UC-NRLF . THE POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD EDITED, WITH A SKETCH OF THE POET S LIFE, PAUL II. HAYNE. NEW REVISED EDITION. NEW YORK: E. J. HALE & SON, PUBLISHERS, MURRAY STREET. 1873. Entered according to act of Congress, In the year 1872, Dy E. J. HALE & SON, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. LANGE, LITTLE & HILLMAN, PRINTERS, ELECTROTYPERS AND STEREOTYI KKS 108 TO 114 WOOSTER STREET, N. Y. S73 TO THE POET S WIFE AND SISTEK,* AND TO HIS, EARNEST FRIENDS, THE HON. GEORGE S. BRYAN, OF CHARLESTON, 8. C., AND DOCTOR J. DICKSON BRUNS, OF NEW ORLEANS, THIS VOLUME IS * This sister died soon after the " Dedication " was penned. The life-long affection between the Poet and herself was of the most tender, touching, and beautiful description. They sympathized in heart, soul, and intellect. Their names must always be associated in the memory of gentle and appre ciative spirits. M294G67 CONTENTS. I AGE Memoir of Henry Timrod 7 Dedication 71 Katie 73 Carolina 80 A Cry to Arms. , 83 Serenade 85 Why Silent ? 86 Two Portraits 87 Charleston 97 Ripley 99 Ethnogenesis 100 Christmas 104 La Belle Juive 107 An Exotic 109 The Rosebuds Ill A Mother s Wail 112 Our Willie 114 Carmen Triumphale 118 Address at the Opening of Richmond Theatre 121 The Cotton Boll 125 Spring 131 The Unknown Dead 134 The Two Armies 136 A Vision of Poesy 137 The Past 162 Pneceptor Amat 163 Dreams . 166 vi CONTENTS. PAGE The Problem . . 168 The Arctic Voyager 172 A Year s Courtship 173 Dramatic Fragment 176 The Summer Bower 178 A Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night 180 Flower Life 184 Youth and Manhood 186 A Summer Shower 189 Baby s Age Hark to the Shouting Wind The Messenger Rose 192 Too Long; Spirit of Storm ! 193 The Lily Confidante 194 On Pressing Some Flowers 196 A C&mmon Thought 197 Sonnets 197 to 203 1866 Addressed to the Old Year 204 Ode, Sung at the Decoration of Graves of Confederate Dead 209 Hymn, Sung at a Sacred Concert 210 The Stream is Flowing from the West 211 Stanzas, Written in Illustration of a Tableau Vivant.- 212 Retirement 213 Vox et Preterea Nihil 215 Hymn, Sung at an Anniversary of an Orphan Asylum 216 To a Captive Owl 217 Love s Logic 218 Second Love 220 Hymn, Sung at the Consecration of Magnolia Cemetery . . . 221 Lines to R. L 221 Madeline 223 To Whom ? 227 To Thee 228 Storm and Calm 229 Sonnets. . . .230 to 232 MEMOIE HENRY TIMROD THE name and writings of HENRY TIMROD have been long known and appreciated at the South. Nor are they wholly unknown at the North. I have before me a letter from the Quaker poet, WHITTIER, in which he warmly commends the poems of TIMROD he had seen, while expressing a regret for his early death. Frequently, in his critical essays, RICHARD HENRY STOD- DARD has referred to TIMROD, as in his opinion the ablest poet the South had yet produced a verdict fully sustained by some other (Northern) Avriters of high position, to whose notice the poems had been brought. These facts may prove, in some sort, an introduction to the present volume, so far as the Northern public is con cerned. They may win for it a candid examination, all that is necessary, doubtless, for its success. Meanwhile, I purpose to give a sketch of TIMROD S life, which, though comparatively brief, and to an exceptional degree uneventful, is still of interest, as throwing much light upon the character of his verses, and the development of Ids genius. 8 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. HENRY TIMROD was born in Charleston, S. C., on the 8th of December, 1829. He was the son of WILLIAM H. TIM- ROD, whose father (HENRY TIMROD), a native of Germany, had married Miss GRAHAM, a gifted and highly educated lady of the north of Ireland, though of Scotch descent, and in good, if not affluent, circumstances. Mr. TIMROD had been for a considerable time a resident in this country, and was, it seems, a widower, when Miss GRAHAM came to Carolina. Sometime in 1792, their only son, WILLIAM, was born on a plantation not far from Charleston. Upon the death of his father, which occurred unfortu nately while the lad was quite young, his mother married again ; a step by which the family means, already reduced by the exigencies of a revolutionary time, were still further squandered. Nevertheless, an effort was made by the mother to educate her son for the Bar. It was frustrated in a manner at once ludicrous and provoking. At the age of eleven, WILLIAM, then at school, became possessed of an idea a brilliant, fascinating conception which he must seize the first oppor tunity of practically testing. To the boy s fancy the most enviable of mortals appeared to be, not a king or a conquer ing soldier, but a loolcbinder ! Reasoning from his narrow premises, he concluded that this lucky craftsman must, by the necessities of his position, have access to innumerable volumes, and to stores of untold learning. In order to realize this personally, and to live thenceforth in a beatified atmosphere of Russia leather, he ran away from school, and having found his Phrenix a complacent bookbinder placed himself deliberately under his tuition. Of course the intelligent lad must soon have perceived how his dreams of the trade and its aesthetic facilities had deceived him ; but whether actuated by self- MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. y will, or some better motive not revealed to others, he re sisted both his mother s entreaties and the remonstrances of friends, refusing utterly to return to his orthodox studies. Thus, by his own erratic will, the father of the poet be came a mechanic a skilled mechanic, we have been told and rather proud than otherwise, like the true man he was, of his useful and honest craft.* In the course of time, WELLIAM TIMROD, self-educated, but full of information, especially in English Mies lettres, attracted the attention of his fellow-citizens by his brilliant talents. The wise and the gifted were happy to associate with him ; and by the simple mastery of genius, he gained no trifling influence among the highest intellectual and social circles of a city noted at that period for aristocratic exclusiveness. Lawyers, politicians, editors, litterateurs, and gentlemen of scholarly ease and culture, would gather about his place of work, chiefly for the delight of listening to his unpremeditated and eloquent conversation. He seems indeed to have been longo intervallo a provincial Coleridge, holding his little audiences spell-bound by the mingled audacity and originality of his remarks. Nor were his gifts exclusively conversational. On the contrary, that he possessed the special endow r ments of a poet, and of a poet of no mean order, some of the songs and son nets he has left us clearly demonstrate. * When the young aspirant after knowledge became bound to his master, he found that he had neither much time given him in the day to read, nor light at night! "I have heard him de clare," says one of his daughters, " that he used, when the moon was clear, or at its full, to climb on the leads of the house, and there, by the lunar rays, to read into the small hours of the night : Shakspeare was, at that time, his favorite coinpanion." 10 MEMOIR OF HKNRT TIMROD. Of these, an Ode "To TIME,"* an apostrophe to "THE MOCKING BIRD," and a Sonnet called "Autumnal Day in Carolina," are the most finished and striking. I will quote them here. TO TIME THE OLD TRAVELLER. I. " They slander thee, Old Traveller, 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. TI. " Thou passest o er the battle-field 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-enriched clay, And the waving corn-tops seem to dance To the rustic s merry lay. * These four stanzas, " To TIME," formed a portion, origin ally, of a much longer poem. Oddly enough, they occur in a very un ambitious production, viz., a newspaper " Carrier s Address," Apropos of the verses, Judge Bryan, in a private letter to me, observes, " As one pro->f of the excellence of the ode, " To Time," let me say here what it would have delighted me to have said to the author, that on my reciting this poem to Washington Irving, he exclaimed with fervor, that Tom Moore had written no finer lyric. " MEMOIR OF HENRY TIM ROD. \\ ITI. " Tiiou hast strewed the lordly palace In ruins o er the ground, And the dismal screech of the owl is heard Where the harp was wont to sound ; But the self-same spot thou coverest With the dwellings of the poor, And a thousand happy hearts enjoy What one usurped before I " Tis 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 icings, 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 raptferwr of his sweetest song, 12 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. His quivering form would spring into the sky, In spiral circles, as if he would catch New powers from kindred warblers in the clouds, WJio would bend down to greet him ! " AUTUMNAL DAY IN CAROLINA. A SONNET, "-^-f " Sleeps the soft South, nursing its delicate breath To fan the first buds of the early spring, And summer sighing, mourns his faded wreath, Its many-colored glories withering Beneath the kisses of the new-waked North, Who yet in storms approaches not but smiles On the departing season, and breathes forth A fragrance, as of summer till at whiles, All that is sweetest in the varying year, Seems softly blent in one delicious hour, Waking dim visions of some former sphere, Where sorrows such as earth owns had no power To veil the changeless lustre of the skies, And mind and matter formed one Paradise ! " * ****** * Not equal in poetical merit to the foregoing, but even more interesting because of their subject, are the lines which follow. They are mournfully prophetic : TO HARRY. " Harry, my little blue-eyed boy, I love to hear thee playing near ; There s music in thy shouts of joy To a fond father s ear. MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 13 " I love to see the lines of niirtli 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 these most happy hours will 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 can st 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-crowned hills, The vales where flowers innumerous blow, The music of ten thousand rills Will tell thee, tis 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 ! 