Although Smart wrote the "Seatonian Prize" poems early on, there is a contrast between the mimicked Miltonic blank verse and the intense exploration of religion found in his later works. His first "Seatonian Prize" poem, "On the Eternity of the Supreme Being" is part of two traditional types of religious writing: "authoritative discourse of religious poetry" and "tentative and self-critical discourse of an apparently more personal devotion" In connecting the two, he redefines "the role of the religious poet." By establishing a debate between these two forms, Harriet Guest claims that Smart creates "a poetic space which allows the poet to make provisional, even questionable statements", which are important to his later works. To Guest, Smart, in his religious poems, "is not concerned to offer instruction in Christian conduct." Besides the greater theological debate, the poems also are the origins of Smart's belief that all of creation is constantly praising God, and that a poet must "give voice to mute nature's praise of God."