The "Red Cotton Nightcap Country" is child's play compared to a sonnet by a determined symbolist such as Mallarmé, or better still his disciple Ghil who has added to the difficulties of symbolism those of poetic instrumentation.

As a lyric poet, he has expressed the moods of peasant and patriot, of mystic, symbolist, and quietist, and it is safe to say that in lyric poetry no one of his generation writing in English is his superior.