Famous Single Poems
gives it a supreme setting and expression. It has had, however, one misfortune, that of being ‘improved’ by a meddlesome interference that should be put in the list of legal torts. Some squeamish person has elided the following stanza and set the lyric afloat in a mangled form,” and he quotes the stanza which is given above.
“Why a symbolic reference,” continues Mr. Benton, “to the most enormous element and force in nature should require this self-assumed fissiparous performance would trouble a Philadelphia lawyer to tell. The grannified impulse that does this mean surgery is not uncommon, and even Longfellow’s ‘Excelsior’ has been subjected to it. The verse omitted from that by false prudery is the following, if I may quote again from memory:
“‘Oh, stay,’ the maiden said, ‘and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!’
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
‘Excelsior!’”
All of which gives rather the impression of fighting windmills. The stanza from “Excelsior” has never been omitted from any version of the poem which has come under the observation of the present scribe, who can detect nothing in it to offend the most prudish. Who
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