The Poems of Henry Timrod | Page 7

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