These fifteen poems about the characters and incidents of Uncle Tom's Cabin made up the bulk of the volume of poems published as Lays of Liberty by Bela Marsh. It's interesting to see how her sequence reorders the narrative of Stowe's novel -- she follows Tom's story to its end on Simon Legree's plantation (and in heaven, of course) before taking up the story of Eliza's flight north. And it's confusing to note that three of the poems — "Eva's Parting," "Death of St. Clare," "Eliza's Flight" — had previously been published as song lyrics by different writers. In the Preface Marsh simply says that some of the poems in her book will be familiar to "some persons" already, and in footnotes says she has permission to use the lyrics, but doesn't give any credit to the lyricists. You can see the three songs, with different publishers than the ones Marsh credits in her notes, in the SONGS section of the archive. By Bela Marsh. (Boston: Bela Marsh and B. B. Mussey & Co., 1854). |