SOURCE: “Promise,” in The Real Robert Louis Stevenson and Other Critical Essays by Francis Thompson, edited by Rev. Terence L. Connolly, University Publishers Incorporated, 1959, pp. 187-9.

In the following essay, which was originally published in 1902, Thompson praises emotion and imagination in Poems.

[Poems, by William Vaughn Moody], is an American book; but whether “Vaughn” be an American spelling of our English name, or a specimen of the American printer at his own sweet will, this reviewer saith not. We love not modern American verse, which is for the most part very respectable magazine-stuff, and no more. There are exceptions, of course; and the present volume is very unexpectedly and pleasurably an exception. It comes to us, for a wonder, without any testimonials from this American paper or that American critic, certifying the author to be one of the most remarkable products of genius in the States. Perhaps that...