Famous Single Poems
The Mormons, was ever published, while his novels, Walter Woolfe, Ambrose Fecit, Jacob Schuyler’s Millions, and the rest, have long since dropped from public ken. Sometimes a collection devoted to patriotic or historical poetry will include one or two of his Civil War verses; but only one of his poems has achieved the sort of immortality which a general anthology can give. There, under the head of Old Favorites or Songs of Yester-Year, one always finds “Ben Bolt.”
There is a moral to this tale:
The only safe rule for the aspiring author is to publish everything he writes either anonymously or under a pen-name. Then, when his creative days are over, he can amuse his declining years by gathering together such of his work as he wishes to be associated with his name, and claim it as his own.
But if authors did that, how thin that final volume would often be!
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