

Charles Sangster

Our life is like a forest, where the sun
Glints down upon us through the throbbing leaves;
The full light rarely finds us. One by one,
Deep rooted in our souls, there springeth up
Dark groves of human passion, rich in gloom,
At first no bigger than an acorn-cup.
Hope threads the tangled labyrinth, but grives
Till all our sins have rotted in their tomb,
And made the rich loam of each yearning heart
To bring forth fruits and flowers to new life.
We feel the dew from heaven, and there start
From some deep fountain little rills whose strife
Is drowned in music. Thus in light and shade
We live, and move, and die, through all this earthly glade.

I read this intensely beautiful poem for the first time yesterday. The poet, Charles Sangster (1822-93), was born in Kingston, Ontario, and began his working life making ordnance for the navy. Although he later became a newspaper editor and a postal employee, he was generally unhappy and overworked. He married three times, and two of his wives died young. He had a passel of kids and a nervous breakdown; and although when younger he had published his work to acclaim, his output eventually dwindled to almost nothing. In a letter to a friend he wrote: "When I went down to Ottawa [to the post office job] . . . I took a pile of M.S. of a third volume with me, as I thought 'ready for the press,' but in all the 18 years I remained there I did little more than correct. . . . When they get a man into the Civil Service, their first duty is to crush him flat, and if he is a fool of a Poet, or dares to think of any nonsense of that kind, draw him through a Knot or a gimlet hole a few times, pile [him] with agony of toil, toil, toil until his nerves are flattened out, all the rebound knocked out of him, and then–superannuate him . . . and tell him he should be thankful."