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Show Famous Poeuu. From American Notes and Queries. (iray's "Elegy" occupied him tor Neven years. Bryant wrote "Thauatopsis" iu he shade of au old forest. Ella Wheeler Wilcox composed her little pot-in. "The Land of Nod," while rocking her baby brother to sleep in tho cradle. Cowperwroto "John (lilpins Biiie" when ho was under one of those terrible terri-ble tils of depression common lo him. The poem, "The Falls of Niagara," was written bv its author, J. C. Brainard, the editor of a small paper in Connecticut. Ho wrote it j'ider pressure, in response to a call for "more copy." , (Jen. Lvtle-wroto ;1 am living. Egvpt, Dying.'. on the night before Ins death. lie had a piciiimiiliou that ho was going to die the next day. "After the Ball,"' the little poem which has made the name of Nora Perry known in the world of letters, was jotted down on the back of an old letter, with no idea of the popularity it was to achieve in the pages of a noted magazine. .,,-, Too first thought of "The Bells" when walking the streets of Baltimore on a winter night. Ho rang tho bell of a lawyer's house a stranger lo him wallked into the gentleman's library, shut himself up. and the next morning presented the lawyer with a copy ol nis celebrated poem. . Thomas Moore, while writing "Lalla Rookh." spent so many mouths in reading read-ing up Greek and Tcrsian works that he became an accomplished oriental scholar, and people found it difficult to believe that its soeues were not penned on the spot iuslead of in a retired dwelling in Devonshire, "Old Grimes," that familiar "little felicity in; verse," which caught the popular fancy as far back as 182a. w as a sudden inspiration of the late Judge Albert G. Greene of Providence. K. I., who found tho first verse iu a collection of old English ballads, and enjoying its humor, built up tho remainder of the poem in the same conceit. |