The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems of Henry Timrod, by Henry Timrod This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Poems of Henry Timrod Author: Henry Timrod Release Date: July 26, 2008 [EBook #845] Last Updated: February 7, 2013 Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD *** Produced by Alan Light, and David Widger POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD With Memoir Contents Introduction The Late Judge George S. Bryan POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD Spring The Cotton Boll Præceptor Amat The Problem A Year's Courtship Serenade Youth and Manhood Hark to the Shouting Wind Too Long, O Spirit of Storm The Lily Confidante The Stream is Flowing from the West Vox et Præterea Nihil Madeline A Dedication Katie Why Silent? Two Portraits La Belle Juive An Exotic The Rosebuds A Mother's Wail Our Willie Address Delivered at the Opening of the New Theatre at Richmond A Vision of Poesy The Past Dreams The Arctic Voyager Dramatic Fragment The Summer Bower A Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night Flower-Life A Summer Shower Baby's Age The Messenger Rose On Pressing Some Flowers 1866—Addressed to the Old Year Stanzas: A Mother Gazes Upon Her Daughter, Hymn Sung at an Anniversary of the Asylum of Orphans at Charleston To a Captive Owl Love's Logic Second Love Hymn Sung at the Consecration of Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C. Hymn Sung at a Sacred Concert at Columbia, S.C. Lines to R. L. To Whom? To Thee Storm and Calm Retirement A Common Thought POEMS WRITTEN IN WAR TIMES Carolina A Cry to Arms Charleston Ripley Ethnogenesis Carmen Triumphale The Unknown Dead The Two Armies Christmas Ode Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead, SONNETS POEMS NOW FIRST COLLECTED Song Composed for Washington's Birthday, A Bouquet Lines: "I Stooped from Star-Bright Regions" A Trifle Lines: "I Saw, or Dreamed I Saw, Her Sitting Lone" Sonnet: "If I Have Graced No Single Song of Mine" To Rosa——: Acrostic Dedication Introduction "A true poet is one of the most precious gifts that can be bestowed on a generation." He speaks for it and he speaks to it. Reflecting and interpreting his age and its thoughts, feelings, and purposes, he speaks for it; and with a love of truth, with a keener moral insight into the universal heart of man, and with the intuition of inspiration, he speaks to it, and through it to the world. It is thus "The poet to the whole wide world belongs, Even as the Teacher is the child's." "Nor is it to the great masters alone that our homage and thankfulness are due. Wherever a true child of song strikes his harp, we love to listen. All that we ask is that the music be native, born of impassioned impulse that will not be denied, heartfelt, like the lark when she soars up to greet the morning and pours out her song by the same quivering ecstasy that impels her flight." For though the voices be many, the oracle is one, for "God gave the poet his song." Such was Henry Timrod, the Southern poet. A child of nature, his song is the voice of the Southland. Born in Charleston, S.C., December 8th, 1829, his life cast in the seething torrent of civil war, his voice was also the voice of Carolina, and through her of the South, in all the rich glad life poured out in patriotic pride into that fatal struggle, in all the valor and endurance of that dark conflict, in all the gloom of its disaster, and in all the sacred tenderness that clings about its memories. He was the poet of the Lost Cause, the finest interpreter of the feelings and traditions of the splendid heroism of a brave people. Moreover, by his catholic spirit, his wide range, and world-wide sympathies, he is a true American poet. The purpose of the TIMROD MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION of his native city and State, in undertaking this new edition of his poems, is to erect a suitable public memorial to the poet, and also to let his own words renew and keep his own memory in his land's literature. The earliest edition of Timrod's poems was a small volume by Ticknor & Fields, of Boston, in 1860, just before the Civil War. This contained only the poems of the first eight or nine years previous, and was warmly welcomed North and South. The "New York Tribune" then greeted this small first volume in these words: "These poems are worthy of a wide audience, and they form a welcome offering to the common literature of our country." In this first volume was evinced the culture, the lively fancy, the delicate and vigorous imagination, and the finished artistic power of his mind, even then rejoicing in the fullness and freshness of its creations and in the unwearied flow of its natural music. But it fell then on the great world of letters almost unheeded, shut out by the war cloud that soon broke upon the land, enveloping all in darkness. The edition of his complete poems was not issued until the South was recovering from the ravage of war, and was entitled "The Poems of Henry Timrod, edited with a sketch of the Poet's life by Paul H. Hayne. E. J. Hale & Son, publishers, New York, 1873." And immediately, in 1874, there followed a second edition of this volume, which contained the noble series of war poems and other lyrics written since the edition of 1860. In 1884 an illustrated edition of "Katie" was published by Hale & Son, New York. All of these editions were long ago exhausted by an admiring public. The present edition contains the poems of all the former editions, and also some earlier poems not heretofore published. The name of Timrod has been closely identified with the history of South Carolina for over a century. Before the Revolution, Henry Timrod, of German birth, the founder of the family in America, was a prominent citizen of Charleston, and the president of that historic association, the German Friendly Society, still existing, a century and a quarter old. We find his name first on the roll of the German Fusiliers of