14 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. " No ! all can do his creatures good, He scatters round with hand profuse The only precept understood, Enjoy, but not abuse ! " In the Nullification controversy of 1832-3, when all South Carolina was convulsed as with the throes of a political and moral earthquake, when,. in Charleston especially, a bitter ness of party feeling prevailed, which threatened at any moment to precipitate revolution and bloodshed, WILLIAM TIMROD espoused the cause of the Union with all the ardor and enthusiasm of his poet soul. One morning, while at work in his employer s store, the divine afflatus " came suddenly upon him, and he composed the following fiery song, which, doubtless, has the true lyric ring, although, as might have been anticipated under the circumstances, it does grave injustice to the motives and character of the leaders of Nullification. In the midst of composing these verses, he became, we are told, so trans ported with the passion of his work," that rushing from his own small room in the rear, he fairly shouted out the lines in his employer s ears! Greatly astonished was that gentle man, for previous to this outburst Mr. Timrod s manner towards him had been marked by a studied reserve; nor was it the poet s habit to declaim his rhymes, even among his intimates. SONS OF THE UNION! " Sons of the Union, rise ! Stand ye not recreant by, and see The brightest star in Freedom s galaxy Flung sullied from the skies I MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 15 ii. " Hosts of the martyred brave ! Bend ye not your pure spirits from the clouds, Indignant at the darkness that enshrouds The land ye died to save ? " Sons of the brave ! shall ye, Basely submissive, crouch to faction s slaves ? No ! rather lay ye down in glorious graves : Tis easy to die free ! IV. " And who the foes that dare Flout the brave banner of a mighty land, Which floating in a thousand fields, hath fanned The brow of victory there ? " Laid they the scheme of blood, Blasting the hope of ages yet to come, Beneath some Temple s consecrated dome, With tears and prayers to God ? " No ! In the wassail hall, Draining the maddening wine-cup, while the cries Of brutal drunkenness affront the skies, They planned their country s fall"! VII. " God ! do thy high decrees Doom that our fathers blood was shed in vain, And that our glorious Union s sacred chain Be snapped by foes like these 1 ]6 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. VIII. " Sons of the Union, rise ! Stand ye not recreant by, and see The highest star in Freedom s galaxy Flung sullied from the skies ! " The intense bitterness of tone displayed in this lyric, will be understood and partially excused by those who reflect that it was, in truth, a campaign production, written during the heat and in the midst of the recriminations of the most savage political contest this country had known previous to the year 1860. But William Timrod was not a mere writer of miscellane ous verses. I learn from the best authority that he com posed a Drama in Five Acts, which he regarded, as par excel lence, the literary labor of his life ! By some strange fatality the manuscript of this play was lost a misfortune which his son continually and bitterly lamented. His patriotism and popularity with the chiefs of his own party procured, after a time, for William Timrod an honor able position in the Charleston Custom House. How long he retained this office I have had no means of ascertaining. In 1835 he was elected to the command of the German Fmileers, an ancient and distinguished volunteer corps of Charleston, composed of Germans and men of German de scent, and marched with them to garrison the town of St. Augustine, in Florida, against the attacks of the Seminole Indians. Exposure, hardship, and protracted labor, brought on a disease of which, about two years after his return to Charleston, he died. Thus perished in his prime a man of remarkable mental vigor and versatility. What he might have done under fairer auspices, it would be useless to. inquire. His name MEMOTE OF TTKNKY TTMROD. 17 henceforth must live chiefly in the reputation of his son, his "blue-eyed Harry," of whom he wrote so feelingly, and with such prescient insight. The latter obtained his primary education at one of the best schools in Charleston. There I first made his acquaint ance an acquaintance which similarity of tastes, and an equality of age, soon ripened into friendship. My seat in the school-room being next to his, I well remember the ex ultation with which he showed me, one morning, his earliest consecutive attempt at verse-making. It was a ballad of .stirring adventures, and sanguinary catastrophe ! But I thought it perfect wonderful and so, naturally, did he. Our " down East " schoolmaster, however, (all whose duties except those connected with penal inflic tions, were left to his ushers, for our Principal united the morals of Pecksniff with the learning of Squeers), could boast of no turn for sentiment, and having remarked us hob nobbing, meanly assaulted us in the rear, effectually quench ing for the time all assthetic enthusiasm. An early teacher of Timrod, who really knew and appre ciated his character and mind, describes him when a boy, as modest and diffident, with a nervous utterance, but with melody ever in his heart and on his lips. 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 of purest gold."/ fehy, but neither me lancholy nor morose, he was passionate, impulsive, eagerly ambitious, with a thirst for knowledge hard to satiate.^ But too close a devotion to books did not destroy the natural lightness and simplicity of youth. / He mingled freely with his comrades, all of whom respected, while some dearly loved him. At that time of life he was physically active and 18 MEMOIR OF -HENRY TIMROD. vigorous, and delighted in every sort of rough out-door sport ; in leaping, running, wrestling, swimming, and even infighting. More than once I have known him to engage in a desperate affaire cVhonneur, the issue of which was decided by a primitive- species of science that would have disgusted the orthodox "ring." " How unspeakably," exclaims one of his associates, " Thnrod rejoiced in the weekly holiday, with its long ram bles through field and wood ! And this taste strengthened with his growth. The sweet security of streets, that Elia loved, had no charm for him. "Born in a city, pent up in its dusty avenues, he longed for the untrammeled freedom of the country. He doted upon its waving fields, its deep blue skies, and the glory of the changing seasons. These formed his special delight, be cause in them he instinctively recognized his best teachers. Face to face with Nature he had no fears, no misgivings ; always a beneficent mother, she nursed him with the milk of a better time, and through all his years he leaned on her breast with the loving trustfulness of a little child." When about sixteen or seventeen, Timrod was prepared to enter college. By the advice, and under the influence of friends, he matriculated at the University of Georgia. There, his vivid intelligence and scholarly ardor soon began to dis play themselves. He sought to enlarge his culture and refine his taste by habitual commerce with the classics. By the horror and gloom of the ^Eschylean drama he appears to have been revolted ; but "sad Electra s poet " charmed him ; he revelled in the elegant art of Virgil ; and of the graces of Horace and Catullus he never wearied. From the fountain of English letters he quaffed unceas ingly. Nevertheless, his reading was more exact than varied. MEMOIR OF HENRY TIM ROD. 19 His unerring critical tact rejected the false and meretricious; but for authors of his deliberate choice, his affection daily increased. There, too, at the University, his poetical gifts commenced to "burgeon" luxuriantly. "A large part," suidhe, laugh ing, "of my leisure at college, was occupied in the composi tion of love verses, frantic or tender. Every pretty girl s face I met acted upon me like an inspiration ! I fancied inj- - self a sublimated Turk (when these faces were reproduced in day-dreams) though walking an ideal, and therefore inno cent, Harem of young Beauties." Some of the cleverest of these love-songs were published in "The Charleston Eveniny News," over a fictitious signature. They became, locally, quite popular, and in one instance, to the author s intense delight, his verses were set to music. Unluckily, the young poet s college career was brought to a sudden close, in part by temporary ill health, and yet more perhaps, by the "res angusta domi." Forced thus to leave his alma mater, his brow unadorned by academic honors he left her, at all events, possessed of valuable stores of learning, and with an intellect unusually well drilled, and disciplined. And now the battle of existence opened in grim earnest ; for him an unending struggle wdth evil fates; a conflict ill which, overcome again and again, thrown to earth as fast as he struggled up therefrom, he found but few kindly hands to help him ; and yet came off more than conqueror, through untold resources of his liberal nature. Timrod s first move upon returning to his native city, was to enter, as a student, the office of that distinguished lawyer, James L. Petigru, Esq. Often in those days, he frequented the rooms of the "Charleston Mechanic s Library Associa tion," where at irregular intervals an informal debating club of young men was in the habit of assembling. W MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. Timrod was fond of argument, but as an extemporaneous speaker, lie had not, as already hinted, inherited his father s facility of language and illustration. Unless excited upon some theme of special moment, he hesitated, stammered, and was continually at a loss for words to embody his ideas; although the ideas themselves were never commonplace or trivial. On the other hand, he was an admirable reader, even if his style did sometimes verge upon the theatrical. I can see him now as he appeared in his early manhood, repeating in a deep, musical bass voice, his favorite "ode" on "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of early Childhood." Short of stature, but broad-chested, and com pactly formed, with his superb head well set upon shoulders, erect, and thrown back in haughty grace his gray eyes flashing, and his swarthy face one glow of intense emotion it was impossible to listen to him without catching some spark of his fiery enthusiasm. *~ In 1848-9, having assumed the nom de plume of " AGLAUS, "* he commenced a series of contributions to the The Southern TAterary Messenger, " then edited by that kindly and accom plished scholar, John R. Thompson, Esq. His genius was gradually maturing, and his art-culture with it ! Let any one who can, examine the back numbers of " The Messenger," from 1849 to the year 1853, containing as they do, the best of our author s earlier poems, and I think it will be acknowledged, that despite some superficial marks of imi tation, the verses display both individuality and power. One piece especially, entitled " The Past," was so full of a subdued thoughtfulness and beauty, that after having been republished by scores of periodicals, it came under the notice The name of a minor pastoral poet of Greece. MEMOIR OF HENR7 TIMROl). 21 of a distinguished Northern gentleman, himself an author, who, corresponding with a friend in Charleston, expressed his hearty admiration of the lines, making inquiry at the same time in reference to the poet, and his circumstances. The letter was shown to Tirnrod, and its encouraging effect was greater and more permanent, than could be understood by any person not gifted in some degree with the suscepti bility of genius. Every poet, in the morning of his career among the masters of song that have preceded him, is apt to select some special object of his imaginative and artistic worship. In those days, Timrod looked up to Wordsworth as his poetical guide and exemplar. With a constant and loving earnestness, he studied his works, caught their spirit of simplicity and truth, and thus laid the foundation of a style, which, however modified by after-studies and experience, was remarkable to the last for its pure Saxon vigor, its terseness, lucidity, and unpretending grace. Finding the law distasteful,* Timrod threw aside his * Alluding to this period, Judge Bryan says (in a private com munication), " Timrod was too wholly a poet to keep company long with so relentless, rugged, and exacting a mistress as the law! As a curious illustration of the abstraction and reverie which so often absorbed the poet, he told me that Mr. Petigru sent him on one occasion to take a message to a certain Factor on the Bay. But as ill-luck would have it, when he had gone half way he found he had forgotten, if indeed he ever really knew, the message entrusted to his care. What was to be done ? He could only return, and, with as bold a face as possible, acknow ledged his misfortune. " On his doing so, Mr. Petigru saluted him, very much excited, in his highest squeaking voice, ( Why Harry, you are a fool! And, added our poet friend to me, I would have been a fool to 22 MEMOIR OF HENRY -TIMROD. Chitty and Blackstone, and determined to renew his classical studies, so as to make himself competent as a College Pro fessor or a Tutor in families. This he conscientiously did, and in due time, no Professorship opening to him, he ac cepted the post of teacher of children in the household of a