And all at once a thousand cheers were heard
And all the army shout the glorious word.
"Bronzed soldiers stood and shook each other's hands;
Some wept for joy, as for a brother found;
And down the slopes, and from the far-off sands,
They thought they heard already the glad sound
Of the old ocean welcoming them on
To that great goal they had so fairly won."
I would not be unmindful of our Iowa poet's other contributions. Before the century's close, Mr. Byers had written "Switzerland and the Swiss," and "What I saw in Dixie," also a book of verse entitled "Happy Isles and Other Poems," besides much occasional verse in celebration of events in Iowa history. So many and excellent are Major Byers' contributions to such occasions that their author has fitly been styled the "uncrowned poet laureate of Iowa." The title is strengthened by two distinctively Iowa songs, one, "The Wild Rose of Iowa," a tribute to our State Flower; the other entitled "Iowa," sung to the air of "My Maryland."
One of Iowa's pioneer poets was signally honored by public insistence that his "swan song" was the song of another and greater. In July, 1863, John L. McCreery, of Delhi, Iowa, published in Arthur's Home Magazine a poem entitled "There Is No Death." The poem went the round of the press attributed to Bulwer Lytton. A newspaper controversy followed, the result of which was that the Iowa poet was generally awarded the palm of authorship. But error sometimes seems to possess more vitality than truth! Every few years thereafter, the McCreery poem would make another round of the press with Bulwer Lytton's name attached! Finally, in response to urgent request, the modest author published his story of the poem.