In Which My Prodigal Claim is Proved False

When I was in 1st or 2nd grade, I wrote the following composition on a piece of 1st or 2nd grade practice paper (you know, that tissue-thin stuff with the blue and red lines designed so that every laboriously-created letter could have a guiding mark?):

What is once loved.
You will find.
Is always yours.
Take it home.
In your mind.
And nothing ever can take it away.

I still have that piece of paper with the above words printed upon it, and while at times I've felt proud of those strangely poetic words, mostly, I've had the sneaking suspicious that I stole them.

Not on purpose, of course, but at that age, everything is about recitation and imitation. That's the only way to learn, really.

So today of all days I decided to do a Google hunt and see if I could find "my" poem under someone else's name.

Here's what I found, at the bottom of a chapter of Harry Potter fanfic, of all places:

"What is once loved, you will find, is always yours from that day.
Take it home, in your mind, and nothing ever can take it away."
- Elizabeth Coatsworth

And then I did a search for Elizabeth Coatsworth, and found this:
http://www.oldchildrensbooks.com/collectors-corner/authors/elizabeth-coatsworth

She was a children's book author, which of course makes sense; If I had stolen that verse from somewhere, it would have been from a book. Even back then, I was a ridiculous reader.

It also occurs to me, however, that maybe I didn't steal this verse on my own; one of my teachers could have printed it on the board for everyone to copy.

But then again, what if that wasn't it? What if it wasn't even an assigned, or an unconscious theft? What if we were asked to write something, and I, well aware that my composition was unoriginal, scrawled it out anyway? Holly Gruntner: violating copyrights since 1998.

The world may never know.

I guess I'm glad this mystery is finally (mostly) solved, but I'm a little sad at the same time.

I would have liked to have been a child prodigy.