Bliss Carman is a native of New Brunswick and began life as a civil
engineer and school teacher. The muse won him, however, almost from
boyhood, and he has written steadily, slowly and safely, which is
equivalent to saying that he has written progressively. Like many of
the Canadian writers, he came to the United States to seek recognition.
Here he met three other Canadians—C. G. D. Roberts, James Clarence
Harvey and the late Richard Hovey. They formed a talented quartet of
struggling poets, and their little world known as “Vagabondia,” was one
of the most fascinating centers of American Bohemianism of the better
type. Literary and artistic people coveted the privilege of entering
therein. Mr. Carman and Mr. Hovey published several volumes of songs
from “Vagabondia.” The subject of this sketch is best known by his
Coronation Ode and his Sapphic Fragments. There is a fine and tender
quality in Mr. Carman’s poems that accounts for their popularity among
people possessing that which is known as the “artistic temperament.”