Unlucky 7

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet,” and nothing could be closer to the truth – and I have a case in point to share with you.
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My recent posts have focused on poems by Thomas Bailey Aldrich.  I had come across a list of American poets from the 19th century, and I thought I would explore and write about a few of the names at random, and I started with Aldrich.  Why him?  He was a past editor of “The Atlantic Monthly,” and in an early review of the poetry of Emily Dickinson, he called her work “poetic chaos” and foresaw “oblivion” for her – so I thought I’d take a look at some of his poems.

One of his works I chose was “At Stratford-Upon-Avon,” lines he dedicated to actor Edwin Booth, and here is a portion of what I wrote:

“Aldrich’s poem is fine, nothing particularly wrong with it, though it’s not particularly memorable.  At first glance, my initial thought was, ‘well, that’s appropriate, he wrote a sonnet in honor of Shakespeare.’  But no, it’s one line short.  A sonnet consists of fourteen lines, and this poem has thirteen.  There’s no couplet at the end.  And do I have this right?  The rhyme scheme is  abba / abab / cdbc / e?  

I only mention all of this because Aldrich is the very man who took such issue with Dickinson’s unconventional structures and rhymes that I kind of thought he’d compose a very traditional sonnet in honor of Shakespeare – so I’m just – surprised.”

The complete post is HERE.
 
Turns out though that Aldrich’s work is, in fact, a sonnet, complete with fourteen lines. How could I have flubbed this up?  Well, the error wasn’t entirely my fault.  I was misled by misinformation on the internet!

As I was writing a draft of an article on Aldrich to submit to an academic journal, I searched for the poem again, but this time I looked for a copy of the poem as it appeared when first published. I found it in several editions of Aldrich’s poetry printed in the late 1800s, and one is shown below on the left as a full sonnet with fourteen lines.

I returned to AllPoems.com where I had first encountered the poem to see if I had somehow misread it.  Nope, it still had thirteen lines, shown below on the right.  ​

Then, out of curiosity, I searched for the poem on other sites, and lo and behold, I found site after site after site with the same inaccurate version of “At Stratford-Upon-Avon.”  Line 7 of the sonnet is missing!   Some of the examples are below. 

I even found a recitation of the poem on YouTube, and the poem was read without line 7.

Click on the images to enlarge.

What do you make of all of this?  How could this have happened?  Obviously, someone on some site printed the poem inaccurately, and then site after site copied and pasted that flawed version.

Below, pics from another volume of Aldrich's poetry from the 1800s with the correct version of the sonnet:

What's funny is that when I first read the poem and made my statement, "I kind of thought he’d compose a very traditional sonnet in honor of Shakespeare – so I’m just – surprised,"  I knew in my heart something was wrong, but my brain just accepted what I'd read on the Internet. If only I had conducted a bit more research at that time, I would have realized what was going on. 

So my apologies to you, Mr. Aldrich.  I'm not surprised at all that you did, in fact, right a proper sonnet in tribute to Mr. Shakespeare!

UPDATE:

I contacted AllPoetry.com about the missing line, and as of today, 12/28/25, they have made the correction!  

In the coming days, I'll see if I can contact some of the other sites too.  ;-)