The Face Upon The Floor

Also known as "The face upon the barroom floor," this poem was originally written in 1872 by John Henry Titus and was adapted by D'Arcy and first published in the New York Dispatch in 1887. The ballad is told in the voice of a ruined artist who relates the story of his lost love to a bar-room audience. The poem inspired a 1914 Keystone Studios movie of the same name, starring Charlie Chaplin, and has been put to song on albums by country music artists Tex Ritter (Blood on the Saddle, 1959) and Hank Snow (Tales of the Yukon, 1968).