Famous Single Poems
agreed, but much to her chagrin, when the book appeared, the verses had no name attached. A few months later, she included them in her Poems of Pleasure, and was astonished to have her authorship sharply challenged by people who claimed to have seen them published elsewhere over other names. She had no difficulty, of course, in proving her right to them, but occasionally for many years she would see them attributed to some one else.
“The Birth of the Opal” became one of the most popular poems Mrs. Wilcox ever wrote, and it is one of the best; but it served to give a fresh fillip to the reputation for daring which Poems of Passion had started. Many of her friends thought it too frank, and one woman, the wife of a successful author, went so far as to cut her acquaintance on the ground that in “The Birth of the Opal” she had laid bare all the secrets of married life!
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