Charleston, volunteers formed in May, 1775, for the defense of the country, immediately on hearing of the battle of Lexington. Again in the succeeding generation, in the Seminole war and in the peril of St. Augustine, the German Fusiliers were commanded by his son, Captain William Henry Timrod, who was the father of the poet, and who himself published a volume of poems in the early part of the century. He was the editor of a literary periodical published in Charleston, to which he himself largely contributed. He was of strong intellect and delicate feelings, and an ardent patriot. Some of the more striking of the poems of the elder Timrod are the following. Washington Irving said of these lines that Tom Moore had written no finer lyric:— To Time, the Old Traveler They slander thee, Old Traveler, Who say that thy delight Is to scatter ruin, far and wide, In thy wantonness of might: For not a leaf that falleth Before thy restless wings, But in thy flight, thou changest it To a thousand brighter things. Thou passest o'er the battlefield Where the dead lie stiff and stark, Where naught is heard save the vulture's scream, And the gaunt wolf's famished bark; But thou hast caused the grain to spring From the blood-enrichèd clay, And the waving corn-tops seem to dance To the rustic's merry lay. Thou hast strewed the lordly palace In ruins on the ground, And the dismal screech of the owl is heard Where the harp was wont to sound; But the selfsame spot thou coverest With the dwellings of the poor, And a thousand happy hearts enjoy What ONE usurped before. 'T is true thy progress layeth Full many a loved one low, And for the brave and beautiful Thou hast caused our tears to flow; But always near the couch of death Nor thou, nor we can stay; AND THE BREATH OF THY DEPARTING WINGS, DRIES ALL OUR TEARS AWAY! The Mocking-Bird Nor did lack Sweet music to the magic of the scene: The little crimson-breasted Nonpareil Was there, his tiny feet scarce bending down The silken tendril that he lighted on To pour his love notes; and in russet coat, Most homely, like true genius bursting forth In spite of adverse fortune, a full choir Within himself, the merry Mock Bird sate, Filling the air with melody; and at times, IN THE RAPT FAVOR OF HIS SWEETEST SONG, HIS QUIVERING FORM WOULD SPRING INTO THE SKY, IN SPIRAL CIRCLES, AS IF HE WOULD CATCH NEW POWERS FROM KINDRED WARBLERS IN THE CLOUDS WHO WOULD BEND DOWN TO GREET HIM! These lines, addressed to the poet by his father, have a pathetic interest:— To Harry Harry, my little blue-eyed boy, I love to have thee playing near; There's music in thy shouts of joy To a fond father's ear. I love to see the lines of mirth Mantle thy cheek and forehead fair, As if all pleasures of the earth Had met to revel there; For gazing on thee, do I sigh That those most happy years must flee, And thy full share of misery Must fall in life on thee! There is no lasting grief below, My Harry! that flows not from guilt; Thou canst not read my meaning now— In after times thou wilt. Thou'lt read it when the churchyard clay Shall lie upon thy father's breast, And he, though dead, will point the way Thou shalt be always blest. They'll tell thee this terrestrial ball, To man for his enjoyment given, Is but a state of sinful thrall To keep the soul from heaven. My boy! the verdure-crownèd hills, The vales where flowers innumerous blow, The music of ten thousand rills Will tell thee, 't is not so. God is no tyrant who would spread Unnumbered dainties to the eyes, Yet teach the hungering child to dread That touching them he dies! No! all can do his creatures good, He scatters round with hand profuse— The only precept understood, ENJOY, BUT NOT ABUSE! The poet's mother was the daughter of Mr. Charles Prince, a citizen of Charleston, whose parents had come from England just before the Revolution. Mr. Prince had married Miss French, daughter of an officer in the Revolution, whose family were from Switzerland. It was the influence of his mother also that helped to form the poet's character, and his intense and passionate love of nature. Her beautiful face and form, her purity and goodness, her delight in all the sights and sounds of the country, her childish rapture in wood and field, her love of flowers and trees, and all the mystery and gladness of nature, are among the cherished memories of all her children, and vividly described by the poet's sister. William Henry Timrod, father of the poet, died of disease contracted in the Florida war, and his family thereafter were in straitened circumstances. Nevertheless, the early education of his gifted son was provided for. Paul H. Hayne, the poet, was one of his earliest friends and schoolmates at Charleston's best school. They sat together, and to his brother boy-poet he first showed his earliest verses in exulting confidence. This friendship and confidence lasted through life, and Hayne has tenderly embalmed it in his sketch of the poet. We have this faithful picture of him at that time:— "Modest and diffident, with a nervous utterance, but with melody ever in his heart and on his lip. Though always slow of speech, he was yet, like Burns, quick to learn. The chariot wheels might jar in the gate through which he tried to drive his winged steeds, but the horses were of celestial temper and the car purest gold." His school-fellows remember him as silent and shy, full of quick impulse, and with an eager ambition, insatiable in his thirst for books, yet mingling freely in all sports, and rejoicing unspeakably in the weekly holiday and its long rambles through wood and field. "The sweet security of streets" had no charm for him. He rejoiced in Nature and her changing scenes and seasons. She was always to him comfort, refreshment, balm. She never turned her face from him, and through all his years he "leaned on her breast with loving trustfulness as a little child." But he had other teachers. He studied all classic literature. "The Æschylean drama had no attraction for him; he reveled in the rich and elegant strains of Virgil, and of the many toned lyre of Horace and the silver lute of Catullus." From the full and inexhaustible fountain of English letters he drank unceasingly. Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, and, later, Tennyson were his immediate inspiration. His college life at the University of Georgia was interrupted by sickness and cramped by lack of means, and his literary plans were foiled by necessity. Nevertheless, he left his Alma Mater with a mind stirred to its depths, and with a large store of learning, and had already sounded with clear note those chords which were afterwards so vocal in melody. Dr. J. Dickson Bruns has left this graphic description of Timrod's personal appearance, and of some prominent traits of his social character:— "In stature," he says, "Timrod was far below the medium height. He had always excelled in boyish sports, and, as he grew to manhood, his unusual breadth of shoulder still seemed to indicate a physical vigor which the slender wrists, thin, transparent hands, and habitually lax attitude but too plainly contradicted. "The square jaw was almost stern in its strongly pronounced lines, the mouth large, the lips exquisitely sensitive, the gray eyes set deeply under massive brows, and full of a melancholy and pleading tenderness, which attracted attention to his face at once, as the face of one who had thought and suffered much. "His walk was quick and nervous, with an energy in it that betokened decision of character, but ill sustained by the stammering speech; for in society he was the shyest and most undemonstrative of men. To a single friend whom he trusted, he would pour out his inmost heart; but let two or three be gathered together, above all, introduce a stranger, and he instantly became a quiet, unobtrusive listener, though never a moody or uncongenial one! "Among men of letters, he was always esteemed as a most sympathetic companion; timid, reserved, unready, if taken by surprise, but highly cultivated, and still more highly endowed. "The key to his social character was to be found in the feminine gentleness of his temperament. He shrank from noisy debate, and the wordy clash of argument, as from a blow. It stunned and bewildered him, and left him, in the mêlée, alike incapable of defense or attack. And yet, when some burly protagonist would thrust himself too rudely into the ring, and try to bear down opposition by sheer vehemence of declamation, from the corner where he sat ensconced in unregarded silence, HE WOULD SUDDENLY SLING OUT SOME SHARP, SWIFT PEBBLE OF THOUGHT , which he had been slowly rounding, and smite with an aim so keen and true as rarely failed to bring down the boastful Anakim!" In Charleston, as a first effort in life, for a brief period Timrod attempted the law, but found that jealous mistress unsuited to his life work, though he had all the opportunity afforded him in the office of his friend, the Hon. J. L. Petigru, the great jurist. Leaving the bar, he thenceforward devoted himself to literature and to his art. Charleston to Timrod was home, and he always returned with kindling spirit to the city of his love. There were all his happiest associations and the delight of purest friendships,—W. Gilmore Simms and Paul Hayne, and the rest of the literary coterie that presided over "Russell's Magazine", and Judge Bryan and Dr. Bruns (to whom Hayne dedicated his edition of Timrod's poems), and others were of this glad fellowship, and his social hours were bright in their intercourse and in the cordial appreciation of his genius and the tender love they bore him. These he never forgot, and returning after the ravage of war to his impoverished and suffering city, he writes, in the last year of his young life, "My eyes were blind to everything and everybody but a few old friends." Suited by endowment and prepared by special study for a professorship, still all his efforts for the academic chair failed, and, finally, he was compelled to become a private teacher, an office the sacredness of which he profoundly realized. In his leisure hours he now gave himself up to deeper study of nature, literature, and man. It was in these few years of quiet retreat that he wrote the poems contained in the first edition of his works, 1859-60, which, laden with all the poet's longing to be heard, were little heeded in the first great shock of war. Indeed, in such a storm, what shelter could a poet find? An ardent Carolinian, devoted to his native State with an allegiance as to his country, he left his books and study, and threw himself into the struggle, a volunteer in the army. In the first years of the war he was in and near Charleston, and wrote those memorable poems and martial lyrics: "Carolina", "A Cry to Arms", "Charleston", "Ripley", "Ethnogenesis", and "The Cotton Boll", which deeply stirred the heart of his State, and, indeed, of the whole South. His was the voice of his people. Under its spell the public response was quick, and promised largest honor and world-wide fame for the poet. The project formed by some of the most eminent men of the State, late in 1862, was to publish an illustrated and highly embellished edition of his works in London. The war correspondent of the "London Illustrated News", Vizitelly, himself an artist, promised original illustrations, and the future seemed bright for the gratification of his heart's desire, to be known and heard in the great literary centre of the English-speaking world. But disappointment again was his lot. Amid the increasing stress of the conflict, every public and private energy in the South was absorbed in maintaining the ever weakening struggle; and with all art and literature and learning our poet's hopes were buried in the common grave of war; not because he was not loved and cherished, and his genius appreciated, but because a terrible need was upon his people, and desperate issues were draining their life-blood. Then he went to the front. Too weak for the field (for