One of the curiosities of literature is the fact that the substitution of Bulwer's name for that of the author arose from the inclusion of McCreery's poem (without credit) in an article on "Immortality" signed by one "E. Bulmer." An exchange copied the poem with the name Bulmer "corrected" to Bulwer—and thus it started on its rounds. As late as 1870, Harper's "Fifth Reader" credited the poem to Lord Lytton! The Granger "Index to Poetry" (1904) duly credits it to the Iowa author.
It is interesting to recall, in passing, the fact that nowhere in or out of the state is there to be found a copy of McCreery's little volume of "Songs of Toil and Triumph," published by Putnam's Sons in 1883, the unsold copies of which the author says he bought, "thus acquiring a library of several hundred volumes."
It seems to have been the fate of Iowa's pioneer poets to find their verse attributed to others. So it was with Belle E. Smith's well-known poem, "If I Should Die To-night." Under the reflex action of Ben King's clever parody, it has been the habit of newspaper critics to smile at Miss Smith's poem. But when we recall the fact that several poets thought well enough of it to stake their reputation on it; and that, in the course of its odyssey to all parts of the English-reading world, it was variously attributed to Henry Ward Beecher, F. K. Crosby, Robert C. V. Myers, Lucy Hooper, Letitia E. Landon, and others, and that Rider Haggard used it, in a mutilated form, in "Jess," leaving the reader to infer that it was part of his own literary creation, may we not conclude that the verse is a real poem worthy of its place in the anthologies? In the Granger Index (1904) it is credited to Robert C. V. Myers,—the credit followed by the words: "Attributed to Arabella E. Smith"!
If support of Miss Smith's unasserted but now indisputable claim to the poem be desired, it can be found in Professor W. W. Gist's contribution on the subject entitled "Is It Unconscious Assimilation?"[ [2] Miss Smith—long a resident of Newton, Iowa, and later a sojourner in California until her recent death—was of a singularly retiring nature. She lived much within herself and thought profoundly, as her poetical contributions to the Midland Monthly reveal. In none of her other poems did she reveal herself quite as clearly as in the poem under consideration. It is in four stanzas. In the first is this fine line referring to her own face, calm in death: "And deem that death had left it almost fair."
The poem concludes with the pathetic word to the living:
"Oh! friends, I pray to-night,
Keep not your kisses for my dead, cold brow—
The way is lonely, let me feel them now.
Think gently of me; I am travel-worn;
My faltering feet are pierced with many a thorn.