SOURCE: Weygandt, Cornelius. “Realists of the Countryside.” In The Time of Yeats: English Poetry of To-day against an American Background, pp. 336-62. New York: Russell and Russell, 1937.

In the following essay, Weygandt concludes that Abercrombie's vivid characterizations are the most memorable elements of his poetry.

Lascelles Abercrombie (b. 1881) is a difficult poet. He is primarily concerned with philosophical problems, or psychological problems, which may be carried by a thread of narrative, or of drama, but which, when they are so carried, strain the thread to the breaking point. And whatever he is concerned with he is concerned with at length. He is not the man to flash a revelation on you and have done. He would analyze and derive, he would discuss and debate. Had he been born in the eighteenth century he had been wholly at home, with Pope and Young and Dr. Johnson. Had he been...