Critical reaction, based on the only two recordings (of 2006 and 2012), has been largely positive, while noting the composer's relative immaturity. Andrew Clements called the quartet writing "rather stodgy" and said that the vocal lines "only intermittently seem personal", but also said that the subject matter (death and transience) is totally characteristic of Finzi's later work. According to an anonymous writer for Boosey & Hawkes, "The music reflects a youthful composer’s intuitive response to poems which were themselves newly published but Finzi’s musical hallmarks are already evident, even if they are not as sophisticated in their presentation as in the songs which were to follow. The collection forms an important first milestone". Greg Keane called the cycle "precocious", and the musical idiom "an acquired taste", but said that the work stopped short of being "impossibly arty". Jeremy Dibble found the cycle more modal than many of Finzi's later works, and noted a debt to Vaughan Williams's 1909 cycle On Wenlock Edge (for tenor, piano and string quartet). Colin Anderson wrote, "By Footpath and Stile is word-setting and Nature-painting at its most-haunting; music of atmosphere and rapture". An anonymous critic in BBC Music Magazine called the cycle "striking", "impressive in Finzi's equable way", and "responding memorably to the cool-climate vividness of the poems".