Carolina planter, with whom he remained for several con secutive seasons. Henceforth, for a decade at least, the labors of a tutor were the sole means upon which he relied for subsistence. He went from household to household, faithfully instructing the youths placed under him ; longing often, no doubt, arid passionately longing, for a different field of toil or action ; yet not ungrateful for the leisure hours allowed him, in which he could cultivate his own mind, and exercise his im agination in writing. In this narrow round of simple duties and pleasures, his youth was spent. At times there came to him from the outer world sounds which stirred his deeper heart, and quickened his pulse into momentary unison with that feverish life that he felt was burning beyond him. But he repressed the de sire which even the most languid must feel at intervals, to be of the w T orld, doers as well as thinkers, and travelled along life s common way, conscious only of his own pure aims ; and, perhaps, somewhat dimly conscious as yet of his extraordinary powers. Whenever in spring or winter the holiday season came round, Timrod, forgetting his cares, would joyfully rush down to Charleston to be welcomed by a small coterie of frjends with demonstrative cordiality. Among these was William Gilmore Simms, who delighted Mr. Petigru to the end of my days, even had I revealed in after- lire the genius of a Milton or a Shakspeare ! " MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 23 to gather round him the younger literary men of his acquaint ance, and to discuss with them the thousand and one topics connected with art and letters^ Many and jovial were the "little suppers" of which we partook at his pleasant town residence, none of the guests, perhaps, enjoying themselves as vividly as Timrod, whose excitable temperament, and keenly social proclivities, made his whole heart expand in the companionship of those he loved and trusted. It was at one of these petits soupers that the idea originated of starting a Monthly Magazine in Charleston, which might serve as an exponent of Southern talent and culture. The idea speedily assumed a definite form. An enterprising, intelligent, and popular bookseller then doing business in the city, Mr. John Russell, was induced to take the practical management of the work, which, in honor of its founder, was called "RusseWs Magazine." The editorship devolved upon the present writer, supported by a small corps of clever, but by no means very regular collator ateurs. On the first day of April (ominous coincidence !), the initial number of RusselPx " appeared. It was neatly printed in the style of " Blacks ood, " and the general impression, typo graphical and intellectual, made by it, was certainly favora ble. In the long run, however, a want of capital proved in this case, as it must prove in all similar cases, fatal ! "Eleemosynary literature," as Mr. Sirnins used to call it, can never be permanently maintained ; nor, were that possi ble, would it in all likelihood be worth maintaining. Never theless, we struggled on with the work for years ; nor until the completion of the fourth volume, did we confess our selves beaten, and retire with our defunct "Maga" from the public view. The lost means and labor expended on this Monthly I have always looked upon as counterbalanced by the facilities for publication it afforded to our gifted local 24 MEMOIR OF HENR7 TIMROD. authors ; especially to Timrod, some of whose most charm ing and characteristic poems were composed for its pages. Such, for instance, was The Arctic Voyager," in which we detect for the first time in our author s art, the influence of Tennyson, not superseding, but harmoniously blending with the earlier influence of Wordsworth. Such also, were his "Prceceptor Amat," and "The Rhapsody of a Southern Winter s Night." Among the briefer lyrics carelessly thrown off by him at this period, we find in "Russell s" the frag ment of a song faithfully reflecting one of those sombre moods, which, owing to circumstances rather than tempera ment, were, alas ! too frequent with him. It is in a loose, reckless measure, rhythmically unlike any other production of the writer, and since this volume does not include it, we will quote the lines. They have a psychological, if not poetical, significance: " Is it gone forever, my gay spring time ? Shall I never be as I was then And this dead heart which once beat so wildly, Who shall wake it can it wake again ? " From the sea where joy lies buried, shall not Something like its shadow flutter up ? The bright wine of life, I quaffed so madly. Hath it left no sweetness in the cup ? " Yet it is not that my youth has perished If I count by years I am not old ; Of that youth I stripped the buds too early, And its leafless stein is all I hold. " Oh ! doth no new Autumn yet await me ? Thus I question Fate, but Fate is mute. Is it Autumn ? where is Autumn s foliage, And its golden store of luscious fruit ? " MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 25 In the same periodical we find a few specimens of Tim rod s powers as a prose essayist and critic. Discussing that venerable question, " What is Poetry ? " he shows a strong, clear judgment, and a thorough appreciation of his subject in all its phases. "As we recall," he says, "the various attempts to de scribe, in a single definition, those operations of the human niind upon itself and the world without, which, wcarnatedw language, we term poetry, we are reminded of a childish search, actually commenced by ourselves, after the pot of gold which is said to Ite buried at the foot of the rainbows. " Elsewhere he remarks : "Poetry does not deal in pure abstractions. However abstract be his thought, the poet is compelled, by his passion- fused imagination, to give it life, form, or color. Hence the necessity of employing the sensuous or concrete words of the language, and hence the exclusion of long words, which in English are nearly all purely and austerely abstract, from the poetic vocabulary. Whenever a poet drags a number of these words into his verse, we say that he is prosaic ; meaning by this, not that he has written prose, nor that he is simply deficient in spirit and vivacity; but that he has not used the legitimate language of poetry ; he has written something which is only distinguished from the ordinary dead-level of unimpassioned prose by the feet upon which it crawls." And again: "The ground of the poetic character is a more than ordinary sensibility. From this characteristic of the poet results what we regard as an essential characteristic of poetry, namely, the medium of strong emotion through which poetry looks at its objects, and in which, to borrow a chemical metaphor of Arthur Hallam, it holds them all fused. Hence, again, is derived a third peculiarity in the 26 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. language of poetry, which, with a difference in the degree, not the Mnd,of its force arising from an imagination more than visually vivid is the language natural to men in a state of excitement, is sensuous* picturesque, and impas sioned! " From these extracts, and the extracts about to follow, an imperfect glimpse may be obtained of the writer s poetic creed. Timrod, as was natural with a disciple of Wordsworth, enthusiastically admired the Sonnet. He defends it against .the assaults of a large body of depreciators with admirable skill and effect. "The Sonnet," he begins, "has been called artificial. It is artificial, but only as all forms of verse are artificial. There are persons who imagine poetry to be the result of a sort of mystical inspiration, scarcely to be subjected to the bounds of time or space ! Others, regarding it as the outgushing of a present emotion, cannot conceive how the poet, carried on by the divine afflatus, should always contrive to rein in his Pegasus at a certain goal. All this is ridiculous ! If the poet have his hour of inspiration (though we are so sick of the cant of which this word has been the fruitful source, that we dislike to use it), it is not during the act of composition. "A distinction must be made between the moment when the great thought first breaks upon the mind, Leaving in the brain A rocking and a ringing/ and the hour of patient, elaborate execution. It is in the conception only that the poet is the Kates ! In the labor of putting that conception into words, he is simply the artist. MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 27 "A great poet lias defined poetry to be emotion recol lected in tranquillity. No man with grief in his heart could sit straightway down to strain that grief through i:>ml>ics! No man exulting in a delirium of joy, ever bul> bles into anapaests ! Were this so, the poet would be the most wonderful of improvisators ; and perhaps poetry would be no better than what improvisations usually are. " There can be no doubt that much of the most passionate verse in the English, or any other language, has been Thoughtfully fitted to the Orphean lyre/ " The act of composition is indeed attended with an emo tion peculiar to itself and to the poet : and this emotion is sufficient of itself to give a glow and richness to the poet s language ; yet it leaves him, at the same time, in such com mand of his faculties, that he is able to choose his words almost as freely, though by no means as deliberately, as the painter chooses his colors. "We are inclined to think that the emotion of the poet somewhat resembles in its metaphysical character those in explicable feelings with which we all witness a tragic per formance on the stage feelings which, even while they rend the heart, are always attended by a large amount of vivid pleasure. "It would be easy to multiply quotations in confirmation of our remarks. Wordsworth speaks of himself as Not used to make A present joy the matter of his song ; and Matthew Arnold separates, as we have separated, the hour of insight from the hour of labor. 28 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. We cannot kindle when we will That fire which in the heart resides ; The spirit bloweth, and is still ; In mystery our soul abides : But tasks in hours of insight willed, May le through hours of gloom fulfilled "Is it not also a significant fact that the best love-verses have been written by men who, at the time of writing them, had long passed that age during which love is warmest, and the heart most susceptible ? "The very restriction so much complained of in the Sonnet, the artist knows to be an advantage. It forces him to condensation, and if it sometimes induces a poetaster to stretch a thought to the finest tenuity, what argument is that against the Sonnet ? As well might Jones object to the violin of Paganini, because Smith, his neighbor, is a wretched fiddler! " The Sonnet is designed, as it is peculiarly fitted, for the development of a single thought, emotion, or picture. " It is governed by another law not less imperative than that which determines its length. We know not how else to characterize it but as the law of unity ! In a poem made up of a series of stanzas, the thought in the first stanza sug gests the thought in the second, and both may be equally important. The concluding stanza may have wandered as far in its allusions from the opening stanza, as the last from the first sentence in an essay. In other words, the poet has the liberty of rambling somewhat, if his fancy so dispose him. "Now, in the Sonnet this suggestive progress from one MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 29 thought to another is inadmissible. It mmt consist of one leading idea around which the others are grouped for pur poses of illustration only. "We claim for the Sonnet, as represented in English literature, a proud distinction. We could gather from it a greater body of tersely expressed and valuable thought, than from any equal quantity of those fugitive verses, the laws of which are less exacting. It abounds in those great thoughts, grave thoughts, which, embodied in lines of wonderful pregnancy, haunt the memory forever. Brief as the Sonnet is, the whole power of a poet has sometimes been exemplified within its narrow bounds as completely as within the compass of an epic ! Thought is independent of space ; and it would hardly be an exaggera tion to say that the poet the minister of thought enjoys an equal independence. 