“Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe (1849)

“Annabel Lee” is by an accomplished and controversial figure in late 19th-century American poetics. Thayer himself admired Poe for his mastery of elegant rhythms and clever rhymes. This non-traditional ballad tells the story of the speaker’s doomed tragic love for the young Annabel Lee. While Ernest Lawrence Thayer uses the conventions of the ballad for tragicomic effect, Poe develops a far more somber, emotional storytelling tone that nevertheless teaches a simple lesson about how love is stronger than death.

“John Henry” by Anonymous (late-19th century)

Thayer’s Casey, given his larger-than-life-presence, has become a central figure in American folk tales. “John Henry” is another such larger-than-life figure. Henry, a burly African American railroad worker, dies in his heroic challenge to a steel-driving machine designed to put workers out of work. Henry busts his heart to prove humanity’s dominance over machines. Like Casey, John Henry fails; but, because Casey fails in a meaningless baseball game and will live to play another game, unlike Casey, John Henry’s failure ennobles him.

“The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert W. Service (1907)

Another fin-de-millennium ballad that enjoyed staggering popularity and also first appeared in a newspaper, Service’s epic ballad tells the story of a doomed miner so enthralled by the longshot possibility of finding gold in the wintry wasteland of the Yukon that he freezes to death.