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‘perhaps meant to disavow religious heresy. To attack both society and religion at one time would perhaps ‘have endangered either cause; and probably it was wise on the part of Sémal to have addressed himself to what he felt to be the more important and unogcupied field. In the absence of history, it is difficult to probe through the poet’s actual motives. But a poet cannot help sing- ing out his own heart, when he sings for years and years together. And when you can find one can- ‘tinued and sustained burden throughout his many and varied songs, you may safely take it that he has poured out his own hears therein. And itisin this way ‘that we are justified in spelling out the great and free ‘heart of S&mal from his powerful works. To several people his poems have seemed puerile and boorish. But it is difficult to appreciate a poet unless one understands him and his standpoint; and a proper understanding of Samal is not possible without.a preliminary realization of the cardinal points of the great objects that inspired his soul and raised his vision above his time and place. His poetry was concentrated into this focus, and he settled the rest of his details very much with the summary proce- dures of the Vril of “The Coming Race,” and of the wand of old Prospero. Not, wishing to draw from known my- thology, and yet impatient of the tardy procedures of the natural development and evolution of things, Smal makes
-effects jump from causes by magical or mythological
