The Canadian poet Archibald Lampman (1861-1899) was one of a loosely defined group of writers known as the "Confederation Poets" whose work represents the first significant literary movement in Canada.

Archibald Lampman was born on Nov. 17, 1861, in Morpeth, Canada West (now Ontario), into a respectable and cultured middle-class family. He was, in part, privately educated, completing his schooling in Cobourg and Port Hope. Lampman graduated in 1882 from Trinity, a constituent college of the University of Toronto.

Lampman's interest in writing and the arts had been aroused under the early tutoring of his clergyman father, and he had written literary essays and poems for his college magazine, Rouge et noir. After graduation Lampman taught school for 3 months, but finding this uncongenial he joined the Post-Office Department in Ottawa in 1883. Four years later he married Maud Playter, and in 1888 his first book of poems, Among the Millet, was published privately...