The “twilight of the poets” has been especially gray in America; for poetry is of course one of those arts in which the smallest amount of work of the very highest class is worth an infinity of good work that is not of the highest class. The touch of the purple makes a poem out of verse, and if it is not there, there is no substitute. It is hard to account for the failure to produce in America of recent years a poet who in the world of letters will rank as high as certain American sculptors and painters rank in the world of art. But true poems do appear from time to time, by Madison Cawein, by Clinton Scollard, by Maurice Egan, and others; such are the poems in Bliss Carman’s “Ballads of Lost Haven”; and such are the poems in Edward Arlington Robinson’s “The Children of the Night.” It is rather curious that Mr. Robinson’s volume should not have attracted more attention. There is an undoubted touch of genius in the poems collected in this volume, and a curious simplicity and good faith, all of which qualities differentiate them sharply from ordinary collections of the kind. There is in them just a little of the light that never was on land or sea, and in such light the objects described often have nebulous outlines; but it is not always necessary in order to enjoy a poem that one should be able to translate it into terms of mathematical accuracy. Indeed, those who admire the coloring of Turner, those who like to read how—and to wonder why—Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came, do not wish always to have the ideas presented to them with cold, hard, definite outlines; and to a man with the poetic temperament it is inevitable that life should often appear clothed with a certain sad mysticism. In the present volume I am not sure that I understand “Luke Havergal”; but I am entirely sure that I like it. Whoever has lived in country America knows the gray, empty houses from which life has gone. It is of one of these that “The House on the Hill” was written. “They are all gone away, The House is shut and still, There is nothing more to say. “Through broken walls and gray The winds blow bleak and shrill: They are all gone away. “Nor is there one to-day To speak them good or ill: There is nothing more to say. “Why is it then we stray Around that sunken sill? They are all gone away, “And our poor fancy-play For them is wasted skill: There is nothing more to say. “There is ruin and decay In the House on the Hill: They are all gone away, There is nothing more to say.”