Famous Single Poems
pions to espouse her cause and cast their gauntlets into the arena on her behalf. For such is the male protective instinct, craftily fostered through long centuries—frequently leading to absurdity and disillusionment, as in the instance about to be recorded.
On the 19th of November, 1875, the New York Evening Post published a poem entitled “What My Lover Said,” signed only with the initials “H. G.” The verses, which were concerned with love’s young dream, were tenderly conceived and deftly written, with that sentimental appeal which finds an echo in so many bosoms. So they became popular at once and began a career in the newspapers which has endured to this day.
Before long, some over-zealous exchange editor, assuming that the initials “H. G.” could stand only for Horace Greeley, affixed Greeley’s name to the verses, and gradually a legend developed to the effect that the poem had been written by Greeley years before—perhaps was even the story of a youthful passion of his own—but had dropped from sight and had been resurrected only by accident.
Horace Greeley had been in his grave for three years at the time the poem appeared, so he was not there to affirm or deny the truth of this legend, but it was given a certain verisimilitude by the fact that as a young man he had
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