The Poems of Henry Timrod | Page 9

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