George Pope Morris had co-founded the daily…

George Pope Morris had co-founded the daily New York Evening Mirror with Nathaniel Parker Willis by merging his fledgling weekly New York Mirror with Willis's American Monthly in August 1831.

Morris is credited with the longevity the Evening Mirror will enjoy and for giving it a wide scope, covering not only news and entertainment but reviews of the fine arts, editorials, and many original engravings.

Morris had also funded in advance Willis's trip to Europe, for which Willis wrote several letters to be published in the Mirror, which helped establish his fame.

In addition to his publishing and editorial work, Morris is popular as a poet and songwriter; especially well-known is his poem-turned-song "Woodman, Spare that Tree!"

His songs in particular are popular enough that Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia has promised Morris fifty dollars, sight unseen, for any work he wants to publish in the periodical.

"Woodman, Spare that Tree!" had first been published in the January 17, 1837, issue of the Mirror under the title "The Oak" and had in that year been set to music by Henry Russell (before being reprinted under its more common title in 1853). (Present-day environmentalists often quote lines from the poem.

The poem is also included in one of Morris's volumes of collected poems, The Deserted Bride and Other Poems, 1838, which is to run into several editions.