'Robert Wells understands how finely man and nature are moulded to each
other. In true communion with his surroundings, a man is dowered with a
wisdom and an ecstasy that nothing else else can give (and this is
perhaps what he is created for), ' George Mackay Brown wrote of the
poet's first collection, The Winter's Task (1977). 'The healing
loneliness of hills and waters, and the solitary figures who move among
them - bathers, wood-cutters, hay harvesters - are the setting and
characters of Wells' poems; all breath a rare wholesomeness.'
In his Selected Poems, Robert Wells includes the best work from his
first book, new poems, and extracts from his acclaimed translations of
Theocritus' Idylls and Virgil's Georgics, of which The Times' reviewer
wrote: 'the English is direct and supple and amazingly evocative,
transporting the listener back 2000 years as if under a spell'.