The Poems of Henry Timrod | Page 3

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Poems of Henry Timrod
With Memoir
Contents
Introduction?The Late Judge George S. Bryan
Spring?The Cotton Boll?Pr|aeceptor 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 Pr|aeterea 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, Arrayed for an Approaching Bridal. Written in Illustration of a Tableau Vivant?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, at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867
Sonnets
I "Poet! If on a Lasting Fame Be Bent"?II "Most Men Know Love But as a Part of Life"?III "Life Ever Seems as from Its Present Site"?IV "They Dub Thee Idler, Smiling Sneeringly"?V "Some Truths There Be Are Better Left Unsaid"?VI "I Scarcely Grieve, O Nature! at the Lot"?VII "Grief Dies Like Joy; the Tears Upon My Cheek"?VIII "At Last, Beloved Nature! I Have Met"?IX "I Know Not Why, But All This Weary Day"?X "Were I the Poet-Laureate of the Fairies"?XI "Which Are the Clouds, and Which the Mountains? See" XII "What Gossamer Lures Thee Now? What Hope, What Name" XIII "I Thank You, Kind and Best Beloved Friend"?XIV "Are These Wild Thoughts, Thus Fettered in My Rhymes" XV In Memoriam -- Harris Simons
Poems Now First Collected
Song Composed for Washington's Birthday, and Respectfully Inscribed to the Officers and Members of the Washington Light Infantry of Charleston, February 22, 1859?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