Robert Underwood Johnson's Poems

Robert Underwood Johnson is sufficiently well known as a poet by all lovers of graceful and lyrical verse to make the publication of a new book of his poems an event worth noting. Recently he has compiled from his two earlier volumes of poems, “The Winter Hour and Other Poems,” published in 1892, and “Songs of Liberty and Other Poems,” published in 1897, a third book which is entitled simply, “Poems by Robert Underwood Johnson.” It includes substantially all the serious verse he has written during the past twenty years. About two-thirds of the volume are to be found in the two issues above mentioned, the remaining third including verse that has not appeared in book form, but which has appeared for the most part in the leading magazines. These include the “Italian Rhapsody,” from the Atlantic Monthly for March of this year; “Dewey at Manila,” “An English Mother,” “The Flower of Fame,” “Love, the Conquerer, Came to Me,” “The Dread Before Great Joy,” “The Welcome of Our Tears,” the “Song of Remembrance” and “The Tryst.”

The volume is full of lyrics and singable songs, illustrating even more completely than the earlier volumes Mr. Johnson’s delicate fancy, his mastery of technique and fine scholarship. He is a poet who always appeals to the finer qualities in our human nature; he is so sincere that he never sacrifices his message to an effort to turning a finished line simply for the sake of its beauty. The message which his verse conveys comes from the heart. His lyrical quality is well expressed in the poem, “Love, the Conquerer, Came to Me,” as the verse or two given here will show:

Love the Conquerer came to me —
He whom I did long deride —
Gave humility for pride.
April voicing,
My rejoicing.

I — who fancied I was free —
Glad with garlands to be tied:

Love the Awakener came to me;
Called my sleeping soul to strife,
Offered gift of fuller life
(Wish, the measure
Of my pleasure);
And the bud that knew no bee
Burst, a rose with beauty rife.

Love the Revealer comes to me
On this battled height and shows
Yonder river of repose:
“Not by creeping,
But by leaping,
Learns the rill of harmony
That within the river flows.”

Admirers of Mr. Johnson’s “Songs of Liberty” will be gratified to find that the paraphrases from the Serbian songs of Zami Iovan Iovanovich have been included in this volume. They are from the literal translations made by Nikola Tesla. An introductory note calls attention to the fact that since the poems were first published, in 1897, the Serbian poet and his hero, Luka Filipov, have both died. The volume also includes the poems inspired by the war with Spain, and which breathe the spirit of a true patriotism as differentiated from a mere glorification of strife and conquest for its own sake. (The Century Company, cloth, 16mo, $1.20 net.)