It goes on to praise The Birth-day's true poetical power, and ‘its sustained and equable character, and ... absence of made points’, while yet mildly demurring at certain passages too minutely personal to be of general interest. The account of the poem as a whole is a fair one:

It goes on to praise The Birth-day's true poetical power, and ‘its sustained and equable character, and ... absence of made points’, while yet mildly demurring at certain passages too minutely personal to be of general interest. The account of the poem as a whole is a fair one:

The poem opens with a description of the wintry dreariness of the sixth of December, the poet’s natal day; and from that vantageground she proceeds to review the past, commencing with ‘the first ray of infant consciousness,’ - dwelling upon the thoughts, the feelings, and the companions of young childhood, recalling the incidents, the employments, the affections, and the mysterious imaginings of its next stage, and of early youth; reviving, in memory, the dead, and the capacity for enjoyment as extinct as they; whilst the reflections of maturer years tinge the whole, now with a mild satire, now with a pleasing melancholy, and occasionally with a sadder feeling.