SOURCE: “Robert Bridges,” in his Poetry at Present, The Clarendon Press, 1930, pp. 18-29.

In the following excerpt, Williams praises Bridges's lyric poetry, asserting that it succeeds in communicating both the ideals and physical existence of such abstractions as beauty and joy.

Of the fourteen laureates from—and including—Dryden, if we take him as the first, some five (if we include Southey) have been notable poets. With the exception of Dryden himself and of Wordsworth none of them has been a greater than Mr. Robert Bridges. Tennyson is not to be considered a greater, for his verbal achievement is no finer, and his philosophic (if the two can be divided) is very definitely less. None of them has contributed a greater mass of lyric beauty to our literature.

It may very well be held that Mr. Bridges is not only a lyric poet; he has written dramas, a...