environment with other living things, and that natural beauty is a necessary background for what makes us human"(Keith 22). Lampman responds to a relationship he sees man as having with nature. He is meticulous with details and takes delicate care in his descriptions and landscaping as if it were of the utmost importance in connecting the reader and himself to the land. The poetry of Lampman is an introspective study of the individual in relation to nature. Nature is a "release of energy, discovery which for a time, [gives] a fresh, eager enthusiasm and a boundlessly idealistic concept of life"(Rashley 90-91). Likewise, if Lampman observes natural objects with accuracy and love then what must opinion of the man-made be? Nature drew Lampman into its folds not only because it was great and beautiful in itself but because it was a refuge from the society he had found to have neither. Nature is a refuge for man from the angst and frustration of day to day urban life. While his published verse was for the most part naturistic, living in Ottawa had given him a sense of disgust for urban civilization. This is perhaps most evident in the poem "The City of the End of Things" written in 1895. The poem sees urban settings as "valleys huge of Tartarus/ Lurid and lofty and vast it seems"(Brown, Bennet & Cooke 156). The most evident part of the poem in which he sees urban life and mankind as being in an apocalyptical situation is in the final passage: And into rust and dust shall fall From century to century; Nor ever living thing shall grow, Nor trunk of tree, nor blade of grass; No drop shall fall, no wind shall blow, Nor sound of any foot shall pass; Alone of its accursed state, One thing the hand of time shall spare, For the grim Idiot at the gate Is deathless and eternal there. The idea that urbanization and industrialization will somehow destroy mankind is a visionary and prophetic view of the globalization and environmental damage we are curr...
