Soon after he went to New York he began a series of Californian ballads, which were published anonymously in the Literary World, and attracted considerable attention.  They appeared before he had made his trip to California; but while on that trip he wrote still others.  At the same time he began several more ambitious poems, among them “Hylas,” and just before he set out for Egypt he had another volume of poems ready for the press.  It was entitled “A Book of Romances, Lyrics and Songs,” and was published in Boston just after he set out on his Eastern journey.  But while his volumes of travel sold edition after edition his volumes of verse scarcely paid expenses.

The previous year, however,—­1850,—­he had had a bit of success which caused him no end of annoyance.  Jenny Lind had been brought to America to sing, and her manager had offered a prize of $200 for the best song that might be written for her.  “Bayard Taylor came to me one afternoon early in September,” says Mr. R.H.  Stoddard, “and confided to me the fact that he was to be declared the winner of this perilous prize, and that he foresaw a row.  They will say it was given to me because Putnam, who is my publisher, is one of the committee, and because Ripley, who is my associate on the Tribune, is another.’”

Mr. Stoddard kindly suggested to him that if he feared the results, he might substitute his (Stoddard’s) name for the real one, and take the money while Stoddard got the abuse.  He did not choose to do this, however, and the indignation of the seven or eight hundred disappointed contributors was unbounded.  Taylor bore their abuse well enough, but he was heartily ashamed of the reputation which the poem brought him.

CHAPTER XI

“POEMS OF THE ORIENT”

During the months he spent in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, Bayard Taylor wrote his “Poems of the Orient,” of which Mr. Stoddard says, “I thought, and I think so still when I read these spirited and picturesque poems, that Bayard Taylor had captured the poetic secret of the East as no English-writing poet but Byron had.  He knew the East as no one can possibly know it from books.”

Certainly these poems of the East have a haunting ring that can never be forgotten.  What more stirring than this Bedouin love song!

From the desert I come to thee
On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind

In the speed of my desire. 
Under thy window I stand,
And the midnight hears my cry: 
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die,
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

Or what more grand and affectionate than this from “Hassan to his Mare”: 

Come, my beauty! come, my desert darling! 
On my shoulder lay thy glossy head! 
Fear not, though the barley-sack be empty,
Here’s the half of Hassan’s scanty bread.