SOURCE: “Three American Poets of Today,” in Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XCVIII, September 1906, pp. 333-5.

In the following excerpt Sinclair traces the progress of Torrence's poetry, predicts “a brilliant future” for him, and cautions lest “preciosity” undermine his art.

Nobody who comes fresh from El Dorado and “The Lesser Children” (a poem published in The Atlantic Monthly) can say that Mr. Ridgely Torrence has not achieved, and achieved excellently; but he has not yet found himself and his place in literature. He has as yet put forth little. His first published work, The House of the Hundred Lights (his Rubáiyát), a slender volume of quatrains written in frank imitation of Omar Khayyám, has no note of his originality, but displays a certain aptitude in assimilating style. Each verse has the neatness of an epigram:—

Yes, he that wove the skein of Stars and poured out all...