A winter holiday

A winter holiday by Bliss Carman is a collection of lyrical travel poems written in the late 19th century. The book evokes a winter escape from New England to the Bahamas, blending nature writing, travelogue, and reflections on art and color; its likely topic is how landscape, sea, and companionship restore the spirit.

The sequence opens in Scituate, where the speaker visits Tortoise Shell, celebrates a painter friend nicknamed the Tortoise, and savors firelit winter evenings with neighbors. It then follows a stormy ocean crossing to the Lucayan Islands, where Nassau’s light, markets, palms, and sea-gardens inspire meditations on how art should capture ideals beyond mere view. Flying fish become emblems of aspiration; a playful dialogue with a Bay Street vendor weighs the impossibility of buying beauty against the free power to love and see; and a meeting with a small migrant bird mirrors the poet’s own search for calm. The book closes with a radiant ode to white Nassau, set against the bleak North, as a place of order, ease, and healing color.