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nursery should be reserved for home consumption, but for those who think otherwise with regard to the "Kingdom of Heavenites," as Coleridge called babies, we can safely recommend Mrs. Piatt. Among the more striking poems in this volume are "A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles," "The Longest Death-Watch," and "Twelve Hours Apart." We select for quotation a double quatrain, entitled "Broken Promise."'
Merry England (Review of Professor Robertson's "Children of the Poets"), March 1887.
'Mrs. Piatt is an American writer not yet known to many in England, though quickly recognised by a few. She never writes without thoughts, and her thoughts, though not always concentrated, are always distinct, and with distinctness they have a rare distinction. This beauty of thought will always be, in spite of the perfect things that have been done in mere form, the supreme merit of poetry and of all literature. But as regards utterance also Mrs. Piatt does exquisitely, having a restraint of tone, a moderation of emphasis, of length, which show firm and careful art; and a quite simple vocabulary. One of her loveliest poems is this in the "Children of the Poets." It is headed "Last Words," and is spoken over a little bed at night.'
The Pictorial World, June 3, 1886.
'Mrs. Piatt is an American woman of genius, and the pensive tone and sweet natural music which distinguish her verse have produced, in "A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles," etc., poems of a delicate beauty, not easy to equal, much less surpass, on either side of the Atlantic. The thought, the expression of these poems are alike purely womanly. Mrs. Piatt studies no model, and takes no pattern for her work; she simply expresses herself; hence her verse is just the transparent mantle of her individuality. The natural refinement, the ready sympathy, the tender sentiment, the quiet grace of a thoroughly womanly woman reveal themselves quite unconsciously in every poem; and the musical quality of the verse increases the impression that the reader is listening to the heart-utterances of one of the Imogens or Mirandas to be met with now seldom outside the radiant land where Shakespeare's imagination reigns supreme. . . . The poems "In Company with Children" contain some of the most distinctive and original of Mrs. Piatt's work. She has especial power of entering into the child life, and she is not afraid to let the children speak in her verse as they speak in life. "My Babes in the Wood," "Playing Beggars," "The Little Boy I Dreamed About," "The Baby's Brother," are a few of many poems which occupy in the realm of verse a quiet corner entirely their own. . . . Mrs. Piatt will, we doubt not, as her poems become known to English readers, become popular, or, we should rather say, dear to a wide circle mainly composed of members of her own sex, for she supplies the adequate expression for women whose hearts are tender and true like her own.'
The Dublin Evening Mail, April 7, 1886.
'If Mrs. Piatt's "Irish Garland" contains poetry like that in the volume before us, it ought to be placed forthwith in the best hundred Irish books. . . . Originality, simplicity, tenderness, and a profoundly pathetic sense of things are the notes of Mrs. Piatt's muse. In many passages she reminds us of Mrs. Barrett Browning, but she is more lyrical, less rhetorical. . . . America may be proud of Mrs. Piatt, and we believe is so.'
