Unusual poem hints at rebirth in nature and spirit
The Brook in February
A snowy path for squirrel and fox,
It winds between the wintry firs.
Snow-muffled are its iron rocks,
And o’er its stillness nothing stirs.
But low, bend low a listening ear!
Beneath the mask of moveless white
A babbling whisper you shall hear –
Of birds and blossoms, leaves and light.
– Charles G.D. Roberts
In his own day, and for several years after his death in 1943, Charles G.D. Roberts was regarded as the “Father of Canadian Poetry.”
Despite the fact he was the founder of the first recognizable “school” of Canadian poets – the so-called Confederation Group of the 1880s and 1890s – he is probably better-known today for his realistic animal stories (and even for his sexual proclivities) than for his poetry.
This is a pity because many of his poems, especially those inspired by the landscapes of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia where he spent the early part of his life are closely observed and economically written expressions of delight in the natural world that remain worth reading and pondering.
“The Brook in February” (1898) is not one of Roberts’s best or most striking poems, but it is unusual in Canadian poetry for being set in February, a month that has rarely attracted the attention of poets, probably because it is a period of seeming stasis that contains few intimations of the spring to come.
As is the case with many of Roberts’s landscape pieces, the poem’s opening lines set the scene for a turn to the thought that is to follow. Its opening line – “A snowy path for squirrel and fox” – provides no details of the animals, thus allowing attention to focus on its sole adjective-noun combination, which unobtrusively conveys the crucial information that the brook is frozen and hidden beneath a layer of snow.
The remainder of the first stanza enhances the atmosphere of cold and stasis. The alliteration of “winds” and “wintry” reinforces the connection that ice and snow have forged between the frozen brook and the surrounding landscape, and the compound adjective “Snow-muffled” not only describes the appearance of the “iron rocks,” but also suggests the scene is as devoid of sound as it is of movement: “o’er its stillness nothing stirs.” To all appearances and apprehensions, the natural world has lost its vitality.
“But low, bend low a listening ear!”: the second stanza begins by punningly echoing a common invitation to look (“But lo”) and continues with an emphatic command that breaches the silence and stillness and suggests further breaches are to come. The imperative “bend low” and the phrase “listening ear” indicate the need to attend closely to what cannot otherwise be heard. They also prepare the way for the poem’s main point: that, with concentration and acuteness, it is possible to apprehend and imagine what would otherwise be inaudible and invisible. In the poem’s final lines, “babbling whisper” deliberately evokes and avoids the cliché of “babbling brook” while also undoing the silence of the first stanza and introducing the plosive “b’s”, sibillant “s’s”, paired alliterations, and lilting rhythm of “birds and blossoms, leaves and light.”
The lyrical flourish of the final line of “The Brook in February” testifies to Roberts’s belief that, properly understood and carefully observed, the natural world provides evidence that beneath or behind the “mask” of appearances lies the promise of rebirth and continuance – a promise that, like many of his contemporaries in Canada and elsewhere, Roberts was inclined to extend to the realm of the human soul or spirit.
The writer teaches in the English Department and is founding editor of Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews.