“The themes of Cawein’s poetry are generally taken from the world of romance.  If there be any modern bard who can recreate a mediaeval castle and give to its inhabitants the sentiments which were theirs in the twelfth century, Cawein is the poet who can.  He takes delight in the East.  He is the Omar Khayyam of the Ohio Valley.  He is as much of a Mohammedan as a Christian.  He knows the son of Abdallah better than he knows Cromwell; and has more sympathy with a Khalif than with a Colonel.  He dwells in the romantic regions of life; but the romance is real.  The hope is a true hope.  The dream is a true dream.  The picture is a painting, and not a chromo.  The love is a passion, and not a dilettante episode.  Cawein’s art is a genuine art.  His verse is exquisite.  Out of the three hundred and thirteen poems in the five volumes under consideration there may be found hardly a false or broken harmony....”—­JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL.D., in The Arena.

“The rattlesnake-weed and the bluet-bloom were unknown to Herrick and to Wordsworth, but such art as Mr. Cawein’s makes them at home in English poetry.  There is passion, too, and thought in his equipment....”—­WILLIAM ARCHER in the Pall Mall Magazine.

“I find in the best pieces an intoxicating sense of beauty, a richness, that is rarely achieved, although every young poet nowadays strives after it.  I find, too, a daring use of language which sometimes, nay often, conducts to genuine and startling felicities.”—­EDMUND GOSSE.