11 To-day, his stature reaches the sky; to-morrow, he will shut himself up in the bell of a tulip or the cup of a lily I " In 1860, a small volume, comprising the best of Tirnrod s verses, produced during the eight or nine years previous, was issued by Ticknor & Fields, of Boston. A better first volume of the kind has seldom appeared anywhere. It was welcomed outside the author s immediate circle by a few cultivated Southern editors, and some even of the critics of the North did not hesitate to commend it. For example, " The Tribune" said: "These poems are "vorthy of a wide audience. They form a welcome offering to the common literature of our country. The author, whose name promises to be better known from this specimen of his powers, betrays a genuine poetic instinct in the selection 30 MEMOIR OF HENRT TIMROD. of his themes, and has treated them with a lively, delicate fancy, and a graceful beauty of expression." * The most elaborate performance in this book, indeed the longest poem Tinirod ever wrote, is called "A Vision of Poesy." Its purpose is to show, in the subtle development of a highly gifted imaginative nature, the true laws which underlie and determine the noblest uses of the poetical faculty. Fhe subject is one of difficulty, demanding for its successful treatment not only an originally comprehensive and subtle mind, but no little knowledge of psychological truths, and the philosophy of intellectual growth. Imagination, descriptive capacity, and metaphysical in sight are active in elucidating the theme ; and the result is a generally pleasing and impressive work, marred, however, by a too evident lack of harmony and unity of parts, proceed- * Such comparatively slender recognition as this, of course fell short of the poet s anticipations of success. - Apropos of this volume, a kindly but discerning critic observes : " The book was full of promise; it gave evidence of consider able culture, of a lively fancy, a delicate, and at times vigorous imagination, and a rare artistic power. Yet it fell almost dead from the press ! " The few who had real critical taste, a genuine and native appreciation of excellence, felt and expressed their admiration ; but the public had no niche for him, not, at least, until he had achieved success, and success was to him a bitter need, for not his living merely, but his life was staked upon it ! " And the disappointment was peculiarly keen, because just at this juncture his other resources had failed. He had surrendered everything to his art. "He had hoped, earnestly and justly, to make a little rift through which the light of popular favor might steal, and now- only clouds and shadows were closing round him." From a Lec ture 0*1 Timrod, and his Poetry, by Dr. J. Dickson Bruns. : MEMOIR OF RENRY TIMROD. 31 ing from the fact that the narrative was composed in sec tions, and after the lapse of periods so long between the different louts of composition, that much of the original fervor of both conception and execution must have evapor ated.* The metrical form of "The Vision" is well chosen, and admirably managed. It is that employed by Shakspeare in his "Venus and Adonis," by Spenser in his " Astrophel," and Cowley in his least ambiguous verses; being, briefly, the elegiac metre, with its alternate rhyme, so warmly defended by Dryden, ending in the terseness of the rhyming couplet, in which the picture should be closed, or the sense clinched. But. of course, the chief merit of "The Vision" is to be found in the unfolding of its leading idea. To accomplish this, Timrod has introduced a story of the mental progress of a youth, possessed of brilliant poetic gifts, which are partially nullified, in the end, by the joint operation of mis taken views of his art, and a morbid subjectivity of nature, fatal to the acknowledgment of his genius by humanity at large. The story is divided into three Parts ; each devoted to some particular phase of its hero s experience. As the boy s "mystical thought," his desire to compre hend something of the secrets of the Universe, suddenly bursts into utterance, he turns to his mother, she who had taught him that "most beautiful of all things" speech, saying : * After all, "The Vision of Poe^y" cannot be considered as in any sense a mature effort. Excepting a few passages which declare themselves to the in telligent reader, the poem was written at a comparatively early 32 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. " But, mother ! while our human words are rife To us with meaning, other sounds there be, Which seem and are the language of a life Around, yet unlike ours winds talk, the sea Murmurs articulately, and the sky Listens and answers, tho inaudibly. " By stream and spring, in glades and woodlands lone, Beside our very cot I ve gathered flowers Inscribed with signs and characters unknown , But the frail scrolls still baffle all my powers : What is this language, and where is the key That opes its weird and wondrous mystery ? " The poor mother, from whom sordid cares and a life-time of the trouble which attaches to material toil had removed her own childhood and its visions, very far away, is first puzzled, and then alarmed, by these strange questionings. She recalls a marvel that attended her child s birth, once considered an omen of good, but now converted by super stitious fancy into a curse and prophecy of disaster ! Trem ulously she tells her son this story of his birth-night. Thenceforth the boy keeps his strange imaginings, which he perceives cannot be understood, locked in the depths of his own consciousness. Meanwhile, the quiet days speed on, and in due course of time the thoughtful boy blossoms into youth. " The "dream" which had haunted his childhood becomes the " deathless need " of his maturer years. A spirit of unrest, yet of beauty, it drives him to seek the heart of lonely forests, and to wander over distant hills. He communes, not only with the waters, the sky, and the flowers, but becomes the familiar of those wild creatures to whom the sight of ordinary men brings terror and dismay : MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 33 " The eagle knew him as she knew the blast, And the deer did not flee him as he passed." There is a particular nook in the forest, to which the youth continually repairs. One night he comes to his favor ite spot. The trees, high and hushed, " rise solemnly about him, and " Silent, but not as slumbering, all things there Wore to the youth s aroused imagination An air of deep and solemn expectation." The presentiment is not a vain instinct merely, for there the Spirit of Poesy reveals herself to him, and in burning words she speaks of the glory, dignity, and loveliness of her divine art and mission. This is, I think, the most thoughtful and highly-wrought portion of the poem. Part the Second forms the connecting link between the opening and the concluding events of the poet s career. It is written in blank verse, and with characteristic care and skill. Here is a specimen of its felicity of style : " The story came to me it recks not whence In fragments. Oh ! if I could tell it all If human speech indeed could tell it all Twere not a whit less wondrous, than if I Should find, untouched in leaf and stem, and bright As when it bloomed three thousand years ago On some Idalian slope, a perfect rose. Alas ! a leaf or two, and they perchance Scarce worth the hiving one or two dead leaves Are the sole harvest of a summer s toil." 34 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. " I have heard /Somewhere of some dead monarch, from the tomb, WJiere Tie had slept a century and more, Brought forth, that when the coffin was laid bare, Albeit the body in its mouldering robes Was fleshless, yet one feature still remained Perfect, or perfect seemed at least ; the eyes Gleamed for a second on the startled crowd, And then went out in ashes ! * Even thus, The story, when I drew it from the grave, Wliere it had lain so long, did seem, I thought, Not wholly lifeless ; but even while I gazed, To fix its features on my heart, and called The world to wonder with me, lo ! it proved Hooked upon a corpse ! " As for the poet himself, he goes into " the busy world to seek his fate." In many lands, and to many peoples he sings Of all he thought, and all he dreamed and hoped But or because the people were intent * Tennyson, in his "Aylmer s Field/ a tale which appeared after the publication of " The Vision," makes use of this very image, as follows : " Dust are our frames ; and gilded dust, our pride Looks only for a moment whole and sound ; Like that long-buried body of the king Found lying with his arms and ornaments, Which at a touch of light, an air of heaven, Slipt into ashes and was found no more." Of these two verses, assuredly that of the younger and obscurer poet is the more striking. MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 35 On other themes, or they were not prepared To dream his dreams, or think the thoughts he thought, Or that not being as other men, he touched No chord that vibrated from heart to heart, The peoples would not hear, or hearing, turned And went their way unheedful ! " Thus the inevitable climax approaches, failure, disappoint ment, death. A love "not wisely placed," a genius not wisely directed, these induce a " sickness of the soul," and, gray before his time, his ideals shattered, and his true pas sion unappreciated, if not scorned, the poet seeks his ancient home, in order that he may look on its beloved scenes again before he himself is called hence, to be beheld of men no more. There is something in this description of the bard s latter and darker days ; of his mournful disenchantment, his mild, yet profound despair, which is singularly pathetic; the more pathetic indeed, as the catastrophe, losing for an in stant its idealism, becomes, as it were, half subjective in its nature, and points to the author s own melancholy doom! With the instinct of right art and genuine feeling, Timrod has taken care not to make his hero a bitter misanthrope, nor to leave him skeptical of the joy and glory "which may hereafter be revealed." Even his poetic work and mission are portrayed as not utterly barren and fruitless. Exalted is the moral, beautiful the philosophy embodied in these concluding lines; if " Thy life hath not been wholly without use, Albeit that use is partly hidden now. In thy unmingled scorn of any truce . With tliis world s specious falsehoods, often thou 36 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. Hast uttered through some all unworldly song, Truths that for man might else have slumbered long. " And these not always vainly on the crowd Have fallen ; some are cherished now, and some, In mystic phrases wrapped as in a shroud, Wait the diviner, who as yet is dumb Upon the breast of God the gate of birth Closed on a dreamless ignorance of earth. " And therefore, though thy name shall pass away, Even as a cloud that hath ioept all its showers, Yet as that cloud shall live again one day In the glad grass and in the happy flowers ; So in thy thoughts, though clothed in sweeter rhymes, Thy life shall bear its flowers in future times ! " Of the minor poems which followed " The Vision," it is unnecessary to speak in detail. The ablest of them have been included in the present edition. iWe now come to the period of the War, during the first months of which Timrod remained chiefly in Charleston, serv ing his country a thousand times more effectually with his }pen, than he could possibly have served her with his sword. It was in 1861 that he inaugurated that remarkable series of poems, suggested by the incidents of the great conflict, tragic or triumphant, in which he struck a higher and firmer note than any hitherto elicited from his lyre. "Ethnogenesis" is the worthy leader of these sustained and earnest strains. The dignity and calmness of its tone, cov ering unsounded depths of ardor and enthusiasm ; its subtle grace of imagination, feeling, and imagery, and the crisp purity of the versification are so artistically blended in this ODE, that one cannot criticise, but must simply and hon- MEMOIR OF HENRY TTMROD. 