In his religious mysticism a trace, and more than a trace, has been found of Crashaw, of Vaughan, of Herbert, and of Belloc and Chesterton. And there is no difficulty at all about finding in Kilmer hints of Patmore, and there may be easily recognised something of the accents of A. E. Housman and of Edwin Arlington Robinson. He did, indeed, to put it in a racy phrase, have the drop on those who do not know that all art that endures must have its roots in a constant interrogation of the “unimpeachable testimony” of the ages. His song was as old as the hills, and as fresh as the morning. Precisely in this, in fact, is his remarkableness, his originality, as a contemporary poet; and in this will be, I think, his abiding quality. “Simple and direct, yet not without subtle magic,” wrote Father James J. Daly, S.J., in a review of “Trees and Other Poems,” printed in _America_, his verse “seems artlessly naïve, yet it possesses deep undercurrents of masculine and forceful thought; it is ethical in its seriousness, and yet as playful and light-hearted as sunlight and shadows under summer oaks.” And this admirable summing up of Kilmer’s talent leaves little more in the way of direct criticism to be said. Mr. Le Gallienne with felicitous tact of phrase has touched upon this, that “no young poet of our time has so reverently, on so many pages, in so many different ways, so playfully at times, as in that masterpiece of playful reverence, ‘A Blue Valentine,’ woven through the texture of his song the love of his lady--that lady ‘Aline,’ whose name will be gently twined about his as long as the printed word endures.” A misquotation in the _Ladies’ Home Journal_ led to an interesting tribute to the author of “Trees.” Many readers of the _Journal_ were somewhat startled to find the editor attributing to John Masefield the lines: A tree that looks at God all day And lifts her leafy arms to pray. The following issue of the magazine contained this correction and acknowledgment by Mr. Bok: I am free to confess that I did not know the correct author. I had been reading John Masefield that morning and unconsciously wrote his name as the author of these lines. A number of friends have pointed to the error and supplied the knowledge. The author is Joyce Kilmer, and to him I owe, and here express, my sense of deep apology. The exquisite lines were worthy of John Masefield, but that does not make them less worthy of their rightful author, as all will agree who read his beautiful work in his book “Trees and Other Poems.” As one, somewhat effusive commentator has remarked, “Trees” just could not be confined within the covers of a book. At once reprinted in newspapers throughout the United States (and still being so reprinted) it was crowned in that warmest of all ways in which a work of literature can be honoured, by being cut out by the world and pasted in its hat. In one version it reads, in part, in this way: