The subject was chosen for a prize competition in The World, the model selected being Campbell’s Hohenlinden, and the following poems appeared in that journal on January 21, 1880:—
The Tay Bridge Disaster.
On Balgay when the sun was low,
Pale gleamed the distant Grampian snow,
And dark and muddy was the flow
Through Strath-Tay ebbing rapidly.
But Balgay saw another sight,
When rose the wind at fall of night,
And distant gleams of splendour light
The darkness of her scenery.