Though men may build their bridges high and plant their piers below the sea, And drive their trains across the sky; a higher task is left to me. I bridge the void 'twixt soul and soul; I bring the longing lovers near. I draw you to your spirit's goal. I serve the ends of fraud and fear. The older fates sat in the sun. The cords they spun were short and slight. I set my stitches one by one, where life electric fetters night, Till it outstrips the planet's speed, and out of darkness leaps to day; And men in Maine shall hear and heed a voice from San Francisco Bay. There is such a display of cynical cleverness in the verse of T. S. Eliot that I think he might be able to write almost anything except poetry. He has an aggressive champion in the distinguished novelist, May Sinclair, who says his best work is equal to the best of Robert Browning. John G. Neihardt was born in Illinois on the eighth of January, 1881. From 1901 to 1907 he lived among the Nebraska Indians, studying their folklore and characteristics. He has published a number of books, of which the best is perhaps _A Bundle of Myrrh_, 1907. In 1915 he produced an epic of the American Fur Trade, preparing himself for the task as follows: "I descended the Missouri in an open boat, and also ascended the Yellowstone for a considerable distance. On the upper river the country was practically unchanged; and for one familiar with what had taken place there, it was no difficult feat of the imagination to revive the details of that time--the men, the trails, the boats, the trading posts where veritable satraps once ruled under the sway of the American Fur Company." I heartily envy him these experiences; to me every river is an adventure, even the quiet, serious old Connecticut. Yet the poem that resulted from these visions is not remarkable. Nothing, I suppose, is more difficult than to write a good long poem. Poe disapproved of the undertaking in itself; and only men of undoubted genius have succeeded, whereas writers of hardly more than ordinary talent have occasionally turned off something combining brevity and excellence. I feel sure that Mr. Neihardt talks about this journey more impressively than he writes about it. His love lyrics, in _A Bundle of Myrrh_, are much better. The tendency to eroticism is redeemed by sincerity of feeling.