The Lesson of the Water-Mill
The book was examined with the best will in the world, but “The Children” remained the only poem quoted from it. The other verses were graceful, sincere, and not without poetic merit, but they lacked that quality of universal appeal which is really what has won “The Children” a place in so many anthologies. Mr. Dickinson, indeed, has some reason to be grateful to anthologists, for they have made it plain that it was he who wrote the poem, and not Charles Dickens, as some too-enthusiastic exchange editors were at one time trying to make the public believe.
So with Mr. Thayer. The anthologists have defended him valiantly against the attacks of various claimants of the authorship of “Casey at the Bat,” but that remains the only poem of his which is ever quoted. His other ballads lack that touch of genius which has made “Casey” the great classic of baseball.
Many writers of verse have had another reason to despair: they were constantly receiving requests for permission for the use of certain of their poems, they saw them quoted everywhere and apparently widely popular, yet their own books, in which these poems appeared, never sold enough to keep them in postage-stamps. It is not strange that, in course of time, they should feel a resentment against all compilers, as men who were robbing them of their just reward.
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