37 estly admire it ! The concluding stanza cannot now be road, at least by any Southerner, without a yearning and passion ate regret. How the Poet s cordial sympathetic temper re veals itself in these lines, which came more naturally to him :han visions of violence and blood ! " But let our fears if fears we have be still, And turn us to the future ! Could we climb Some mighty Alp, and view the coming time, The rapturous sight would fill Our eyes with happy tears ! Not only for the glories which the years Shall bring us ; not for lands from sea to sea, And wealth, and power, and peace, though these shall be ; But for the distant peoples we shall bless, And the hushed murmurs of a world s distress ; For, to give labor to the poor, This whole sad planet o er, And save from want and crime the humblest door, Is one among the many ends for which God makes us great and rich ! The hour perchance is not yet wholly ripe When all shall own it, but the type Whereby we shall be known in every land, Is that vast Gulf which laves 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 ! " That resonant lyric,- " A Call toArms^" succeeded " Ethno- genesis." It contains one of the few palpable conceits I can recall, which would seem hot merely admissible, but charm ing. And next appeared aTyrtae an strain indeed, I mean the 38 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. lines on " Carolina ; " lines destined perhaps to outlive the political vitality of the State, whose antique fame they cele brate. I read them first, and was thrilled by their power and pathos, upon a stormy March evening in Fort Suniter ! Walking along the battlements, under the red light of a tem pestuous 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 fly ing 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 1 And roar with all thy festal guns ! It is the answer of thy sons ! Carolina ! " At last, influenced by these and other poems of kindred force and fire, the public awoke to a sense of Timrod s unu sual merit. Towards the close of 18G2, a project was formed in Charleston, with the view of having an illustrated and highly embellished edition of Timrod s works published in MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 39 the city of London. Vizetelli, an Englishman of Italian blood, and an artist of some eminence, then the Southern AVur Correspondent of " The London News," offered to sup ply original illustrations of his own ; and so warm was the support the proposition met with from some of the chief men and most opulent merchants of the State, that but little doubt was entertained of its immediate and practical realiza tion.* The poet, now in jubilant spirits, collected all the compo sitions of which his taste approved, and had them printed near him, so that correct proof-sheets might be sent to the publishers across the Ocean. Among his war-lyrics he placed some poems, also lately written, of a more subjective tone and character, for example "Katie," and "An Exotic;" both of which, from their references to English history, scenery, and manners, were likely to be appreciated in the mother land." Tho former ("Katie") is dedicated to the lady whom Timrod subsequently married ; and is full of charm ing details of her girlish walks through the streets of old Bury St. Edmunds ; and of her innocent holiday pastime in the lovely country around it. The piece is almost pre- Rapliaelite in the delicious minuteness of its word-painting. But alas! that evil Fortune, that haunted our poet from the cradle to the grave, that never left him for a season, but to return darker, grimmer, more ruthless than before ; de creed that the publication scheme, which had aroused his best hopes and energies, by promising to make his genius known in the great centre of English literary art, should prove but a mockery and delusion after all ! * The intention, we learn, was " to present this edition to the author ; the object being to bring him, in the highest style, before the world, and at the same time to secure to him a modest compe tence." 40 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. In the hurry and pressure of great events, the solitary singer, "pipe he never so sweetly and boldly," was quite forgotten. Those gentlemen who had played the kindly role of patrons, found their own weightier interests, and no doubt the in terests of the Commonwealth, endangered; therefore what more natural than the consignment by them of the poet s expectations to that region of "Limbo," which is said to engulf so many vows unredeemed, and visions unful filled ? " Although no reason was ever given to Timrod, for the abandonment of this scheme, he could form his own con jectures on the subject. Every hour his once bright an ticipations grew duller, until ultimately they smouldered out, one by one, in the anguish, solitude, and bitterness of his soul.* * Years afterwards Timrod, on two occasions, alludes (in his correspondence) to the manner in which the scheme had died out. " The great plan," he writes, " for publishing an illustrated edi tion of my poems has (/ believe) evaporated in smoke ! So fades, so languishes, grows dim and dies, the hope of every poet who has not money ! " In another, and more recent letter, he thus refers to the subject : " The project of publishing my poems in England has been silently but altogether dropped! An unspeakable disappointment! but I try to bear my lot the lot," he adds, with a momentary bitter ness, "of all impecunious poets." Next to the poet himself, this disappointment in regard to the English edition of his works, fell most heavily upon his mother. Perhaps in HER case, the disappointment was even greater, since, , in extreme old age, she could scarcely look forward to the sharing of any possible literary triumph of her son in the future. The mention of her here, gives us the opportunity of quoting some passages from an interesting letter descriptive of this lady s MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 41 It was soon after the bloody and desperate battle of Shiloh, that Timrod joined the army of the West, as "War Corre spondent" of the Charleston "Mercury." family, her character, intellect, etc., written by one who knew her in all the most sacred and intimate relations of existence. Such as read them may think that our former assertion, or rather, inference, that the poet s genius was wholly derived from his father, ought to be considerably qualified. " Henry Timrod s mother was the daughter of Mr. Charles Prince, a citizen of Charleston, S. C., and one of whom, at his death, my father said, he was the most upright and honest man I ever knew. " Mr. Prince was the son of English parents, who emigrated to Carolina just before the breaking out of the Eevolution. "He married a Miss French, whose father, of the Swiss family of French, came over from Switzerland, and fought as an officer of Republican artillery, during the whole war." ******** * "My father (Win. H. Timrod), at the early age of nineteen, married Miss Prince, then a young and beautiful girl of six teen or seventeen. The perfection of her face and form caught the poet s fancy ; the perfection of her character won and kept his HEART through the twenty-six years of their married life. " It was from her, more than from his gifted father, that" my brother (Henry Timrod) derived that intense, passionate love of Nature which so distinguished him. Its sights and sounds always afforded her extreme delight. Shall I ever forget the almost childish rapture she testified, when, after a residence in the pent- up city all her life, she removed with me to the country ? A walk in the woods to her was food and drink, and the sight of a green field was joy inexpressible. " From my earliest childhood, I can remember her love for flowers and trees and for the stars ; how she would call our atten tion to the glintings or the sunshine through the leaves ; to the afternoon s lights and shadows, as they slept quietly, side by side; and even to a streak of moonlight on the floor. 42 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. "The story," says Dr. Bruns, in his masterly Lecture on the Poet and his genius, " the story of his camp life would furnish a theme for mirth, if our laughter were not choked by tears! One can scarcely conceive a situation more hope lessly wretched than that of this child, as it were, suddenly flung down into the heart of that stormy retreat, and tossed like a straw on the crest of those crimson waves, from which he escaped as by a miracle." Out of the refluent tides of blood, from under the smoke of conflict, and the sickening fumes of slaughter, he stag gered homeward, half blinded, bewildered, with a dull red mist before his eyes, and a shuddering horror at heart. But now, as if some beneficent spirit, who had long wit nessed his troubles, and also the calm, brave front of patience wherewith he opposed them, had resolved that at the last, some sweetness should be mingled with the wormwood of his life, he exchanged the turmoil of his recent deadly expe rience, for what to him must have seemed, by comparison, a very Eden of peace and happiness ! Removing to Columbia, S. 0., whither his family had pre ceded him, he" was enabled to become (but through Avhat precise means I cannot tell) part proprietor and associate editor of the " South Carolinian^ 1 a daily paper, published " She would sit absorbed, watching the tree-branches as they waved in the wind, and say, Don t they seern to be whispering to each other in a language of their own ? " To this strong love of Nature, she added so correct a judgment in all things ; so much sound practical sense ; such self-abnega tion and entire devotion to those she loved ; and such sweetness, forbearance, gentleness, that I think I can truly say, she was one of the most perfect characters I ever knew ! " Her children loved her with a devotion rarely given even to parents." MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 43 in the Capital, which promised to yield him a moderate, and what Avns better still, a permanent support. Thus provided for, as he fondly believed, Timrod saAv the possibility of realizing what had long been the dearest Avish of his soul. Miss Kate GoodAvin, the "Katie" of hijs poetic visions, she Avhose charms are embalmed in his delicate yet glowing Averse, came to this country from England in the spring of I860. She accompanied her father, w r ho came to visit his son (Mr. George M. GoodAvin, long settled as a mer chant in Charleston, S. C., and married to one of Henry Timrod s sisters), and also, in accordance with his physician s advice, Avho stated that a voyage across the Atlantic, and a residence of some months in a semi-Tropical latitude, might entirely re-establish his health. The change, however, did not benefit him, for he died three months after his arrival. The choice was then presented to Miss GoodAvin of remain ing with her brother s family, or of returning to England with her stepmother. She chose the former ; and thus it happened that the poet Avas often thrown into her society. On the 12th of January, 1864, our poet came to the State Capital, prepared to assume his duties as editor, and in