"A subject of our own time fertile in what is pathetic and awe-inspiring, and free from any taint of the vulgar and conventional.... Positive subject-matter, the emotion which inheres in actual life, the very smile and the very tear and heart-pang, are, after all, precious to poetry, and we have them here. 'The Heather on Fire' may possibly prove something of a new departure, and one that was certainly not superfluous.... Even apart from the fascination of its subject-matter, the poem is developed with spirit and energy, with a feeling for homely truth of character and treatment, and with a generally pervasive sense of beauty."--_Athenæum._ "Miss Blind has chosen for her new poem one of those terrible Highland clearances which stain the history of Scotch landlordism. Though her tale is a fiction, it is too well founded on fact.... It may be said generally of the poem that the most difficult scenes are those in which Miss Blind succeeds best; and on the whole we are inclined to think that its greatest and most surprising success is the picture of the poor old soldier, Rory, driven mad by the burning of his wife."--_Academy._ "A subject which has painfully pre-occupied public opinion is, in the poem entitled 'The Heather on Fire,' treated with characteristic power by Miss Blind.... Both as a narrative and descriptive poem, 'The Heather on Fire' is equally remarkable."--_Morning Post._ "A poem remarkable for beauty of expression and pathos of incidents will be found in 'The Heather on Fire.' Exquisitely delicate are the touches with which the progress of this tale of true love is delineated up to its consummation amid the simple rejoicings of the neighbourhood; and the flight of years of married life and daily toil, as numerous as those of their courtship, is told in stanzas full of music and soul.... This tale is one which, unless we are mistaken, may so affect public feeling as to be an effectual bar to similar human clearings in future."--_Leeds Mercury._ "Literature and poetry are never seen at their best save in contact with actual life. This little book abounds in vivid delineation of character, and is redolent with the noblest human sympathy."--_Newcastle Daily Chronicle._ "'The Heather on Fire' is a poem that is rich not only in power and beauty but in that 'enthusiasm of humanity' which stirs and moves us, and of which so much contemporary verse is almost painfully deficient.... Miss Blind is not a mere poetic trifler who considers that the best poetry is that written by the man who has nothing to say but can say that nothing gracefully.... We can best describe the kind of her success by noting the fact that while engaged in the perusal of her book we do not say, 'What a fine poem!' but 'What a terrible story!' or more probably still say nothing at all but read on and on under the spell of a great horror and an overpowering pity. Poetry of which this can be said needs no other recommendation."--_The Manchester Examiner and Times._