SOURCE: “The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges,” in New York Times Book Review, August 23, 1931, p. 5.

In the following review of The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges, Walton contends that while Bridges was not an innovative poet, he was in fact “a marvelous technician,” especially in regard to the short, lyric form.

Robert Bridges was born in the Victorian age, the period given over to moral rectitude and to the polishing of English manners and English verse. One feels that he went to school to Tennyson, the master craftsman. He lived through the somewhat decadent and very rebellious '90s, but he joined none of the movements that rated Tennyson and Queen Victoria as out of date. He became neither esthete, pessimist nor catholic, for his spirit was profoundly British, and, despite his amazing facility in all the dainty French verse forms, he remained essentially English in his choice...