When Frank Oliver Call published “Wisteria” in his 1920 collection Acanthus and Wild Grape, Canadian poetry was shifting away from late-Victorian ornament toward something sparer and more pictorial. Call, a Canadian professor of modern languages and a poet, often worked in that quieter mode. The title of his collection already pairs the decorative acanthus with wild grape, a cue that his verse balances artful arrangement against natural growth.
The speaker addresses an “old man” who peers out “from underneath the purple lanterns of your wisteria vine,” his eyes half shut and his face “but a mask.” The lilac gown and yellow gem give him the quality of a figure in a painting or print, and Call leaves his exact identity uncertain. Nothing about that face signals joy or sorrow. Yet the poem’s central idea is that emotional life can be read through the beauty people choose to surround themselves with. The old man bends his head to listen “when the wild geese go honking towards the south,” and his eyes “grow wide with sadness” when the last wisteria petal drops. These reactions reveal someone attuned to departure and decay, not indifferent at all. The proof arrives as a pair of questions: “You, too, love beauty, / Or else why twine the purple wisteria about your door-posts, / Or pin a yellow gem upon your lilac gown?” The mask may hide feeling, but the tended vine and bright ornament speak for him.
Call avoids regular rhyme and metre, letting the movement of curiosity set the rhythm. The short phrase “With eyes half shut” creates a brief pause, while the long line “From underneath the purple lanterns of your wisteria vine” stretches the sentence the way the vine itself trails downward. Sound holds the images together: the internal echo of “wild geese go honking,” the soft fall of “last petal falls,” the repeated p and l sounds in “purple wisteria about your door-posts.” These patterns make the poem feel calm rather than scattered, and the recurring questions turn observation into an act of interpretation.
Imagery of colour and seeing carries the emotional weight. Calling the blossoms “purple lanterns” turns them into gentle sources of light, so the old man stands within an illuminated space even while his face stays dim and unreadable. The “yellow gem” pinned to the “lilac gown” is a sharp, deliberate contrast among all the purple, a small act of adornment that hints at a rich inner life. The word “mask” suggests concealment or performance, yet the eyes contradict it: they peer, half shut, then grow wide. Throughout the poem, the speaker relies on looking rather than speaking, and that choice makes the old man’s silence feel meaningful rather than empty.
What makes “Wisteria” significant is how much it conveys through restraint. It does not explain the old man’s history or name his sorrow; it gathers evidence from the angle of his head, the sound of migrating geese, the falling petal, the vine around his door. In an era when poetry often reached for grand statements, Call trusted small observations to carry feeling. The result is an intimate, slightly mysterious portrait in which beauty becomes a form of emotional speech, and a guarded face can still reveal a cultivated heart.