O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art. Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine That lights the pathway but one step ahead Across a void of mystery and dread. Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine. ON A VOLUME OF SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY What chilly cloister or what lattice dim Cast painted light upon this careful page? What thought compulsive held the patient sage Till sound of matin bell or evening hymn? Did visions of the Heavenly Lover swim Before his eyes in youth, or did stern rage Against rash heresy keep green his age? Had he seen God, to write so much of Him? Gone is that irrecoverable mind With all its phantoms, senseless to mankind As a dream's trouble or the speech of birds. The breath that stirred his lips he soon resigned To windy chaos, and we only find The garnered husks of his disused words. Robert Underwood Johnson was born at Washington, on the twelfth of January, 1853, and took his bachelor's degree at Earlham College, in Indiana, at the age of eighteen. When twenty years old, he became a member of the editorial staff of the _Century Magazine,_ and remained there exactly forty years. His first volume of poems, _The Winter Hour,_ was published in 1891, since which time he has produced many others. Now he is his own publisher, and two attractive books "published by the author" appeared in 1917--_Poems of War and Peace_ and _Italian Rhapsody._ Mr. Johnson is a conservative, by which he would mean that as editor, publicist, and poet, he has tried to maintain the highest standards in art, politics, morality, and religion. Certainly his services to his country have been important; and many good causes that he advocated are now realities. There is no love lost between him and the "new" school in poetry, and possibly each fails to appreciate what is good in the other. Moral idealism is the foundation of much of Mr. Johnson's verse; he has written many occasional poems, poems supporting good men and good works, and poems attacking the omnipresent and well-organized forces of evil. I am quite aware that in the eyes of many critics such praise as that damns him beyond hope of redemption; but the interesting fact is, that although he has toiled for righteousness all his life, he is a poet. His poem, _The Voice of Webster,_ although written years ago, is not only in harmony with contemporary historical judgment (1918) but has a Doric dignity worthy of the subject. There are not a few memorable lines: Forgetful of the father in the son, Men praised in Lincoln what they blamed in him.