A noteworthy feature in Drummond's poetry, as in that of his courtier contemporaries Aytoun, Lord Stirling and others, is that it manifests no characteristic Scottish element, but owes its birth and inspiration rather to the English and Italian masters. Drummond was essentially a follower of Spenser, but, amid all his sensuousness, and even in those lines most conspicuously beautiful, there is a dash of melancholy thoughtfulness—a tendency deepened by the death of his first love, Mary Cunningham. Drummond was called "the Scottish Petrarch"; and his sonnets, which are the expression of a genuine passion, stand far above most of the contemporary Petrarcan imitations. A remarkable burlesque poem "Polemo Middinia inter Vitarvam et Nebernam" (printed anonymously in 1684) has been persistently, and with good reason, ascribed to him. It is a mock-heroic tale, in macaronic Latin enriched with Scottish Gaelic expressions, of a country feud on the Fife lands of his old friends the Cunninghams.