has paraphrased his best ideas so many times that the effect is weakened.
Yet, considered not as pure art, but as the expression of a spiritual attitude, the book is valuable. It is essentially modern in spirit, expressive of the best contemporary ideals, and is evidently written by a man who realizes deeply the spiritual complexities of life to-day. The poems are too long to quote but The Public, Library and Revenants are among the best.
OUR CONTEMPORARIES
WHAT WOULD WALT THINK?
"And, by the way, what, oh, what do you suppose Waft would have thought of Miss Monroe's magazine if he had lived to see it?" So asks Mr. John L. Hervey in a recent letter to The Dial. The question is delightfully suggestive. We would love to know just what Walt Whitman would have thought of Poetry. It is not impossible that Mr. Hervey thinks that Walt would have thought of Poetry just what he, Mr. Hervey, thinks of the magazine. No doubt it is under this conviction that Mr. Hervey delivers this last, smashing blow! Still, there isn't any way of being sure that Walt would have come out on Mr. Hervey's side. Walt was very tolerant; tolerant of poets—you remember his charming, "I like your tinkle, Tom," to Thomas Bailey Aldrich; also tolerant of editors—of Richard Watson Gilder, to whom Whitman's November Boughs "did not appeal" for publication in The Century.
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