Famous Single Poems
be discovered some day, or a statue by Praxiteles, or the Gospel of St. Matthew. But the chances are against it. And it is just as certain that modern literature is built upon a foundation of forgotten masterpieces as that modern life moves over an earth compounded of the forgotten dead.
Indeed, the survival of masterpieces, far from being due to any inherent quality, is largely the result of accident. A few statues catch the conqueror's eye in the captured city and he carries them off—the rest are destroyed; the fleeing inmates snatch a few pictures from the walls of the burning house—the others go up in smoke; the anthologist chooses a few poems from among many to publish in his "Reliques" or "Pastorals," and the others vanish into darkness. We can only hope that, in each case, the best ones were selected, but there is no way to prove it.
And even when a masterpiece does survive, it very often needs a press agent before it is generally recognized as such. It was Chaplain McCabe who advertised the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" by singing it in his incomparable voice, Captain Coghlan who called the world's attention to "Hoch! der Kaiser" by reciting it at the psychological moment, and De Wolf Hopper who furnished the publicity which made a household word of "Casey at the Bat."
And yet Mr. Hopper does not deserve the
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