in diction", but also "facile, clever, and occasionally distinctly beautiful". Roberts' second book, In Divers Tones is filled with selections which vary in quality, style and subject. Those written after 1883 demonstrated developing skill, and three in particular, 'The Tantramar Revisited,' 'The Sower,' and 'The Potato Harvest, were considered superior. By the time of Songs of the Common Day, and Ave! (1893), Roberts poetic style was well developed. The sonnet sequence of Songs of the Common Day drew attention from critics; some colourfully described landscapes in Tantramar (lines such as "How sombre slope these acres to the sea' ('The Furrow"), 'These marshes pale and meadows by the sea' ('The Salt Flats'), and 'My fields of Tantramar in summer-time' ('The Pea-Fields')). Middle period After Roberts turned to free-lance writing in 1895, he began concentrating on writing fiction in order to support himself. He published two more books of poetry by 1898, but managed only two more in the following 30 years. His 1897 book of seasonal poems in The Book of the Native was a collection of works designed to appeal to monthly magazines: 'The Brook in February,' 'An April Adoration,' 'July,' and 'An August Woodroad.' Some of the poems demonstrated Roberts' skill at colourful depictions of nature through Romantic verse; however, the book also included examples of a shift toward a more mystical style. Roberts's 1898 book New York Nocturnes and Other Poems was filled mainly with poetry written before his move to New York. Written during a difficult time in his life, much of the work is unremarkable. The poem 'The Solitary Woodsman,' was later included in a number of anthologies. His poems about New York focus less on descriptions of visual interest and more on urban problems such as noise, fumes and crowding. The first and title section of The Book of the Rose (1903) was a collection of love poetry of varying effectiveness. Among the poems in the second section, "Heat in the City," about the distress and despair of the tenement-dwellers, has been praised as "the best poem he ever wrote about city life". Also notable is the introspective final poem in the book, "The Aim." "New Poems, a slim volume published in 1919, shows the drop in both the quantity and quality of Roberts' poetry during his European years. At least half of the pieces had been written before he left America, some as early