the fatal weakness that finally sapped his life was then upon him), he was compelled, under medical direction, to retire from the battle ranks, and made a last desperate effort to serve the cause he loved as a war correspondent. In this capacity he joined the great army of the West after the battle of Shiloh. The story of his camp life was indeed pathetic. Dr. Bruns writes of him then: "One can scarcely conceive of a situation more hopelessly wretched than that of a mere child in the world's ways suddenly flung down into the heart of that strong retreat, and tossed like a straw on the crest of those refluent waves from which he escaped as by a miracle." Home he came, baffled, dispirited, and sore hurt, to receive the succor of generous friendship, and for a brief time a safe congenial refuge, in 1864, in an editor's chair of the "South Carolinian", at the capital of his native State. Here his strong pen wrote the stirring editorials of that critical time, and there, tempted by the passing hour of comparative calm, he married Miss Kate Goodwin, "Katie, the fair Saxon" of his exquisite song. Here the war that had broken all his plans, and wrecked his health and hopes, and made literature for a time in the South a beggar's vocation, left him with wife and child, the "darling Willie" of his verse, dependent upon his already sapped and fast failing strength for support. Here he saw the capital of his native State, marked for vengeance, pitilessly destroyed by fire and sword. Here gaunt ruin stalked and want entered his own home, made desolate as all the hearthstones of his people. Here the peace that ensued was the peace of the desert! Here the army, defeated and broken, came back after the long heroic struggle to blackened chimneys, sole vestige of home, and the South, with not even bread for her famished children, still stood in solemn silence by those deeper furrows watered with blood. The suffering that he endured was the common suffering of those around him,—actual physical want and lack of the commonest comforts of life, felt most keenly by his sensitive nature and delicate constitution. In the midst of this fierce stress, his darling boy, the crown of his life, died. All his affections, it seemed, were poured out at once, as water spilled upon the ground. He was dying of consumption, and earth shadows crowded around him. Though long in feeble health, his last illness was brief. The best physicians lovingly gave their skillful ministration, and the State's most eminent men, in their common need, tenderly cared for him and his. With death before him, he clung passionately to his art, absorbed in that alone and in the great Beyond. His latest occupation was correcting the proof-sheets of his own poems, and he passed away with them by his side, stained with his life-blood. In the autumn of 1867 he was laid by his beloved child in Trinity churchyard, Columbia, S.C. General Hampton, Governor Thompson, and other great Carolinians bore him to the grave,—a grave that, through the sackcloth of the Reconstruction period in South Carolina, remained without a stone. But as he himself wrote of the host of the Southern dead of the war,— "In seeds of laurel in the earth The blossom of your fame is blown, And somewhere waiting for its birth, The shaft is in the stone." In later years loving friends reared a small memorial shaft to mark his grave. It was in that dark period that Carl McKinley's genius was touched to these fine lines. At Timrod's Grave. 1877. Harp of the South! no more, no more Thy silvery strings shall quiver, The one strong hand might win thy strains Is chilled and stilled forever. Our one sweet singer breaks no more The silence sad and long, The land is hushed from shore to shore, It brooks no feebler song! No other voice can charm our ears, None other soothe our pain; Better these echoes lingering yet, Than any ruder strain. For singing, Fate has given sighs, For music we make moan; Oh, who may touch the harp-strings since That whisper—"HE IS GONE!" See where he lies—his last sad home Of all memorial bare, Save for a little heap of leaves The winds have gathered there! One fair frail shell from some far sea Lies lone above his breast, Sad emblem and sole epitaph To mark his place of rest. The sweet winds murmur in its heart A music soft and low, As they would bring their secrets still To him who sleeps below. And lo! one tender, tearful bloom Wins upward through the grass, As some sweet thought he left unsung Were blossoming at last. Wild weeds grow rank about the place, A dark, cold spot, and drear; The dull neglect that marked his life Has followed even here. Around shine many a marble shaft And polished pillars fair, And strangers stand on Timrod's grave To praise them, unaware! "Hold up the glories of thy dead!" To thine own self be true, Land that he loved! Come, honor now This grave that honors you! The one characteristic above all others that marked the poet's life was his unfaltering trust,—the soul's unclouded sky, a quenchless radiance of blessed sunlight amid the deep darkness that encompassed him. As in his poetry there is no false note, no doubtful sentiment, no selfish grief, even when he sings with breast against the thorn, so in his life do we find no word of bitterness or moaning or complaining. Even amid the terrible blight of war and its final utter ruin, prophet- like, he speaks in faith and hope and courage. His own heart breaking, and life ebbing, he writes of Spring as the true Reconstructionist, and pleads her message to his stricken people. It is so true and prophetic that we quote the words written in April, 1866. "For Spring is a true Reconstructionist,—a reconstructionist in the best and most practical sense. There is not a nook in the land in which she is not at this moment exerting her influence in preparing a way for the restoration of the South. No politician may oppose her; her power defies embarrassment; but she is not altogether independent of help. She brings us balmy