When quacks with pills political would dope us, When politics absorbs the livelong day, I like to think about that star Canopus, So far, so far away. Greatest of visioned suns, they say who list ’em; To weigh it, science almost must despair. Its shell would hold our whole dinged solar system, Nor even know ’twas there. When temporary chairmen utter speeches, And frenzied henchmen howl their battle hymns, My thoughts float out across the cosmic reaches To where Canopus swims. When men are calling names and making faces, And all the world’s ajangle and ajar, I meditate on interstellar spaces And smoke a mild seegar. For after one has had about a week of The argument of friends as well as foes, A star that has no parallax to speak of Conduces to repose. _William Vaughn Moody_ William Vaughn Moody was born at Spencer, Indiana, July 1, 1869, and was educated at Harvard. After graduation, he spent the remaining eighteen years of his life in travel and intensive study—he taught, for eight years, at the University of Chicago—his death coming at the very height of his creative power. _The Masque of Judgment_, his first work, was published in 1900. A richer and more representative collection appeared the year following; in _Poems_ (1901) Moody effected that mingling of challenging lyricism and spiritual philosophy which becomes more and more insistent. (See Preface.) Throughout his career, and particularly in such lines as the hotly expostulating “On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines” and the majestic, uncompleted “The Death of Eve,” Moody successfully achieves the rare union of poet and preacher. “Gloucester Moors” is an outcry against the few exploiting the many; “The Quarry” and “An Ode in Time of Hesitation” are passionate with prophecy. His last, extended works have an epic quality which, with their too-crowded details and difficult diction, will effectually prevent them from ever becoming popular. But their importance will grow even as Moody’s place in our literature will eventually be a higher one than that which has yet been accorded him. His prose play _The Great Divide_ (1907) was strikingly successful when produced by Henry Miller. _The Faith Healer_ (1909), another play in prose, because of its more exalted tone, did not win the favor of the theatre-going public. A complete edition of _The Poems and Poetic Dramas of William Vaughn Moody_ was published in 1912 in two volumes. In the summer of 1909 Moody was stricken with the illness from which he never recovered. He died in October, 1910. FROM “JETSAM”