Songs For The New Age

"...That question has now been solved, for a time at all events, by the publication of Mr. Oppenheim’s book of verse last year. His “Songs for the New Age" is a group of vigorous emotional chants, something like Whitman, something like the Bible, and very much unlike either of them, or anything else. This book shows Mr. Oppenheim in his most real and individual self. He is, as Mr. Louis Untermeyer has spoken of him to me, a lesser Hebrew prophet, and it is impossible for ‘him, for the present, to be anything else. We should not expect it. Those of us who can should certainly appreciate his generous contribution to the feeling of the time. Too many of us are old before our years. Only a very few grow into maturity in possession of that magnificent youthfulness which is religion. From this standpoint one starts out to read any new novel by Mr. Oppenheim, not as one would read a novel by Mr. Henry James or Mr. H. G. Wells, or Mrs. Edith Wharton, but as one would start upon a Bible story. One expects power, sincerity, fine poetry, unsubtle but firm characterization. One finds them very adequately presented in this book."