"Those who have followed Mr. Morris's career will be pleased to find that his poetic grasp, his argumentative subtlety, his tenderness of sympathetic observation, his manly earnestness, are as conspicuous and impressive as before."—Mr. Bayne, in the Helensburgh Times.
"The reputation earned by the author's books has been such as few men in a century are permitted to enjoy. Beginning with the first volume, it has gone on increasing."—Liverpool Mercury, November 9th, 1883.
"For ourselves we dare hardly say how high we rank Mr. Morris. This last volume is deserving of highest praise. In some of its contents no living poet, to our mind can surpass him."—Oxford University Herald, March 8th, 1884.
"The gems of this volume, to our mind, are some of the shorter poems, which are full of melody and colour, saturated with lyrical feeling, and marked by that simplicity without which no poem of this class can be called great."—British Quarterly Review, January, 1884.
"The writer is never diffuse or vague or pointless, both his road and the end of it are always in view."—New York Critic, January 19th, 1884.
"In one sense 'Songs Unsung' is more typical of Mr. Morris's genius than any of his previous works. There is in them the same purity of expression, the same delicate fancy, the same mastery of technique, and withal the same loftiness of conception."—Scotsman, December 22nd, 1883.
"In some respects we must award him the distinction of having a clearer perception of the springs of nineteenth-century existence than any of his contemporaries.... What could be more magnificent than the following conception of the beginning of things...."—Whitehall Review, October, 1883.
"Mr. Morris has always that picturesque power which limns in a few words a suggestive and alluring picture of nature or of life evoking the imagination of the reader to supplement the clear and vigorous work of the poet."—New York Christian Union, February, 1884.
"No lover of poetry will fail to make himself possessed of this volume from the pen of one who has made for himself so high and distinctive a place among modern writers."—Manchester Examiner, January 31st, 1884.