little more than a month, that is to say, on the 16th of the ensuing February, he married Miss Goodwin,- taking his bride to a humble home, but one glorified, I venture to say, by antici pations as bright, pure, and ardent as ever flushed the fancy and elevated the heart of the richest and most prosperous of bridegrooms. It is pleasant to dwell upon his honeymoon, and the few months immediately succeeding it ; to picture his cheerful walks from his home to the office, and from the office to his home again. He proved himself a judicious and able editor, and his indiu.iry never flagged. Once or twice during these comparatively halcyon days, 44 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. I received aff ectionate letters from him ; but amid his in cessant occupations he could do no more than give me an outline of his employments, prospects, and occasional business annoyances, which latter, however, as I gathered from his tone, were never permitted to ruffle his serene domestic atmosphere. "All the poetry in my nature," wrote he, "has been fagged out of me, I fear! I work very hard. Besides writing the * leaders of the paper, I often descend, as you may have noticed, into the local columns. My pur pose is to show that a poet can drudge as well as a duller man, and . therefore I don t complain! But, O God! for leisure enough to breathe, although at rarest intervals, the air of the Aonian mount! By the way," he inquires in the same note, "What think you of the War? Shall we ever see its end, favorable or unfavorable, glorious or fatal? Its end, deuce take me ! but I sometimes fear it has been like the end of the Irishman s rope cut off! " Another end, at least, was imminent, the end of his own hard-won quiet ; his independence and partial prosperity. But just on the verge of the catastrophe, an intense joy was granted him. Upon Christmas Eve, 1864, his son WILLIE was born ! a child of unusual promise, and of a beauty described as exquisite. In a communication all couleur de rose, bubbling over with pride and delight, he says, * At length, my dear P , we stand upon the same height of paternity quite a celestial elevation to me ! If you could only see my boy ! Everybody wonders at him! He is so transparently fair; so ethereal! " A few weeks of dalliance with his infant beauty ; of un disturbed calm in the little nest of a home he had reared for himself and his wife, and then came fearful reports of inva sion; the rapid, overwhelming march of the enemy, and upon the 17th of February, 1865 (just one year and a day, MEMOIR OF HENRY TIM ROD. 45 since Timrod s marriage), the devoted city of Columbia was given up to the mercies of Sherman and his troops. What followed is known to all the conflagration, the sack, the universal terror and despair! As one whose vigor ous, patriotic editorials had made him obnoxious to Federal vengeance, Timrod was forced, while this foreign army occu pied the town, to remain concealed. When they left, he rejoined his anxious "womankind," to behold, in common with thousands of others, such a scene of desolation as mor tal eyes have seldom dwelt upon. An imperfect glimpse of his condition; of what he did and suffered for the next twelvemonth, may be obtained from this letter, addressed to me, and dated " Columbia, March 30 tf, 18G6: My dear P : Nothing has come to me for the past year which has given me such pleasure as your letter of the instant. I am overjoyed to renew our correspondence. "Dear old fellow! heart and hand, body, soul, and spirit, I am still yours ! " I have the right poet s inclination to plunge in media* res. You ask me to tell you my story for the last year. I can embody it all in a few words: beggary, starvation, death,* Utter grief, utter want of hope ! But let me be a little more particular, that you may learn where I stand. You know, I suppose, that the Sherman raid destroyed my business. Since that time I have been residing with my sister, Mrs. Goodwin. Both my sister and myself are completely impoverished. We have lived for a long period, and are still living, on the pro ceeds of the gradual sale of furniture and plate. We have * Five months before, on the 23d of October, 1865, Timrod s idolized child was taken from him. He died somewhat suddenly. In that little grave, a large portion of the father s heart was buried. The poet was never quite his old self again. 46 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. let me see ! yes, we have eaten two silver pitchers, one or two dozen silver forks, several sofas, innumerable chairs, and a huge bedstead ! ! " Until December, I had no employment. Mr. passed through Columbia in November on his way to the sea-board. He called on me, informed me that he was going to re-estab lish his paper in Charleston, and promised that I should have my old interest in it. "On reaching Charleston, he started The Carolinian^ and soon he wrote me (but addressing me as a mere employe), and offering a salary of fifteen dollars a week for daily edito rials. Necessity compelled me to accept this offer. I have now hacked on for four months, and as yet have failed to receive a single month s pay. " The plain truth is, Mr. can t pay ! He made a grave mistake in carrying his paper to Charleston. Under the shadow of the News and Courier, it is languishing, and must die ! What I am going to do, I can t imagine. As for supporting myself and a large family wife, mother, sister and nieces, by literary work tis utterly pre posterous ! "In a forlorn-hope sort of mood, and as a mere experi ment, I forwarded some poems in my best style to certain Northern periodicals, and in every instance they were coldly declined. So all hope of thus turning my rhymes into bread must be resigned." Whereupon, with a self-mocking spurt of humor, he adds, " Little Jack Horner, who sang for his supper, and got his plum cake, was a far more lucky minstrel than I am ! * * * To confess the truth, my dear P , I not only feel that I can write no more verse, but I am perfectly indifferent to the fate of what I have already composed. I would consign every line of it to eternal oblivion, for one hundred dollars in hand /***** MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 4? 44 1 can tell you nothing about Charleston, although in February, having a free Railroad ticket, I went down and spent three days there. My eyes were blind to everything and everybody but a few old friends. I dined with Bruns ; had a night of it at Henry Raymond s, and went to see the lions in the circus! The sum of this small experience of my native town is, that the people are generally impoverished, sulfering, de spondent, with all the spring and elasticity taken out of them. * * * * My wife has been very sick. Her low condition of health, indeed, makes me continually anxious." A fair conception of Timrod s editorial style its pic- turesqucness and beauty, allied to much quiet power, may be obtained by a perusal of three brief articles of his, published in " The Carolinian." The first of these, evidently composed during the closing days of the war, is called "THE ALABAMA." " The bones of the noble Alabama, full fathom five under the English channel, have, perchance, long ere this, suffered a sea change into something rich and strange. Precious jewels these bones would be if they could be fished up now yet not, thank Heaven, of that sort of value which would make our Destructive friends think it worth while to bring them into the Admiralty courts. A Southron might possibly be permitted to treasure a shell-covered rib, without fear of having it torn from him by the myrmidons of the law. And well might that Southron well indeed might the citizen of any section of the United States, if he would consider the matter magnanimously cherish any relic that could be recovered of this dead lioness of the seas. For what a won derful history was hers! A single ship matched against one 48 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. of the mightiest navies of the world, yet keeping the ocean in defiance of all pursuit for we forget how many years ! Flitting like a phantom across the waters, appearing at aston ishingly short intervals in the most opposite quarters of the globe, we used to follow her track with something of that weird interest which was wont to thrill us in our boyhood when poring over a tale of the ghostly Dutchman of the Cape. At one time lost in the fogs of the Northern Atlantic, at another popping up in the region of the trade winds, scat tering dismay among the clippers ; and anon, far away in the direction of the dawn, where much more precious spoil might be reaped, or, if not reaped, then consigned to that vast locker of which the mythic Davy of the sailor, is said to keep the key such were the reports that reached us from month to month of this almost ubiquitous vessel. Now we heard, perhaps, that, in the neighborhood of the Golden Cher- sonesus, or under the rich shores of that utmost Indian isle Toprobane, some homeward-bound Englishman had been startled by the dull boom of guns across the billows, while a red light upon the horizon informed him that the Alabama was illuminating those remote seas with the fires of Confede rate revenge ; and, again a little later, it was bruited from port to port that fihe was speeding across the main haply amazing the gentle islanders of the Pacific with the gleam of her beautiful but unfamiliar flag to complete the circuit of her awful mission with the destruction of a few treasure ships of the Ophir of the West ! The repeated achievement of the adventure has rendered the circumnavigation of the globe in these modern days a commonplace thing; but there w as that in the errand upon which the Alabama was bound, which reinvested the voyage with its old romance ; so that, in accompanying the Southern cruiser upon her various paths, we used to experience a feeling somewhat resembling MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 49 that imaginative one which WORDSWORTH has expressed in these deep-toned lines : Almost as it was when ships were rare, From time to time, like pilgrims, here and there, Crossing the waters, doubt and something dark, Of the old sea some reverential fear, Were with us as we watched thee, noble bark. " The career of the Alabama was worthily closed. Chal lenged by a foe more powerful than herself, she sallied forth bravely to battle and went down in the sight of the coast of one people and of the ships of another, who each knew liov to admire the valor which she had displayed. What a pity and what a wonder it is that the same generous appreciation of her glorious story, and its not less glorious end, is not- shared in the country which enshrines the name of LAW RENCE ! Who could believe, that did not know it, that we Southrons are expected by those who call us brethren to re member this gallant* ship only as a corsair, and its venerated commander as a pirate." The two others, written at a later date, some months in fact after the surrender at Apponiattox, are certainly fine speci mens of "poetic prose." "SPRING S LESSONS." "Spring, thank Heaven, is not subject to radical rule, or pregnable to radical intrigues ; otherwise, she would certainly be proscribed, outlawed or expatriated by Thaddeus Stevens and his crew. For Spring is a true reconstructionist a re- constructionist 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 50 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 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 re-clothe 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, and you will reap a reward to which the yellow water, talking bird, and the singing tree of the fairy tale, are not to be compared. 