Famous Single Poems
ception of this, for he adds, “On the theory that the whole had been lost by the author, the finder, if disposed to appropriate it, would naturally publish only those verses which did not so plainly repeat themselves, selecting only the best. The very fact then of this peculiarity, or defect, if it is one, must be taken as proof that the whole is the work of one mind!”
This is sublime, but it is far from being Mr. Morse’s best. He easily surpasses it when he proceeds to a dissection of the internal evidence of the poem itself. He points out that one of the lines stolen by Mrs. Akers is:
Come, let your brown hair just lighted with gold,
and that there can be no doubt Mr. Ball wrote it, because his mother had exactly such hair, as Mr. Morse himself can testify, for he has seen a tress of it, piously preserved by her son. Furthermore, consider these lines, also stolen by Mrs. Akers:
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair.
Mr. Morse testifies that Mr. Ball’s forehead was furrowed (as well it might be!) and that there were “silver threads in his hair not a few.” He had never seen Mrs. Akers, but she subse-
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