The book has been the subject of scholarly debate. Attempting to explain why MacLean's earlier poetry has had the greatest influence, Derick Thomson wrote that it is love poetry which is most timeless, while MacLean's political poetry has not aged as well. According to Maoilios Caimbeul, "There is not, and I doubt there will ever be, a series of love poems" that would have as much influence on Gaelic literature. Ronald Black suggested that "duty not... a comprehensible emotion nowadays" and therefore "the greatest universal in MacLean's verse is the depiction of that extraordinary psychosis which is called being in love". However, this type of commentary has been criticized as an attempt to depoliticize MacLean's work. Seamus Heaney argued that Eimhir was similar to Beatrice in Dante's "Divine Comedy", in that Eimhir "resolves at a symbolic level tensions which would otherwise be uncontainable or wasteful". Scottish poet Iain Crichton Smith said, "there is a sense in which the Spanish Civil War does not form the background to these poems, but is the protagonist".