Page:Famous Single Poems (1924).djvu/31

 the characteristic "last message," which he wrote the day of the operation, "My only regret is that all the great work I have always contemplated doing for humanity remains undone. The bread-and-butter necessities of life have prevented my getting to it."

The controversy over the authorship of "There Is No Death" began in 1869 and lasted the remainder of his life. He had apparently claimed the poem as his before that date, for in February, 1869, the Dubuque Times published a caustic article ridiculing the claim. McCreery was at that time working on the rival paper, the Herald, and he replied in the issue of March 1, 1869, and there gave his first version of how he came to write the poem.

He stated that he had written "There Is No Death" in 1859, and published it in his own paper, The Delaware County Journal; that some time later one Eugene Bulmer copied the poem, signed his own name to it, and sent it to the Independence Offering at Chicago, where it was printed with Bulmer's name attached; that the scissors editor of the Farmer's Advocate, published in Wisconsin, saw the poem, cut it out and used it, but, concluding that Bulmer was a misprint, changed the name to E. Bulwer—et voila!

The second account was printed as a preface to a collection of his verse called Songs of Toil