The collection sold well enough at the time of its release for The Sydney Mail to report on 22 August 1896 that a second edition had been ordered by the publishers.
[1] A reviewer in The Queenslander was impressed with every aspect of the collection finding that it "is got up (as a matter of course in super-excellent style) on hand-made rough-edged paper, with title-page lettered in red and black, and bound in dull-crimson cloth, so that the lover of good craftsmanship in the way of typography and book-making is taken with it at the first glance.
Le Gay Brereton has set himself, we take it, to utter what emotional men feel about woman's love, their sense of restraint under the conditions of life and the hamperings of mortality, their regret about past and lost joy and past failures, their longings for a bliss to come, their vagrant fancies and their fervent hopes.
Le Gay Brereton's muse is undoubtedly sensuous and dreamy; she is serious if not sombre; but she sings well in her minor key.
Popular his little work will not be, but it will be grateful to the lovers of melodious verse, who seek soothing rather than stirring influences from poetry.