SOURCE: "A Modern Solitary," in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. II, No. 2, 1917, pp. 103-05.

In the following review of Ideal Passion, Monroe describes Woodberry's poetic style as outdated.

Mr. Woodberry's sonnet sequence [Ideal Passion] has the frail beauty of perfumed summer days, days spent in an old garden, out of range of the winds of the world. The garden is formally patterned but softly overgrown—a sweet refuge for a sensitive solitary soul. In its paths, beside its mossy marble finials, a poet may live in the spirit and be indulgent of dream. He may see the light that never was, and celebrate a mystic marriage with a lady too fine and fair for flesh; and then, dreaming himself into etherealized passion, he may weave a fabric of poesy in her praise.

Indeed, the suggestion of the book is monastic. The poet took the vows early, and...