Famous Single Poems
by the reluctance of his victim, he proceeded merrily with his task. Ball’s halo was fixed so firmly upon his head that it seems never to have occurred to any of his friends that his reluctance to go into the fight might be due to something else besides chivalry and modesty; or if it did, they quickly put the thought behind them.
“The whole poem,” Mr. Morse starts out by saying, “may be ranked among the gems of American literature, nor is it perhaps too much to say, that as a plaintive refrain of filial love, it is not surpassed in our language. The lines of Cowper to his mother’s picture awaken the same emotions, but to a less degree than these exquisite verses, and certainly are inferior to them, as a longing and a cry that cannot be suppressed, for converse with the spirit of a beloved departed mother. It may be a question whether in Cowper’s day the spiritual atmosphere of England was not such as to render impossible, even to the most refined and acute souls, any such vivid recognition and perception of beloved beings in the other world, as are manifested in these lines.”
With which high proof of his competence for the task Mr. Morse proceeds with his case, using as his text the letter from Mrs. Akers published in the Evening Post, and producing (1) the fifteen-stanza version by Mr. Ball; (2) six letters from friends who believed they
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