AustLit

'...the perusal of which affords a pleasing relief to the dull monotony of the unhappily accustomed versifier. Mr Mackay is already known as the author of "Stirrup Jingles" a collection of pieces which have a good deal of honest colour in them, although the lesson set by Adam Lindsay Gordon is rather too closely followed. But in this "Bush Idyl" Mr Mackay has given us a characteristically Australian poem. It is virile and healthy in its tone, its colour is true and treatment of its happily chosen subject highly artistic. It is not often we get such manly and heartfelt work from an Australian writer and though there is no straining after effect here, the result is clear and strongly defined...The worst that can be said in the way of criticism about this is, perhaps, that it reads too much like prose broken up into metrical lines...'