WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT

A slight book in bulk is Robert Francis's "Stand With Me Here" … but I have found a distinct person in it. He is another of our New Englanders, terse and direct….

It would be inequitable to lay too great emphasis on this volume; but, in expectation of finding little, in reality I found much. Those who are fond of the lonely New England country world will find its flavor here, will discover dark comfort in these unobtrusive verses.

[In Stand with Me Here] the terse yet tender quality of [Robert Francis'] verse springs from … deep roots in primitive experience. Not that he is ever obscure or tenebrous. He sees things clear-cut and draws them objectively whether it is a frog sitting on a stone beside a spring, a boy waiting to plunge into still water, or runners going up a hill under elms. But behind the foreground definition there is an elemental background, felt if not necessarily sketched in, but dominating such poems as "Monotone By a Cellar Hole," "Slow," or "Appearance and Disappearance."… [He] has a remarkable gift for identifying himself with natural things—with snow and hay and stones, and with those, too, who serve Nature and work with her, such as old men gathering apples from the ground or women weeding the onion fields in white kerchiefs. And many of his poems, such as "A Broken View," reveal from original and attractive angles that collaboration between Man and Nature which is their inspiration.