airs and gentle dews, golden suns and silver rains; and she says to us, 'These are the materials of the only work in which you need be at present concerned; avail yourselves of them to reclothe your naked country and feed your impoverished people, and you will find that, in the discharge of that task, you have taken the course which will most certainly and most peacefully conduct you to the position which you desire. Turn not aside to bandy epithets with your enemies; stuff your ears, like the princess in the Arabian Nights, against words of insult and wrong; pause not to muse over your condition, or to question your prospects; but toil on bravely, silently, surely....' "Such are the words of wise and kindly counsel, which, if we attend rightly, we may all hear in the winds and read in the skies of Spring. Nowhere, however, does she speak with so eloquent a voice or so pathetic an effect as in this ruined town. She covers our devastated courts with images of renovation in the shape of flowers; she hangs once more in our blasted gardens the fragrant lamps of the jessamine; in our streets she kindles the maple like a beacon; and from amidst the charred and blackened ruins of once happy homes she pours, through the mouth of her favorite musician, the mocking-bird, a song of hope and joy. What is the lesson which she designs by these means to convey? It may be summed in a single sentence,—forgetfulness of the past, effort in the present, and trust for the future." Such was the lofty creed and last hopeful, but dying message to his brothers of the South, whose war songs he had written, and the requiem of whose martyred hosts he had chanted. Such was the tragedy that ended in October, 1867, with the hero at the age of thirty-seven; glory, genius, anguish, tears, but unconquerable faith and heroic fortitude. His larger life scarce begun, his full power felt, but only half expressed, he realized deeply— "The petty done, the vast undone!" He yearned with passionate longing and hope and conscious might to fulfill an even greater mission; but in the infinite providence of God the full fruitage of this exquisite soul was for another sphere. He was indeed "one of those who stirred us, a friend of man and a lover. In no country of this earth could he long have been an alien, and that may now be said of his spirit. In no part of this universe could it feel lonely or unbefriended; it was in harmony with all that flowers or gives perfume in life." The story of his last days, as given by his poet-friend, Paul Hayne, at the latter's cottage among the pines, is of tender and peculiar interest, and we quote it here, as it was written in 1873:— ... In the latter summer-tide of this same year (1867), I again persuaded him to visit me. Ah! how sacred now, how sad and sweet, are the memories of that rich, clear, prodigal August of '67! We would rest on the hillsides, in the swaying golden shadows, watching together the Titanic masses of snow-white clouds which floated slowly and vaguely through the sky, suggesting by their form, whiteness, and serene motion, despite the season, flotillas of icebergs upon Arctic seas. Like Lazzaroni we basked in the quiet noons, sunk into the depths of reverie, or perhaps of yet more "charmed sleep". Or we smoked, conversing lazily between the puffs, "Next to some pine whose antique roots just peeped From out the crumbling bases of the sand." But the evenings, with their gorgeous sunsets "rolling down like a chorus" and the "gray-eyed melancholy gloaming", were the favorite hours of the day with him. He would often apostrophize twilight in the language of Wordsworth's sonnet:— "Hail, twilight! sovereign of one peaceful hour! Not dull art thou as undiscerning night; But only studious to remove from sight Day's mutable distinctions." "Yes," said he, "she is indeed sovereign of ONE PEACEFUL HOUR! In the hardest, busiest time one feels the calm, merciful- minded queen stealing upon one in the fading light, and 'whispering', as Ford has it (or is it Fletcher?),—'WHISPERING tranquillity'." When in-doors and disposed to read, he took much pleasure in perusing the poems of Robert Buchanan and Miss Ingelow. The latter's "Ballads" particularly delighted him. One, written "in the old English manner", he quickly learned by heart, repeating it with a relish and fervor indescribable. Here is the opening stanza:— "Come out and hear the waters shoot, the owlet hoot, the owlet hoot; Yon crescent moon, a golden boat, hangs dim behind the tree, O! The dropping thorn makes white the grass, O! sweetest lass, and sweetest lass Come out and smell the ricks of hay adown the croft with me, O!" With but a slight effort of memory I can vividly recall his voice and manner in repeating these simple yet beautiful lines. They were the last verses I ever heard from the poet's lips. Just as the woods were assuming their first delicate autumnal tints, Timrod took his leave of us. In a conversation on the night but one previous to his departure, we had been speaking of Dr. Parr and other literary persons of unusual age, when he observed: "I haven't the slightest desire, P——, to be an octogenarian, far less a centenarian, like old Parr; but I hope that I may be spared until I am FIFTY or fifty-five." "About Shakespeare's age," I suggested. "Oh!" he replied, smiling, "I was not thinking of THAT; but I'm sure that after fifty-five I would begin to wither, mind and body, and one hates the idea of a mummy, intellectual or physical. Do you remember that picture of extreme old age which Charles Reade gives us in 'Never Too Late to Mend'? George Fielding, the hero, is about going away from England to try his luck in Australia. All his friends and relations are around him, expressing their sorrow at his enforced voyage; all but his grandfather, aged ninety-two, who sits stolid and mumbling in his armchair. "'Grandfather!' shouts George into the deafened ears, 'I'm going a long journey; mayhap shall never see you again; speak a word to me before I