There Is No Unbelief
Bulmer, as quoted above, adding that she had always bitterly resented the fact that she was robbed of credit for the poem, which she cherished “with the fondness of a mother for her offspring.” And she showed Dr. Barton, with much pride, a book of poems by James Whitcomb Riley which he had sent her after inscribing it:
To
Mrs. Lizzie York Case,
Who lit the lone world’s darkness, doubt and grief,
With truth’s own song—“There Is No Unbelief.”
There was one obvious way to confirm Mrs. Case’s story. That was to make a search of the files of the Detroit Free Press. This bit of bibliographical service was courteously undertaken by the custodian of the Burton Historical Collection in the Detroit Public Library, and the poem was discovered in the issue for August 18, 1878. It is signed with Mrs. Case’s name, and of course settles the controversy.
It is interesting to compare the first version with the later one. Both consist of seven stanzas, and the first three are the same in both. The earlier version then continues:
There is no unbelief,
Whoever says to-morrow, the unknown,
The future, trusts that power alone
He dare disown.
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