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Notes and Commentaries

Volume 10, Number 1 (1985)

"Thoughts Grow Keen and Clear": A Look at Lampman's Revisions

  • Richard Arnold
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1985-01-01

Abstract

Lampman's disturbing ambivalence toward nature in his early verse (Among the Millet) encouraged him to adopt the Emersonian identification of man and nature in Lyrics of Earth, but, once perceiving the inadequacy and dishonesty of this philosophical position, he turned away from it in order to look directly at the frightening realities of nature and human nature in Alcyone. This change in Lampman's visionary outlook can be traced in an examination of revisions he made on two important poems -- "Vision"/"Winter-Store" and "Peccavi, Domine" -- in his manuscript workbook and in printed text.