Wheelock published his first poem in 1900, and his longevity, coupled with what James Dickey called "his large, innocent heart" [see excerpt above] and his career as an editor, are almost enough to melt the point of a critic's pen. But to praise Wheelock is to confuse the end of literature with sentiments. His poems [collected in This Blessèd Earth] go on and on being moved…. His softened melancholy and his gratitude for existence vie for control of his tone. Laid on thick and thick, the honey sickens. (p. 296)

To praise Wheelock is also to praise pastiche, mostly of Wordsworth. It's to rout the moderns from Yeats to Lowell, who distrusted the consolations not only of sentiment but of a time-slickened style. To be high-soundingly high-souled, as Wheelock is, to use "lonely" as he does in "Now the high lonely stars of night come on" or write any part of "the tender / High fortitude of the spirit shining through," is to murmur unconsciously from the Sleeper's Den, outside modernity and outside what Eliot called the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings. (p. 297)