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.