political, spiritual, literary, and artistic
life are familiar sources of inspiration for him. With all, he shows the
lofty spirit of a worshipper of greatness and depth wherever he finds
them. Tolstoi or Aeschylus, Goethe or Dante, Ibsen or Poe, Swinburne or
Walt Whitman, Leopardi or Rabelais, Hugo or Carlyle, Serbian Folk Lore
or the Bible, Hindu legends or Italian songs, Antiquity or Middle Ages,
Renaissance or Modernity, any nation or any lore are objects worthy of
study and stores of wisdom for him. Indeed, very few living poets could
be compared with him in scholarship and learning.

Nor does he lift his voice only for individual or national throbbings.
He sings of the great and noble whenever he sees it. One of his best
lyric creations is a song of praise to the valor of the champions of
Transvaal's freedom, his "Hymn to the Valiant," the first of the
collection entitled "From the Hymns and Wraths," a paean that has been
most highly lauded by Professor D.C. Hesseling of the University of
Leyden (_Nederlandsche Spectator_, March, 1901). Here is a fragment of
it, the words which the Muse addresses to the poet:

... Awake! Thou art not maker of statues!
Awake! For songs thou singest!
And song is not for ever
The heart's lament
To fading leaves of autumn,
Nor the secret speech thou speakest,
A Soul of Dream, to the shadows of Night.

For suddenly there is a clash and groaning!
The joy of birds sea-beaten,
In storms of Elements
And storms of Nations!
Song is, too,
The Marathonian Triumpher!
Over the ashes of Sodoma,
It is blown by the mouth of wrath!

Something great and something beautiful,
Something from far away,
Travelling Glory brings thee
On her sky-wandering pinions.

Glory has come! On her wings and on her feet,
Signs of her wanderings are shown,
Dust gold-loaded and distant;
And she brings aloes blossoming, first-seen,
From the land that feeds the Kaffir's flocks.

In your aged summers,
A new-born spring has spread!
From North to South,
The Atlantic Dragon groans a groan first-heard;
To the African lakes and forests,
His groan has spread and echoed;
From the Red Sea, a Lamia's palace,
To the foam-shaped breast of the White Sea,
A Nereid's realm.

Thinly the plants were growing
On the bosom of the ancient Motherland;
Winds carried away the seed