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 reno vation in the shape of flowers ; she hangs once more in our blasted gardens the fragrant lamps of the jessamine ; in the streets, she kindles the maple like a beacon announcing peace ; 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 con vey ? It may be summed in a single sentence forgetfulness of the past, effort in the present, and trust for the future ! " "NAMES OF THE MONTHS PHONETICALLY EX PRESSIVE." "Talking of the offices of March and April, reminds us of a fancy of ours which we desire to record. It will, however, * Columbia, S. C. MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 51 find no sympathy from those who rend words with the eye, or hear them with the ear alone. We speak only to the rare few who possess an inner sense of which the common world knows nothing. The fancy is that each month has a name phonetically expressive (to their inner sense, mark you) of its character. For example, the winds seem to us to rum ble in the word March as audibly as they did in the cave of J2olus. April falls from the tongue like silver rain. AVI i at name but May could be fitly given to that beautiful, blue- eyed, and exquisitely feminine month ? June, sounded with the proper depth of tone, is exactly like the humming of bees. The wings of millions of insects and the rustle of innumerable leaves may be found in the w^ords July and August. September whistles through more than its initial let ter like an autumnal gale. October has a royal soundj that fills the mouth like Napoleon or Plantagenet. It is a name worthy of that imperial month, whose gorgeous sunsets and magnificent woods indicate its supremacy both in earth and sky. We have Burns authority for asserting that Novem ber chill blows loud with angry sough. Lastly, he to whom the mere syllables of December, January and February do not suggest all that belongs to Winter its cheerful firesides as well as its ice and snow r lacks the organ we address. "With this fancy in our head, we often wonder how those people feel who leave this country or England for the South Temperate zone. Surely, when they see roses in Decem ber, ice in June, they must undergo a moral sensation equivalent to the bodily one produced by standing on one s head." In the winter of 1866 I again heard from him. "COLUMBIA, Nov. 19/fi, 1866. U MY DEAR P : Your letter found me a scribe in the 52 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. Governor s Office, where I work every day from 9 A.M. to 7 P.M. I snatch a moment from my labor to answer your note. Yes ; I have had a sad and hard struggle of it for the past six months, but just as I was about to despair of help from God or man, I received from Governor Orr a temporary appointment as an assistant secretary, or rather, clerk. The appointment is but for a month or so, in order to get through a certain amount of work which crowds upon the depart ment at this time. It ensures me, however, a month" 1 s supply of bread and bacon; that devoured, I ll trust in God that something else will turn up. This last is no conventional remark. I am really learning, P -, to trust in God ! "My health is very wretched. The doctors prescribe change of air, but, of course, that remedy is impossible at present. Both on this account, and to shake hands once more with you, old friend and true heart, I should like to accept the invitation to your home. "But here I must stay like a lugubrious fowl, to scratch for corn. I shall, however, keep your invitation in memory, and as soon as practicable, be assured, I will gladly take a turn or two upon your cot in the country. "You say nothing about Mrs. H , and your boy, Willie! Ah, how ineffably dear that name has become to me now. He (my own lost Willie) was the sweetest child. But every body thought him too ethereal to live, even when he seemed in the most perfect health ! " In the January of 1867, Timrod, addressing his friend, Judge Bryan, says : My term of service in the Executive office ended at the close of the session. It was no child s play. On two occasions I wrote from 10 o clock one morning until the sunrise of the next day (a brief intermission for dinner being allowed). MEMOIR OF HENRY TIM ROD. 53 " A laborious life, yet not half so laborious, after all, as having nothing to do ! " The wages of the office I held barely sufficed to feed our family. We had still to depend upon the sale of furniture and plate for rent. On the 24th we must perforce leave the house we now occupy. Tm looking for a small hole to squeeze ourselves in ! " A flitting glimpse of hope had, some months before, beguiled him in the shape of an invitation from the pub lisher, Mr. Richardson, then on a visit to the South, to leave his home troubles awhile, and to become his (Mr. R. s) guest in New York city. Something, too, was rather vaguely said of the Publisher s willingness to undertake an edition of a few of Timrod s selected poems ; but the chronic im- pecuniosity of the latter made void the whole plan as soon almost as conceived. I can never cease to regret this ; for had Timrod made the personal acquaintance of some among the New York and Boston Literati, it is quite possible that his fate would have been wholly different. Such high hearted men as Bryant, Whipple, Holmes, and Whittier, would have recognized equally the genius of the man, and his modest worth and purity of temperament. Some bene ficent suggestion, some practical help might have reached him from them ; since the fact that in a special sense he was the poet of his section, could have weighed in their estima tion but little against the claims of his intellect, his cha racter, and, I may add, his undeserved misfortunes. * * * In the April of 1867 I received a note from my friend in which he says that my long-standing invitation to the country would soon be answered by him personally. " Our watchful Doctor," he proceeds, "has been urging me more persist ently than ever to change the air. I shall obey him. You tempt me, dear P , not only with your light, bracing, 54 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. aromatic pine-land atmosphere the very thing I need and with the happy prospect of your own society, but you speak of the publishers sending you their new fooks! You can afford to put up with what Mr. Simms really appears to con sider appetizing fare, so unctuously does he refer to it (I mean hog and hominy ) if, mean time, instead of having your imagination starved, it (or she ?) is free to wander in fresh literary pastures. Apropos of literature and rhymsters, I have lately had a modest request preferred me by a committee of Richmond ladies, intent upon establishing a Bazaar, or something, in that city. It was, to write within a fortnight, a poem on the history of Fort Sumter, beginning with the shot at the STAR OF THE WEST, and ending with the elevation of the United States flag over the ruins of the Fort ! ! This poem I was further requested to make long enough to fill eighty printed octavo pages, or it was obligingly qualified less!! Need I say that I respectfully declined to undertake the task?" In less than a week the poet himself had followed his letter. He found me with my family, established in a crazy wooden shanty, dignified as a cottage, near the track of the main Georgia Railroad, and about sixteen miles from Au gusta. Our little apology for a dwelling was perched on the top of a hill, overlooking in several directions hundreds of leagues of pine-barren; there were, as yet, neither garden nor enclosure near it, and a wilder, more desolate, and savage-looking home, could hardly have been seen east of the great prairies. Hither, so to speak, had the eruption of war hurled us ; for our old residence on the beautiful Caro lina coast had been destroyed by fire; the State of our nativity was a blackened, smoking ruin, and we were con sequently grateful for any shelter, however lowly, in which MEMOIR OF HKNRT TIMROD. 55 it was possible to live at peace and in freedom ! Human hearts can be as warm in a shanty, with leaking roof and shutterless windows, as in the palace of the Doges, and in the enthusiasm of the poet s welcome we strove to make amends for the general poverty of his accommodations, and a very perceptible coarseness of the cuisine. But he, poor fellow, had been the victim of privations so much worse, that he cared for none of these things, or rather, he pro fessed (with frequent deep-drawn sighs of relief), to be per fectly content in the mere consciousness of present freedom from anxiety. A month s sojourn in our Robinson Crusoe solitude greatly improved both his strength and spirits. Leisure, saunter- ings through the great balmy pine forest, luxurious explora tions of shadowy glens and valleys, full of exquisite varieties of wild flowers ; the warm, dry, delicious climate which in vited him to take his dolce far niente under the boughs of murmuring trees, outstretched upon a couch of brown pine- needles, as elastic as it was odorous, all promised to bring back his poetical enthusiasm, and to set in genial motion the half frozen springs of his invention and fancy. But his term of holiday was too limited. Circumstances compelled his return to the capital, and there the old, terrible, destructive life of want recommenced. For let it be distinctly and finally understood, that in allud ing to Timrod s poverty I do not mean the factitious poverty of your w r ell-to-do ingrate, whether epicure or gourmand, who, in the midst of substantial plenty, whimpers over a lost paradise of venison, French pates, and champagne, but that frequent actual lack of food, those grim encounters with star vation, which sap the life, chill the heart-blood, madden the brain! ******* * * * In the latter summer-tide of this same year, I 56 MEMOIR OF HENRT TIMROD. 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 hill-sides, 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 depths on depths of reverie, or perhaps of yet more charm ed 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 gloam ing," were the favorite hours of the day with him. He would often apostrophize twilight in the language of Words worth s sonnet : " Hail, twilight ! sovereign of one peaceful hour 1 Not dull art thou as undiscerniug night ; But only studious to remove from sight Day s mutable distinctions." "Yes," said he, " she is indeed the sovereign of one peace ful 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 ?) whis pering tranquility! " When in-doors, and disposed to read, he took much pleasure in perusing the poems of Robert Buchanan and Miss Tngelow. The latter s Ballads particularly delighted him. MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 57 One, written "in the old English manner," he quickly learned by heart, repeating it with a relish and fervor inde scribable. 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, ! " 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 au tumnal tints, Timrod took his leave of us. In a conversa tion on the night but one previous to his departure, we had been speaking of Dr. Parr and other literary persons of un usual age, when he observed: " I hav nt the slightest desire, P , to be an octogenarian, far less a centenarian, like old Parr; but I DO hope that I may be spared until I &m 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 Heade gives us in Never too Late to Mendf George Fielding, the hero, is about going away 58 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 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 arm-chair. " 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. It came upon me without a moment s warning, my mouth being filled with blood while I was listening to Wm. Talley talking. " 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 dol lars 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 * When one thinks how little how very little of the " world s gear" would have served to make this most unexacting of mortals content, nay, happy! there is something in the dogged persist ence and cruel energy of the fate which harassed and wounded him along almost every yard of his rugged life-path, that resem bled the virulence of a Greek Nemesis, rather than the chastenings of a benignant Providence. MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 59 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 mo ment. "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! It occurred in the street the blood came in jets from my mouth ; you might have tracked me home in crimson ! 