As we read ["The Steeple-Jack," in Collected Poems,] we begin to understand that we are not being offered a piece of mere realism: we are participating in the play of imagination over a time and a place. Miss Moore gives us, you will notice, not only the look of things but their sound, smell, and movement; she is rendering her material, as all artists must, through the senses. At the same time her with is in operation; the tone of the poem is light, almost gay, but with an underlying seriousness. This seriousness becomes more and more apparent as the poem proceeds; and soon we are aware that the poet is beginning to draw general inferences from specific facts observed. (pp. 257-58)

Miss Moore, we discover, is playing on the theme of safety versus danger. The town, which looks so neat and stable, depends for its living on the sea, that most unstable of elements. The town is a refuge even for boats—which are repaired in its drydock—but the life of the place depends upon the sea and, therefore, upon danger. In such a place, where so much peace has been attained in spite of continual imminent risk, something must exist which is a guide and a stay to its inhabitants. That something is "hope"; and at the close of the poem a large concept opens out: we are all faced with danger; life itself is dangerous; but danger faced up to and worked with can be made a basis for peace and an ordered daily round, when some spiritual factor is held at the center of life…. The meaning of the poem reverberates in the mind; we feel that we have been led to simplicity through apparent complexity—toward abstract truth through contact with living reality.

All the components of Miss Moore's special method are present in "The Steeple-Jack." Her reticence is clear: no personal emotion is openly displayed, but emotion is present—in this instance, an emotion of reconciliation and of joy. We also notice Miss Moore's delicate ear for language, which gives the poem its rich and varied all-over verbal texture; and what can only be called her "connoisseurship." (p. 258)

Miss Moore's general method is expository; she describes and explains but rarely exclaims and as rarely exhorts. And as we become used to her personal rhythm—to her "style"—it seems faintly familiar to us. It is fundamentally a prose rhythm; and suddenly we recognize it as a style met in some English essays….

She has analyzed manners and customs. And from this material she has distilled not only a picture of human life but an interpretation of human experience. The reader will notice, as well, how her work, in its later phases, becomes progressively warmer—her sympathies come more directly into view. And throughout we come upon the happy phrase, the delightful comparison, the illuminating insight. Her habit of quotation—her "hybrid method of composition," as she calls it—often adds new dimensions to her subjects; and the notes she has furnished identifying these quotations are evidences of her catholicity of taste and interest as well as of her learning—a learning which she wears "as lightly as a flower." (p. 260)