Collectively, [the verses of The First Four Books of Poems] echo and reaffirm a prolific anthology of tongues, testifying, of course, to Merwin as translator, one of the most authentic practitioners we have today. Imitations, in the best sense, accomplished exercises in an abundance of forms, their sources are variably the Biblical tales, Classical myth, love songs from the Age of Chivalry, Renaissance retellings; they comprise carols, roundels, odes, ballads, sestinas and they contrive golden equivalents of emblematic models: the masque, the Zodiac, The Dance of Death. Had Merwin never written any verse of his own save this, he would compel the ear of anyone decently educated to the liberal euphonies of the accumulated tradition. Were you to redistribute these poems, unsigned, among collections of translated material or of English Poetry Down the Ages, any but the most erudite reader would heedlessly accept them as renderings of Theocritus...