In the past, Longley's strong point has always been his lyricism—largely because he has never allowed elegance to inhibit plainspeaking. And the same is true of the best poems in The Echo Gate; 'Dead Men's Fingers', typically, reinforces amorous exultation by relating it to the phenomenal world with a kind of excited tenderness…. Elsewhere the objects chosen to play a part in negotiations between spirit and flesh are more conventionally romantic—which invariably means rural. Hillsides, lakes, snow and wild flowers recur with particular frequency, and gather considerable symbolic value as the book proceeds. While this obviously enriches them in one respect, it also threatens their naturalism, and subverts the very function that Longley wishes them to perform. Rather than manifesting his commitment to the world around him they risk suggesting a withdrawal from it into artifice. 'Lore', 'Entomology' and 'Botany' look suspiciously like souvenirs from Innisfree...