Well, it depends …

Rhyme Does Not Pay – Quote Investigator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

IN 1874, a New York City newspaper paid Henry Wadsworth Longfellow $3,000 for his poem “The Hanging of the Crane.” In last year’s money (I could an inflation calculation for 2019), that would be $68,728.68. A tidy sum indeed. But surely the exception to the rule. (In Charles C. Calhoun’s excellent Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life, which I reviewed, the figure given is $4,000.)

Here is an account of the matter and the poem: The Hanging of the Crane.