In the following essay, Harris argues that Meredith's poetry is often misread when critics attempt to analyze it as a coherent body of work. Harris identifies Meredith's “Earth” poems of the 1880s as some of his most successful, aside from Modern Love, which stands apart from both Meredith's corpus and most Victorian poetry as an original expression of love's hypocritical sentimentality.

In the following essay, Lucas faults Meredith for inept rhyming, excessive grandiloquence, and generally faulty writing. Lucas frames his criticism as an attempt to take Meredith seriously as a poet, arguing that his successes cannot be properly valued unless his failings are clearly understood.

In the following excerpt, Bernstein identifies Meredith's debt to Romanticism, focusing on the poem “Hymn to Colour.” Bernstein emphasizes Meredith's Romantic sympathies to demonstrate that the poem is not merely philosophical, but also sensual.

In the following excerpt from a work originally published in 1906, Trevelyan emphasizes the inventiveness and variety of Meredith's poetry. He characterizes Meredith's work as uniquely intellectual, sometimes at the expense of accessibility.

In the following essay, Bailey attempts to offer a balanced view of Meredith as a poet, acknowledging Meredith's frequent failures to please the ear, as well as the intellectual challenges his poetry poses for readers. Meredith's best poems, Bailey concludes, rival the works of John Milton, William Wordsworth, or Percy Bysshe Shelley, particularly in their ability to present a universal perspective.

In the following essay, Simpson contends that “In the Woods” is best read as an example of Meredith's earlier, more pessimistic works, rather than as an awkward version of his later philosophy. Simpson suggests that the poem represents a significant transitional phase of Meredith's naturalism.

In the following essay, Hiemstra regards “Lucifer in Starlight” as an adaptation of John Milton's Paradise Lost with nineteenth-century sensibilities and concerns, tracing significant parallels between the poems.

In the following review, originally published in The Critic on November 15, 1851, Rossetti compares Meredith's poems to those of earlier poets, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson and, especially, John Keats. Rossetti finds the works of Poems: 1851 to be uneven, but concludes that the best of Meredith's writings show him to be a perceptive, accomplished poet, while not quite worthy to be classed among the very best.