The first period of Stedman's poetic life produced little save colorless, passionless lyrics, the echoes of a wide reading in other poets. He went, like all of his clan, to books rather than life. He was early enamoured of the Sicilian idylists. It was a dream that never quite deserted him, to make "a complete, metrical, English version of the idyls of Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion"--an idle dream indeed for a vigorous young poet in a land that needed the breath of a new life. Why dawdle over Theocritus when fields are newly green and youth is calling? Stedman himself seems to have misgivings. "When the job [the collecting of the various texts] was nearly ended, I reflected that one's freshest years should be given to original work, and such excursions might well be deferred to the pleasures of old age. My time seemed to have been wasted."[74] During this earlier period poetry was to him an artistic thing to be judged coldly from the standpoint of art and beauty. He worked with extreme care upon his lines. For a time he considered that he had reached his highest level in "Alcetryon," and he waited eagerly for the world to discover it. William Winter, his fellow poet of beauty, hailed it as "not unworthy of the greatest living poet, Tennyson"; Professor Hadley of Yale pronounced it "one of the most successful modern-antiques that I have ever seen." Then Lowell, with one of his flashes of insight, told the whole truth: "I don't believe in these modern antiques--no, not in Landor, not in Swinburne, not in any of 'em. They are all wrong. It is like writing Latin verses--the material you work in is dead." It was the voice of an oracle to the young poet. Twenty-three years later he wrote of his chagrin when Lowell had praised his volume in the _North American Review_ and had said nothing of his _pièce de résistance_ "Alectryon." "Finally I hinted as much to him. He at once said that it was my 'best piece of work,' but no 'addition to poetic literature,' since we already have enough masterpieces of that kind--from Landor's _Hamadryad_ and Tennyson's _OEnone_ down to the latest effort by Swinburne or Mr. Fields.... Upon reflection, I thought Lowell right. A new land calls for new song."[75] The episode is a most significant one. It marks the passing of a whole poetic school. To the war period that followed this era in the poet's life belong the deepest notes of Stedman's song. In his _Alice of Monmouth_, he is no longer the mere poet of beauty, he is the interpreter of the thrill, the sacrifice, the soul of the great war. The poem has the bite of life in it. "The Cavalry Song" thrills with the very soul of battle: Dash on beneath the smoking dome, Through level lightnings gallop nearer! One look to Heaven! no thoughts of home: The guidons that we bear are dearer. CHARG-E! Cling! Clang! forward all! Heaven help those whose horses fall! Cut left and right!