go!' Grandfather looks up, brightens for a moment, and cackles feebly out: 'George, fetch me some SNUFF from where you're going. See now' (half whimpering), 'I'm out of snuff.' A good point in the way of illustration, but not a pleasant picture." On the 13th of September, ten days after Timrod's return to Columbia, he wrote me the following note:— "Dear P——: I have been too sick to write before, and am still too sick to drop you more than a few lines. You will be surprised and pained to hear that I have had a severe hemorrhage of the lungs. "I did not come home an instant too soon. I found them without money or provisions. Fortunately I brought with me a small sum. I won't tell you how small, but six dollars of it was from the editor of the 'Opinion' for my last poem. "I left your climate to my injury. But not only for the sake of my health, I begin already to look back with longing regret to 'Copse Hill'. You have all made me feel as if I had TWO beloved homes! "I wish that I could divide myself between them; or that I had wings, so that I might flit from one to other in a moment. "I hope soon to write you at length. Yours," etc. Again on the 16th I heard from him, thus:— "Yesterday I had a still more copious hemorrhage!... "I am lying supine in bed, forbidden to speak or make any exertion whatever. But I can't resist the temptation of dropping you a line, in the hope of calling forth a score or two from you in return. "An awkward time this for me to be sick! We are destitute of funds, almost of food. But God will provide! "I send you a Sonnet, written the other day, as an Obituary for Mr. Harris Simons. Tell me what you think of it—be sure! Love to your mother, wife, and my precious Willie [since the death of his own child he had turned with a yearning affection to my boy]. Let me hear from you soon—VERY soon! You'll do me more good than medicines!" etc. On the 25th of the month confidence in Timrod's recovery was confirmed by a letter from Mrs. Goodwin:— "Our brother," she writes, "is decidedly better; and if there be no recurrence of the hemorrhage will, I hope, be soon convalescent!" A week and upwards passed on in silence. I received no more communications from Columbia. But early in October a vaguely threatening report reached my ears. On the 9th it was mournfully confirmed. Forty-eight hours before, Henry Timrod had expired! On the 7th of October, the mortal remains of the poet, so worn and shattered, were buried in the cemetery of Trinity Church, Columbia. There, in the ruined capital of his native State, whence scholarship, culture, and social purity have been banished to give place to the orgies of semi-barbarians and the political trickery of adventurers and traitors; there, tranquil amid the vulgar turmoil of factions, reposes the dust of one of the truest and sweetest singers this country has given to the world. Nature, kinder to his senseless ashes than ever Fortune had been to the living man, is prodigal around his grave—unmarked and unrecorded though it be—of her flowers and verdant grasses, of her rains that fertilize, and her purifying dews. The peace he loved, and so vainly longed for through stormy years, has crept to him at last, but only to fall upon the pallid eyelids, closed forever; upon the pulseless limbs, and the breathless, broken heart. Still it is good to know that "After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well." Yet, from this mere material repose, this quiet of decaying atoms, surely the most skeptical of thinkers, in contemplation of SUCH a life and SUCH a death, must instinctively look from earth to heaven; from the bruised and mouldering clod to the spirit infinitely exalted, and radiant in redemption. "A calm, a beautiful, a sacred star." The poetic creed of Timrod, expressed in his "Vision of Poesy", set the impress upon all his work. Conscious of his power, he reverently believed in the mission of the poet as prophet and teacher,— "The mission of Genius on Earth! To uplift, Purify, and confirm, by its own gracious gift, The world,"— and he has consecrated his gift to its noblest uses in the discharge of that "high and holy debt". As lover of man and nature, his sympathy was universal; no theme was too humble for his pen. "The same law that moulds a planet forms a drop of dew." "Humility is power!" "We may trace the mighty sun above even by the shadow of a slender flower." Yet he dealt not with the fleeting; that was only the passing form of the abiding. Passionately fond as he was of Nature, and nourished and refreshed by her always, he never wrote a line of mere descriptive poetry. Nature is only the symbol, the image, to interpret his spiritual meaning. He felt with Milton, in his noble words, that the abiding work is not raised in the heat of youth or the vapors of wine, or by "invocation to dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altars to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases." Under that inspiration and revelation the poet is a divine interpreter of (in his own words)— "All lovely things, and gentle—the sweet laugh Of children, Girlhood's kiss, and Friendship's clasp, The boy that sporteth with the old man's staff, The baby, and the breast its fingers grasp— All that exalts the grounds of happiness, All griefs that hallow, and all joys that bless, "To me are sacred; at my holy shrine Love breathes its latest dreams, its earliest hints; I turn life's tasteless waters into wine, And flush them through and through with purple tints. Wherever Earth is fair, and Heaven looks down, I rear my altars, and I wear my crown." It was this mission of Poetry that filled his mind and heart and life with abiding light, which made him cling passionately to life, not because of any physical fear of death, but because in that mission Art and Nature were so inexpressibly rich and sweet to him to reveal his message to man. In the benediction of his dying words, "Love is sweeter than rest!" The moral purity of these poems is their distinctive quality, as it was of the man. With a universal sympathy for all life, still he moved always on the highest planes of thought and feeling and purpose. He seemed always to be impressed in his art with the truth of his own lines,— "There is no unimpressive spot on earth, The beauty of the stars is over all." His earnestness and deep poetic insight clothed all themes with the beauty and light that is in and over all. Timrod's melancholy, the finest test of high poetic quality, when purified and spiritualized, has no Byronic bitterness, no selfish morbidness, no impenetrable gloom, but in his own exquisite lines it is,— "A shadowy land, where joy and sorrow kiss, Each still to each corrective and relief, Where dim delights are brightened into bliss, And nothing wholly perishes but Grief. "Ah, me!