The first edition of The Earth Compels has the following blurb on the flap of the dust jacket: "Mr. MacNeice's position as a poet was incontestably established in 1935 by his first volume of Poems.

[1] Jon Stallworthy gives the following summary of The Earth Compels: "The book offers an impressionistic picture of a journey from brightness, 'The Sunlight on the Garden' (from which poem its title is taken), towards darkness; from Carrickfergus to Iceland and the Hebrides; from peace - by way of one World War - into the advancing shadows of another.

T. S. Eliot, who was an editor at Fabers and had previously given encouragement and support to MacNeice, wrote back on 6 January 1938: 'I have read THE EARTH COMPELS last night, and am very much pleased with it.'

[6] Geoffrey Grigson, reviewing The Earth Compels in New Verse, commented that 'the elegance in MacNeice's poetry is more one of sensuality now and less one of ingenuity, and the poems he is writing are the experiences of a lonely contemplative person, occupied with himself and with the world we share'.

Grigson went on to claim: 'there is no other poet now in England who's such a good writer (W. H. Auden may be on a bigger scale altogether, but at present he does very often make a mannerism of hs own inventions).'

[7] On the other hand, the Scrutiny reviewer (Geoffrey Walton) dismissed The Earth Compels along with other recent books by MacNeice, and regretted 'there are not many poets writing at the moment whom one wants to read'.