Low Tide on Grand Pre is a poem by the Canadian poet Bliss Carman. Written in 1887, it was a breakthrough poem for the young Carman, and it became the title poem of his first book, published in 1893. Like the poem “The Tantramar Revisited” by the Canadian poet Charles G. D. Roberts (who was Carman’s cousin), “Low Tide on Grand Pre” is a poem about return. It is set in the Grand Pre region of Novia Scotia, once part of the area called Acadie, or Acadia. (See Roberts, Charles G. D.)
The sun goes down, and over all These barren reaches by the tide Such unelusive glories fall, I almost dream they yet will bide Until the coming of the tide. And yet I know that not for us, By any ecstasy of dream, He lingers to keep luminous A little while the grievous stream, Which frets, uncomforted of dream— A grievous stream, that to and fro Athrough the fields of Acadie Goes wandering, as if to know Why one beloved face should be So long from home and Acadie. Was it a year or lives ago We took the grasses in our hands, And caught the summer flying low Over the waving meadow lands, And held it there between our hands? The while the river at our feet— A drowsy inland meadow stream— At set of sun the after-heat Made running gold, and in the gleam We freed our birch upon the stream. There down along the elms at dusk We lifted dripping blade to drift, Through twilight scented fine like musk, Where night and gloom awhile uplift, Nor sunder soul and soul adrift. And that we took into our hands Spirit of life or subtler thing— Breathed on us there, and loosed the bands Of death, and taught us, whispering, The secret of some wonder-thing. Then all your face grew light, and seemed To hold the shadow of the sun; The evening faltered, and I deemed That time was ripe, and years had done Their wheeling underneath the sun. So all desire and all regret, And fear and memory, were naught; One to remember or forget The keen delight our hands had caught; Morrow and yesterday were naught. The night has fallen, and the tide… Now and again comes drifting home, Across these aching barrens wide, A sigh like driven wind or foam: In grief the flood is bursting home.
Bliss Carman followed Charles G. D. Roberts in adapting the conventions of English Romanticism and American Transcendentalism to the landscape of the coastal region in eastern Canada. English Romanticism of the late 1700’s and early 1880’s emphasized, among other things, the importance of nature to the human imagination and spirit. American Transcendentalism, which developed in the 1830’s and 1840’s, was similarly based on the belief that God was present in nature.
Carman adds a romantic aspect to his poem by addressing a beloved woman. The experience that they shared “a year or lives ago” is presented as a moment of apparent timelessness. But two features of the poem underline the impossibility of escaping time. First, the speaker dreams that the sunset will coincide with the tide, only to realize that nature’s ways are “not for us.” Second, Carman sets his poem by the sea, where the landscape is altered by the ceaseless ebb and flow of tidal waters. The memory of what seemed a timeless union is followed by the onset of night and the return of the tide. The very waters that once seemed like “running gold” now come “bursting home” in grief.
Bliss Carman spent much of his adult life outside his native Canada. From the 1890’s onward, he worked as a literary editor and journalist in New York City and Boston. He was a prolific author, writing plays, anthologies, and critical studies as well as more than 30 volumes of verse. For many years after his death, Carman was Canada’s best-known poet, with an international following. But by the end of the 1900’s, his reputation had declined.
For more information about Carman, see Carman, Bliss. See also American literature (Nonfiction prose); Canadian literature; English literature (Romantic poetry).
