THE LESSON OF THE WATER-MILL
It is usually the despair of single-poem men that their fame rests upon what seems to most of them so slender a foundation, and nearly all of them disclose a curious blind spot when it comes to looking at their own work, so that, just as a parent will often love his unworthiest child the best, the poet almost always thinks many of his creations are far superior to the one the public prefers, and is inclined to feel abused when they are disregarded.
“In general quality,” writes Mr. Ernest Lawrence Thayer, “‘Casey at the Bat,’ at least in my judgment, is neither better nor worse than much of my other stuff.” Mr. Charles M. Dickinson, the author of “The Children,” voices the same feeling.
“The anthologies,” he writes, “seem determined that I shall go down to posterity as the author of a single poem. Now I plan to let the collectors know that I have written other verse. So I am sending you a book containing some of my other poems with the hope that you may find something in it worth copying beside ‘The Children.’”
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