Summum Bonum

( A solan do , 1889.) A Latin phrase meaning the chief or ultimate good. “In ethics it was a phrase employed by ancient philosophers to denote that end in the following and attainment of which the progre , perfection and happine of human beings consist. Cicero treated of the subject very fully in his De Finibus .” ( Encyc. Dict. ) Concentration is the key-note of the poem: in the honey-bag of one bee there is the breath and bloom of a year; in a single gem is represented all the chemistry of nature, from the condensation of the gases which went to form the earth; in the beauty of a single pearl is all the wonder of the sea, just as in a lump of coal are the imprisoned sun-rays of prehistoric forests. But truth and trust are brighter and purer than gems and pearls; in the love of a young girl Mr. Browning sees the concentration of the brightest truth and purest trust in the universe, so holy a thing to him is love. The Summum Bonum of St. Augustine is, of course, the true, ultimate good of man—the Love of God—of which the love of the purest of mankind is but a dim reflection.