Famous Single Poems
him, and he went to work to improve them. He pondered, he polished, he expanded. Stray phrases, as they came into his head, were jotted down on scraps of paper and stuck away in odd corners of his desk. That theme was always at the back of his mind, and his brain was incessantly at work upon it. It was the “labor of the file” so dear to Gautier—changing a phrase here, a word there; rejoicing over the discovery of the word “yawing” to describe a gaping hole in a battered head; tasting the joy of the true artist in winning closer and closer to perfection.
At last he had five stanzas which suited him fairly well, and he sent them to the Century Magazine. The editor accepted them in a flush of enthusiasm when he first read them; but when, some time later, he got them out of his manuscript safe and looked them over, he perceived that they were rather strong meat for his clientele, and he wrote to Mr. Allison suggesting that they be toned down a little, especially in the closing lines. This Mr. Allison refused to do, and the poem came back to him. So it was printed in the Louisville Courier–Journal, and started on its travels through the press. As is almost always the case, some exchange editor soon clipped off the author’s name, and from that time on it was usually credited to that prolific writer, “Anon.”
But the theme was still stirring around in
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