+ − Nation 111:sup415 O 13 ’20 60w
“When it is said that he is somewhat unvarying and that he is sometimes immature it remains to be said that in everything Francis Ledwidge wrote there is the shapely and the imaginative phrase.” Padraic Colum
+ − New Repub 22:190 Ap 7 ’20 680w
“He knew the simplicities and austerities of wild life in fields and woods so well that he could borrow from them a little sternness to go with the sweetness of his song.”
+ N Y Times 25:27 Ja 18 ’20 500w
“It is simple, sincere, beautiful. Yet it is always quiet and restful. It is not emotional, it soothes. The pictures are gems.”
+ Springf’d Republican p10 Ap 27 ’20 900w
“It is true that he is ‘the poet of the blackbird,’ that his ‘small circle of readers’ will turn to his work for its mildness, sweetness, and serenity, ‘as to a very still lake ... on a very cloudless evening.’ But that small circle must not be disappointed to discover that his limpidity and naturalness are often blurred with the derivative, that his taste is uncertain, ... that his imagination is less active than his fancy. Complete poems, unflawed by inequalities of tone and workmanship are therefore rare.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p607 O 30 ’19 1700w
“It is impossible to read these again without realizing that Ledwidge is Ireland’s foremost poet of landscape, a poet who will undoubtedly win lasting recognition.” N. J. O’Conor