The present world seems far removed from the poetry of John Hall Wheelock. His posthumous book [This Blessèd Earth, New and Selected Poems, 1927–1977] contains his last and selected poems, a short but important summing-up. The nineteenth-century air things wear in these poems seems appropriate and true in old age, and the advice in "Self-Counsel in Age" suitable to any poet: "Sing for your own delight—though there be none / To hear you out." Wheelock, like Whitman, remembers a thrush singing to young lovers and he describes the suffering existence itself knows within us. Wisdom and thanksgiving shine through his lines, and his old-fashioned fervor makes "Address to Existence" and "Affirmation" lyrical in their didacticism. Similar themes occur in the selected poems: philosophical acceptance in "The Holy Earth," love of nature in "The Fish-Hawk," and oneness with the dead in "Dear Men and Women." Admiration is the only response for a poet so solicitous of his audience. (pp. 121-22)