In his _New World Lyrics and Ballads_, Scott aims to reveal the kind of mind or thought which the strange humanity of the Northwest in Canada—the Indian heart in the wild North of Canada—contains. In the volume Indian themes predominate, and the so called Ballads are more aptly named Legends, because Scott’s Ballads are art and the product of a reflective mind _thinking into_ Indian mind the thoughts of a civilized man, whereas the genuine Ballad is a spontaneous story told in simple verse. Moreover, Scott’s genius is lyrical; but in these so called Ballads he attempts dramatic situation and emotion. It all lands him in recondite psychological symbolism, as, for instance, in _The Mission of the Trees_ or in _The Forsaken_, which is later attempted in _The Half-Breed Girl_ (from _Via Borealis_), a striking essay in Indian introspection. What we get from these poems is Scott’s perception and revealment of spiritual Beauty in loneliness—his half-mystical intuition that the spirit in civilized man, in the Indian soul, and in Nature everywhere is one and the same spirit, and that civilization has only resulted in veiling the face of God and in separating his creatures from one another and from the Creator. This vague mystical intuition of the mystery and yet identity of spirit in man and Nature is beautifully, perhaps too sensuously, envisaged in Scott’s _Spring on Mattagami_ (from _Via Borealis_). This poem is seductively musical and highly impressionistic, but shows the influence of Meredith (_Love in a Wilderness_) in its interpretation of the conflict of Love and Law in the universe. What counts and solaces, however, is the Vision or Light of a higher Love and a deeper Law that lie behind the seemingly meaningless conflict of the visible love and law. After all, the poet, like the rest of mortals, can only ‘trust’ in the supremacy of Good in the universe:— Vaster than the world or life or death my _trust_ is Based in the unseen and towering far above. Hold me, O Law, that deeper lies than Justice, Guide me, O Light, that stronger burns than Love. This abstract mystical symbolism is Old World, not Canadian, not Scott’s own philosophy of the spirit for the Canadian spirit. His own is found in his poem _Labor and the Angel_. It is original and noble in conception; and, consistently with its serious didactic purpose and ideas, or symbolism, its diction is vernacular, its form and rhythm are suited to plain narrative; and the whole is devoid of Scott’s luxuriant color and sensuous melody. It is a dramatic poem in the sense that it is designed to affect the heart and the imagination with dramatic force and truth. As a criticism of life in the Arnoldian sense, we see in the poem the influence of Matthew Arnold. But its thought and style show more notably the influence of Browning and Meredith, especially in its syntactical ellipses, bald and abrupt lines.