ently facing. Lampman felt that man can resist corruption by maintaining close and passionate contact with Nature. These ideas are reflected throughout Lampman's poetry, from the poetry that depicts his feelings of the natural world such as "Solitude" as well as the poetry that condemns the urbanized/industrialized world as in "The City Of the End if Things". Society does corrupt man and E.K Brown even felt that Ottawa had almost corrupted Lampman(106). Lampman was privately inclined by both temperament and circumstance. His despair went deep but never so deep as to destroy or even disturb his "intuition that the core of the universe is sound"(Brown 106). His own private demons shaped his poetry. It is evident that while Lampman could see the beauty in life and in nature he had a true contempt for the society of urban life. Ottawa had even given him a disgust for politicians. An unpublished verse that he kept within his circle of friends asserted his condemnation of the system which he was forced to live in : From the seer with his snow-white crown Through every sort and condition of bipeds, all the way down To the pimp and the politician (qtd in Brown 93). Lampman appeared to believe that political trickery and financial exploitation were permanent staples of the city. His contempt for an urban civilization seemed to draw out and depend on the worst elements of human nature. He believed that the function of Nature was to "increase the good . . . to make man nobler so that his guiding concepts and social organization will implement that nobility"(Rashley 91). Societal restrictions make it difficult for man to live in the midst of nature. Lampman felt that society makes it difficult for a relationship to occur between man and nature. He wants to leave behind the city and its toil and tension to go into the country in search of rest and renewal. Even in present times human interest in the natural world has remained strong despite the grea...
