 Part I of the book contains four poems that are similar in style and tone to the poems of Lowell's previous books, "The Mills of the Kavanaughs" and "Lord Weary's Castle".They're well-polished, formal in their use of meter and rhyme, and fairly impersonal.This first section can be interpreted as a transition section, signaling Lowell's move away from Catholicism, as evidenced by the book's first poem, "Beyond the Alps," as well as a move away from the traditional, dense, more impersonal style of poetry that characterized Lowell's writing while he was still a practicing Catholic and closely associated with New Critical poets like Allen Tate and John Crowe Ransom.