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INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR<br />
me about a year to write ; for I have changed and<br />
rechanged it and thought hard over that poem, and<br />
striven to get that sense of inexorableness the<br />
human (or unhuman) side of this war has. It<br />
even penetrates behind human life ; for the<br />
' '<br />
Amazon who speaks in the second half of the<br />
poem is imagined to be without her lover yet,<br />
while all her sisters have theirs, the released spirits<br />
of the slain earth-men ; her lover yet remains to<br />
be released. 11 To Miss Seaton (1916).<br />
" Many thanks for book and chocolate. Both<br />
are being devoured with equal pleasure. I can't<br />
get quite the delight in Whitman as from one<br />
poem of his I know—' Captain, my Captain. 1 I<br />
admire the vigour and independence of his mind,<br />
but his diction is so diffused. Emerson and not<br />
Whitman is America's poet. You will persist in<br />
refusing to see my side of our little debate on<br />
criticism. Everybody has agreed with you about<br />
the faults, and the reason is obvious ; the faults<br />
are so glaring that nobody can fail to see them.<br />
But how many have seen the beauties ? And it is<br />
here more than the other that the true critic<br />
shows himself. And I absolutely disagree that it<br />
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