The City Of End The Things Poem Analysis

“The City of End the Things” by Archibald Lampman, was published in the last anthology of his poems entitled Alcyone in the year 1899. This poem is an inevitable instance of a decadent modern urban life and city that predominantly represented an overwhelming view of oppression and human deprivation. This trait of representation reflects vividly in the poetry of most of the Canadian poets of the later part of nineteenth century. For most of these poets, the most corporeal as well as harsh realistic occurrences took place amidst an industry based city- life. Archibald Lampman was one of the brightest exponents in this particular genre of Canadian poets who is celebrated for the underlying overtones of socialist idealisms. Lampman has not really criticized all kinds of industrial advancements; he rather remained ambivalent towards industrialization while carving out the squalors rendered by this process and its impact on nature and humans living in it. On one hand Lampman praises the boundless power of human mind and on the other hand, when his poems critiquing industrialization is analyzed, a frugal amount of optimism can be discovered. Thus, Archibald Lampman’s poems reflect the duality or ambivalence of the poet towards industrialization. This poem simultaneously reflects the general contention for modern industrialization that could be found in Canadian potry. “The City of the Ends of the Things” by Lampman

It is a moderately predictable illustration of how the rising modern metropolis had come to be primarily abstracted as the overpowering site of coercion and human deprivation by the contemporary English- Canadian poets. A similar denunciation of the malevolence of urban existence had also been depicted by Eustache Prudhomme, almost more than a quarter of century ago, in a poem named, "A Night in the City" (1866), where the poet