Famous Single Poems
arrested for robbing a Mr. Page of $300. I had the curiosity to go to the Tombs to see him, and he told me his real name and history. What happened to him after that I don’t know.”
Like all other one-poem men, Mr. Watson was convinced that Fate had done him a great injustice by linking his name to a single poem, and consigning all his other work to oblivion.
“I am not only the author of ‘Beautiful Snow,’” he protested, “but of ‘The Dying Soldier,’ ‘Farmer Brown,’ ‘Ring Down the Drop,’ and of many others as good or better. Why they are not equally famous I cannot imagine. I think I can say without egotism that my poems originated a new taste or school, of which Trowbridge, Carleton and a few others are worthy followers.”
But a careful examination of the contents of “Beautiful Snow and Other Poems,” reveals nothing but a dreary waste. And yet, an editorial note at the back of the volume, dated March, 1871, proclaims the sixth edition, and calls attention to the interesting fact that two of the poems contained in the book, “Beautiful Snow” and “The Dying Soldier,” “were read upon one night, a few months since, to audiences varying from one thousand to four thousand, in seven of the great cities of the country, including New York, Philadelphia and Boston!”
Yes, it was the Age of Plush!
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