When Jessie B. Rittenhouse in 1904 wrote sketches of eighteen “Younger American Poets” she put Miss Reese in the second place as one who was mistress of a certain poignant primness, as one who was a feminine Robert Herrick. The quality implied in the comparison was debatable then and is more debatable now. Miss Reese's sonnets and quatrain-songs are impeccable in meter and phrasing, are irreproachable in sentiment; but they lack original salt. Their edges are frilled and lavendered, while their central designs are woven of gentle archaisms—“nowhit,” “of a surety,” “this many a year,” “hushes where the lonely are,” “all palely sweet,” “candlelight,” “wayfarer,” “deem”—which Herrick did not or would not now employ. A little conscious archness in rhyme-words and endinglines will not make up for a great monotony of neatness. Any poetical idea is new to the poet who makes it so; Miss Reese's are laced and ivoried over with unvarying, respectable age. Her book is not without charm, but it is without force. …