Famous Single Poems
think that McCreery might have secured a letter from him which would have settled the matter once for all—but it is certain that it appears nowhere among Bulwer's works. Eight or nine years ago, the present writer had an exhaustive search made, because he himself, in the first edition of The Home Book of Verse, had attributed it to Bulwer. McCreery once offered to pay a thousand dollars to any one who could find it anywhere prior to its appearance in Arthur's Home Journal.
Investigation discloses the fact that the poem did appear in Arthur's Home Journal, as McCreery alleged. The set preserved in the library of Drexel Institute at Philadelphia has been examined, and the poem found, as McCreery said it would be, in the issue for July, 1863. It is in ten stanzas, identical, except for two or three unimportant words, with the version which accompanies this article. It is stated to be "by J. L. M'Creery," and, at the end, is dated from Delhi, Iowa.
It is worth noting, also, that McCreery did write other verses, and while none of them approaches "There Is No Death" in poetic merit (such as it is), they do bear a certain family resemblance to it. Songs of Toil and Triumph contains one hundred and forty-three pages and the character of its contents may be judged by a few titles—"The World Is Waiting," "The
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