Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure

This is Canadian poetry searching for a nation. Written in 1887, at a moment when Canada was still forging its cultural identity separate from Britain, W. D. Lighthall's collection pulses with the anxiety and ambition of a young country trying to define itself in verse. Here are poems that celebrate national pride alongside intimate meditations on love, nature, and the artist's restless inner life. "National Hymn" invokes a collective spirit, while "The Artist's Prayer" captures the universal struggle for creative fulfillment. Lighthall uses the Canadian landscape not merely as backdrop but as mirror, its vast horizons and changing seasons reflecting the emotional and philosophical terrain of the poems themselves. The collection offers a window into a particular Victorian Canadian sensibility: earnest, philosophically engaged, and deeply concerned with the relationship between individual consciousness and national destiny. For readers interested in the origins of Canadian literary voice, these verses document a moment when poets were still learning to speak with their own accent.