A small volume of Thoreau's POEMS OF NATURE, selected and edited by H. S. Salt and F. B. Sanborn (John Lane), is also welcome, though the poetry of the New England transcendentalist and recluse will never rank so high as the prose records of his impressions of external nature. Thoreau was half a poet, but only half; he had the feeling, the thought, in a high degree, but only a small measure of the gift of metrical expression. Still, out of all he wrote in verse there is enough good lyrical and meditative poetry to fill a small volume, so that the editor's task has not been in vain.
The Times, November 15, 1895, p. 13