—not dies—no more than spirit dies; But in a change like death is clothed with wings; A serious angel, with entrancèd eyes, Looking to far off and celestial things." Again, in all these poems there is a nameless spell of a simplicity, fervid yet tender, and an imagination, strong yet delicate, both in its perception and expression. His style, "like noble music unto noble words," is elaborate, yet perfectly natural. There is no trace of labor; grace guides and power impels. So perfect is it at times in its natural power that the mind is almost unconscious of the word-symbol in grasping immediately the thought revealed. There is in the verse a ceaseless melody and perfect finish. At times there is "the easy elegance of Catullus", always his delight, and a metrical translation of whose poems he had completed. Rare endowment with broad culture is evinced in the high intellectual level always maintained; and the evenness of quality that is always of the mountain top. He always knows his power, and its range. His song is always clear and true. Moreover, with a universality of poetic feeling, he has struck every chord, and always with a keen sensibility and delicacy of natural instinct. Among the finest poems, how wide is this range and varied this power! "The Vision of Poesy", his longest work, written in youth, essaying the mission and the philosophy of the poetic art, has some lofty passages, and all the promise of his later power, felicity, and melody. "A Year's Courtship" is in its glow, and grace, and music the perfection of classic art. The dainty voluptuousness in a "Serenade" kindles with the luxuriousness of the South. His "Præceptor Amat" is warm with the breath of rapturous feeling, and rich with the fragrance of flowers. "Ethnogenesis", "the birth of the nation", is regarded by some his greatest poem. It is prophecy linked with the hope and aspiration of the newborn nation of the South. A permanent image of the Southern nature and character is thus richly portrayed:— "But the type Whereby we shall be known in every land Is that vast gulf which lips our Southern strand, And through the cold, untempered ocean pours Its genial streams, that far off Arctic shores May sometimes catch upon the softened breeze Strange tropic warmth and hints of summer seas." "The Cotton Boll", in "the snow of Southern summers", is a forerunner of Lanier's "Corn". It reveals the mystic spell and kingly power of that far-stretching tropic snow, and contains that glowing painting of Carolina from sea to mountain, which closes "No fairer land hath fired a poet's lays, Or given a home to man!" "Too Long, O Spirit of Storm", is the fused passion of the poet's heart appalled at the moral death of stagnation. It has all the intensity and subtlety of Shelley. In "The Lily Confidante", delicate and fanciful as it is, the reply of the Lily "is a simple yet sacred melody", hallowing the purity of passion. "The Arctic Voyager" suggests Tennyson's "Ulysses" in its high faith, lofty purpose, and sustained power. "Spring" is the burst of the Southern spring, in its flooding life and glory and beauty. There is "a nameless pathos in the air." A wonderful revelation is going on before our eyes! No miracle could startle in the ever new creation, so strange and rapturous is this joy of sense and spiritual rebirth. Nor was his genius only reflective, and creative, and playful; his was a trumpet voice also. When the blast of war sounded, his voice rang like a clarion in "Carolina" and "Cry to Arms". Beyond their local meaning, which kindles and thrills, now as then, the men of the South, they have an abiding, universal power from the standpoint of art; for there is nothing finer in all the martial strains of the lyric. Paul Hayne, his brother poet, speaking of "Carolina", as "lines destined perhaps to outlive the political vitality of the State, whose antique fame they celebrate," said:— "I read them first, and was thrilled by their power and pathos, upon a stormy March evening in Fort Sumter! Walking along the battlements, under the red light of a tempestuous sunset, the wind steadily and loudly blowing from off the bar across the tossing and moaning waste of waters, driven inland; with scores of gulls and white sea-birds flying and shrieking round me,—those wild voices of Nature mingled strangely with the rhythmic roll and beat of the poet's impassioned music. The very spirit, or dark genius, of the troubled scene appeared to take up and to repeat such verses as— "'I hear a murmur as of waves That grope their way through sunless caves, Like bodies struggling in their graves, Carolina! And now it deepens; slow and grand It swells, as rolling to the land, An ocean broke upon the strand, Carolina! Shout! let it reach the startled Huns! And roar with all thy festal guns! It is the answer of thy sons, Carolina!'" Profoundly appealing as are Timrod's war strains, for they are the heart-cry of a people, still it should be noted that there is scarcely a battle ode that does not close with an invocation to peace, such was the lofty nature of the poet. War to him was only the drawn sword of right, and truth, and justice, which accomplished, the prayer for peace was