“His scope was limited. Trees, flowers and the recurring seasons were his theme. But he evidently believed in these things, and did not write of nature because since Wordsworth’s day, it is the correct thing to do. Ledwidge was a countryman and loved the country; the desire to express himself came, and he moulded into what are often exquisite forms, the simple country thoughts which were natural in him.”
+ Ath p1255 N 28 ’19 340w + Booklist 16:234 Ap ’20
“A book which many lovers of modern Irish poetry will rejoice to possess. In many of the poems there is evidence of a delicate and fragrant talent, but one refuses to speak, as the editor so confidently does, of Ledwidge’s genius.” H: A. Lappin
+ − Bookm 51:215 Ap ’20 160w
“It is difficult to predict what his future development might have been, but at least there is nothing in this collection to justify the editor in speaking so confidently of his protégé as a genius. Although there is here a great deal of fragrant and delicate imagination, and much keen and intimate observation of sky and tree and field and bird, there is nothing quite so full of Irish reality as any one of a dozen lyrics one might mention by Joseph Campbell or Padraic Colum, for example.”
+ − Cath World 110:827 Mr ’20 260w
“There is little in the slight evidence before us to indicate that he would have made his place by sheer power; his success, had he lived, and had he obtained it, would have been of the idiosyncratic sort. And success of this sort he would, I think, no doubt have obtained. For through all his work runs a strain of lyric magic.” Conrad Aiken
+ − Dial 68:376 Mr ’20 1900w
“Francis Ledwidge was an honest songster, a poet of the blackbird in a time of hawks and vultures. He was in no sense an important poet, it must be said.” Mark Van Doren