Francis has, if anything, written more impressively as he has grown older. His first volume, Stand With Me Here (1936), appeared when he was thirty-five …, and his serene, detached style was already formed. He has published slowly—eight books in forty years. He has grown slowly.

What sticks in the memory about Francis is his quiet ebullience, his understated Yankee wit. Take, for instance, "Pitcher," one of several gems about baseball:

       His art is eccentricity, his aim
       How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at,
 
       His passion how to avoid the obvious,
       His technique how to vary the avoidance.
 
       The others throw to be comprehended. He
       Throws to be a moment misunderstood.
 
       Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,
       But every seeming aberration willed.
 
       Not to, yet still, still to communicate
       Making the batter understand too late.

This is a very tight little poem, playful...