ever on his lips, as witness the noble invocation to Peace, closing his "Christmas", that has so often stirred and hushed at once the heart of the South. The Ode, written for Memorial Day, April, 1867, of the Confederate graves at Charleston, was his last production. He had sung in lofty strains each phase of the struggle, its hope, its courage, its fear, its despair; he now sings his latest song, a wreath of flowers upon the unmarked graves of the Southern dead, and has hallowed these sacred mounds to his people in the words,— "There is no holier spot of ground Than where defeated valor lies, By mourning beauty crowned!" These poems are written in the life-blood of the poet and his generation. The patriotic fire, the devoted sacrifice and splendid achievement, that "Carolina", "Cry to Arms", "Unknown Dead", "Carmen Triumphale", "Charleston", "Storm and Calm", and the other of the war poems celebrate were not only the rushing tide of earnest feeling of a noble people then, but are now a part of the glory and heritage of the State, of the South, and of the American republic. They were the mighty heart-beats of that great epoch. They are now irrevocable history, and make these poems a part of the abiding literature of America. "A Common Thought" is the poet's premonition of his end; but he sees no vision of the dying glory of sunset, no going out into the dark, no presentiment of a vague and gloomy voyage on a homeless sea; but in the sunshine, in the growing light of ever broadening day, amid the joy and splendor of nature, bright prophecy and intuition of immortality, is to come the sudden, solemn mystery of the whisper, "He is gone!" And so it was. For as the sun broadened into glad day, and the full radiance illumined and animated earth and sea and sky, "as it purpled in the zenith, as it brightened on the lawn," this rich young life, in its own fresh morning of genius and spiritual sunshine, passed, and in his own triumphant words,— "not dies, no more than Spirit dies; But in a change like death was clothed with wings." The Late Judge George S. Bryan It would not be fitting that this memorial edition of Timrod's Poems should go forth to the world without proper recognition, on the part of the TIMROD MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION, of the relation occupied and the services rendered to the poet in his lifetime by the late Hon. George S. Bryan, of Charleston. During the whole of Timrod's career Judge Bryan was his devoted friend, ever ready to assist him materially, morally, and in every other respect. His faith in Timrod's genius never wavered, and but for his early assistance, sympathy, and encouragement, much of the fruit of that genius would have been lost or wasted. He helped him in adversity, cheered him in his hours of anxiety and despondency, and from first to last, throughout the literary and spiritual history of the poet, he did more than any other friend to keep alive in his heart the steadfast flame of faith in his poetic destiny; Judge Bryan's name must always be inseparably connected with Henry Timrod's in the literary annals of South Carolina. January, 1899. POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD Spring Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air Which dwells with all things fair, Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain, Is with us once again. Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns Its fragrant lamps, and turns Into a royal court with green festoons The banks of dark lagoons. In the deep heart of every forest tree The blood is all aglee, And there's a look about the leafless bowers As if they dreamed of flowers. Yet still on every side we trace the hand Of Winter in the land, Save where the maple reddens on the lawn, Flushed by the season's dawn; Or where, like those strange semblances we find That age to childhood bind, The elm puts on, as if in Nature's scorn, The brown of Autumn corn. As yet the turf is dark, although you know That, not a span below, A thousand germs are groping through the gloom, And soon will burst their tomb. Already, here and there, on frailest stems Appear some azure gems, Small as might deck, upon a gala day, The forehead of a fay. In gardens you may note amid the dearth The crocus breaking earth; And near the snowdrop's tender white and green, The violet in its screen. But many gleams and shadows need must pass Along the budding grass, And weeks go by, before the enamored South Shall kiss the rose's mouth. Still there's a sense of blossoms yet unborn In the sweet airs of morn; One almost looks to see the very street Grow purple at his feet. At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by, And brings, you know not why, A feeling as when eager crowds await Before a palace gate Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start, If from a beech's heart, A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say, "Behold me! I am May!" Ah! who would couple thoughts of war and crime With such a blessëd time! Who in the west wind's aromatic breath Could hear the call of Death! Yet not more surely shall the Spring awake The voice of wood and brake, Than she shall rouse, for all her tranquil charms, A million men to arms. There shall be deeper hues upon her plains Than all her sunlit rains, And every gladdening influence around, Can summon from the ground. Oh! standing on this desecrated mould, Methinks that I behold, Lifting her bloody daisies up to God, Spring kneeling on the sod, And calling, with the voice of all her rills, Upon the ancient hills To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves Who turn her meads to graves. The Cotton Boll While I recline At ease beneath This immemorial pine, Small sphere! (By dusky fingers brought this morning here And shown with boastful smiles), I turn thy cloven sheath, Through which the soft white fibres peer, That, with their gossamer bands, Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands, And slowly, thread by...