Famous Single Poems
not only to the tightly-laced, semi-hysterical, sex-suppressed denizens of the drawing-room, but also to the gay celebrants at stag parties when those present had reached that stage of inebriety where they longed to put their heads on the table and weep over their sins. Its range was not too exacting, its rhythm was slow and soothing, and its minors gave opportunity for pleasing variations by the bass and tenor. The present scribe recalls another song of a later generation called “The Picture That Is Turned to the Wall.” It was about a girl driven out into the storm by a relentless father, and it was in its day almost as popular as “Ben Bolt,” for exactly similar reasons; but its author had been wise enough to remain anonymous!
Poor English had had no such forethought, and he could not deny his child after he had given it his name. It confronted him at every turn; he was everywhere referred to as the author of “Ben Bolt.” It was popularly regarded as his supreme achievement, if not his only one. Think of a poet, a novelist, a dramatist, who took himself and his work seriously, being continually reminded that his only hold upon fame was as the author of a doggerel song!
Such, then, was the awful fate which English had unthinkingly brought upon himself. But even the worst reputation may in time be lived
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