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 01 two from you in return. An awkward time this for me to be sick ! We are desti tute 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 vert/ soon ! You ll do me more good than medicines ! " etc. The Bonnet he mentions is here before me, written in pen cil on a scant fragment of paper, but in a calligraphy clear and bold as ever : IN MEMORIAM HARRIS SIMONS. " True Christian, tender husband, gentle sire, A stricken household mourns thee, but its loss Is Heaven s gain and thine ; upon the cross 60 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. God hangs the crown, the pinion, and the lyre ; And thou hast won them all. Could we desire To quench that diadem s celestial light ; To hush thy song and stay thy heavenward flight, Because we miss thee by this autumn fire ? Ah, no ! ah, no ! chant on ! soar on ! reign on 1 For we are better thou art happier thus ! And haply from the splendor of thy throne, Or haply from the echoes of thy psalm, Something may fall upon us, like the calm To which thou shalt hereafter welcome us ! " Reading these lines, no shadow of a presentiment oppressed ine. I simply admired the art of the Sonnet, and its tender Christian feeling, unconscious that another " In Memoriam" would soon be called for, steeped in the bitterness of an irre mediable grief ! On the 25th of the month this confidence in Tiuirod s re covery 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! The circumstances attendant upon his last illness and death, are related by his sister in terms at once so graphically minute, and so tenderly pathetic, that I cannot but feel justified in laying the letter although a private one before my readers. " Alas ! alas ! in every tremulous line We see but heartbreak and the touch of tears 1 " MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 01 " COLUMBIA, October 22rZ, 1867. " MY DEAR FRIEND : u You are, I know, anxiously awaiting the particulars of those last sad d^s ! "Painful as the effort is, I feel that to you, his dearest friend, I ought at once to write. You will remember that my last letter was scarcely as hopeful as the former had been.* Hal s apprehension of an other hemorrhage seemed to increase. Each cough he gave, I saw the look of uneasiness on his face, and each cough sent a thrill of terror to my heart! " The idea that he was to choice to death by a sudden rush of blood from the lungs, haunted him like a spectre ; no persuasions could induce him to believe that there was really no danger. " His fears, alas! proved but too sure premonitions of the truth. On Wednesday morning (2d of October), at two o clock, I was roused to witness once more the life stream flowing from his lips, while every instant respiration became more difficult. The hemorrhage, however, was soon checked, but its effect on his nervous system was fatal! He never rallied again ! Doctors Gibbes and Talley spent hours by his bedside, en deavoring by every human means to arrest the progress of the disease ; but pneumonic symptoms made their appearance, and hope was gone ! "On Friday morning Dr. Gibbes said, Mr. Timrod, I think it my duty to tell you that I can see no chance of your recovery ! Never shall I forget the fearfully startled ex pression of my brother s face at this announcement. After * This note miscarried. 62 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. the Doctor went, he said to me, And is this to be the enti of all so soon! so soon! and I have achieved so little ! I thought to have done so much ! I had just before my first attack fallen into a strain of such pure and*delicate fancies. I do think this winter I would have done more than I have ever done ; yes, I should have written more purely, and with a greater delicacy. And then I have loved you all so much ! Oh! how can I leave you? "A little while after he said, Do you not think I could will to live ? adding with a smile, I might make an effort, like Mrs. Dombey, you know ! "And indeed, so resolutely did he seem to combat with the powers of Death, that the rest of that day (Friday) he appeared to grow stronger, and the symptoms were more favorable ; so much more so, in fact, that both physicians, at night, pronounced a change for the better. Captain Hugh Thompson sat up with him that night, I bearing him company. He begged us to talk, saying he liked to hear our voices ; and in the morning observed, I have enjoyed this night ; I slept when I wanted, and listened when Hiked. " I must not omit to say, that from the first serious hemor rhage his mind turned to religious subjects, and that the New Testament was always near his pillow. He would every now and then ask me to read a chapter from the Gospels, and to pray with him. " On Saturday morning he seemed cheerful, and even san guine ; but in the afternoon the great pain in his side, and difficulty of breathing, returned. He requested the subcu taneous injection of a portion of morphine. This had given him relief several times before. It was done, and he fell into a gentle sleep. "I sat up with him again, intending to call his wife to- MEMOIR OF HENRY TIM ROD. G3 take my place at two o clock; but at two he awoke, and OI God! that awakening! "It was the commencement of the last struggle. The strongest convulsions shook his already worn-out frame. To listen to those groans those shrieks, was unutterable horror ! was agony untold ! For hours the struggle lasted, and then came for a space partial quiet and consciousness. He knew that he was dying. Oh ! I murmured to him, you will soon be at rest NOW. Yes, he replied, in a tone so mournful, it seemed the wail of a life-time of desolation ; yes, my sister, l)ut love is sweeter than rest ! "In the early hush of that Sabbath morning, he for the first time commemorated the love and sufferings of our ascended Lord ; the Holy Communion having been adminis tered to him by a clergyman of our church. " Most strange, solemn, and sad was the sight to those who stood about his death-bed. He looked upon the struggle of life and death as if from the position of an earnest but out side observer. Once he said, And so THIS is Death ! the struggle has come at last. It is curious to watch it. It ap pears like two tides two tides advancing and retreating, these powers of Life and Death ! Now the power of Death recedes; but wait, it will advance again triumphant. Then, with a look of eager, yet hushed expectation, he seemed to watch the conflict. "Again he said, So this is Death! how strange! were I a metaphysician I would analyze it ; but as it is, I can only watch. "Words fail to describe the awful solemnity with which these dying words of the poet impressed all who heard him. Everybody was in tears. " Once, turning to me, he asked, Do you remember that little poem of mine ? 64 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. " Somewhere on this earthly planet In the dust of flowers to ~be, In the dew-drop and the sunshine Waits a solemn hour for me." il Yes, I replied, and now that hour, which then seemed so far away, has come. Often he would fold his arms, and repeat two lines of his favorite hymn: Jesus, lover of my soul/ etc. "At every conscious interval his prayers to our atoning Lord were unceasing. During the earlier part of the last night he slept for many hours. Awaking, he missed me, and asked that I should be called. On my going to him, he said, Well, Emily, I am really dying now, but my trust is in Christ. Then quoting those lines of Milton, Death rides triumphant, etc., he added, Oh, may I be able to say, thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ/ An unquenchable thirst consumed him. Nothing could allay that dreadful torture. He whispered, as I placed the water to his lips, Don t you remember that passage I once quoted to you from " King John? " I had always such a hor ror of quenchless thirst, and now I suffer it ! He alluded to the passage " And none of you will let the Winter come, To thrust his icy fingers in my maw ! " "Just a day or two before he left on a visit to you at Copse Hill, in one of our evening rambles he had repeated . the passage to me with a remark on the extraordinary force of the words. MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 05 "Katie took my place by him at 5 o clock (in tne morn ing), and never again left his side. The last spoonful of water she gave him, he could not swallow. Never mind, he said, I shall soon drink of the river of Eternal Life. " Shortly after he slept peacefully in Christ. "He died at the very hour which, years ago, he had pre dicted would be his death-hour. The whisper, He is gone! went forth as day purpled in tlie zenith! " etc., etc. On the 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 sceptical of thinkers, in contempla tion of such a life, and such a death, must instinctively look 06 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 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," thus imagining, and perchance believing, though it be but for an hour, in the mysterious ameliorations of eternity ! x- * # # * * ** Were one to sum up the idiosyncrasies of Timrod s genius and poetic manner, I think it would be just to notice in the first place, the simplicity, clearness, purity, and straight forward force of his imagination, which within its appointed bounds (and these limitations are as strictly marked as its vivid capabilities themselves) is always a true enchanter, not owning the slightest relation to that mechanical faculty, so commonly confounded with imagination, which, instead of evolving its material out of the heart of its own electric being, is content to work /Vow without, piling up a tedious cat alogue of qualities, whether its attempts be directed towards description merely, or towards the subtleties of spiritual analysis. Thus it happens that Timrod s productions carry with them always "a firm body of thought." They do not appeal, like too many of Edgar Poe s, to our sense of rhythmic harmony alone; nor are they charming, but mystic utter ances, which here and there may strike a vaguely solemn I echo in the heart of the visionary dreamer. \ No! beneath the surface of his delicate imagery, and Rhythmic sweetness of numbers, rest deeply imbedded the ^golden ores of wisdom." As an artist, he fulfilled one of Coleridge s many definitions of poetry ("the best words in the best order "), with a tact as exquisite as it was unerring. And his style is literally 1dm- sclf ! "It has the form, and follows the movement of his MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 67 nature, and is shaped into the expression of the exact mood, sentiment, or thought out of which the poem springs. Therefore his compositions with all their elegance, finish, and superb propriety of diction always leave the impression of having been forw, not manufactured or made." His morale is perfect. What can speak more emphatically for the native soundness, wholesoineness, and untainted virility of his genius, than the absence from his works of all morbid arraignments of the Eternal justice or mercy ; all blasphemous hardihood and whining complaint in a word, all Byronism of sentiment, despite the ceaseless trials of his individual experience, his sorrows, humiliations, and corrod ing want. While other poets, "the curled darlings of Fortune," were, like Master Stephen, deliberately procuring stools to be melancholy upon," ostentatiously showing themselves "sad as Night for very wantonness, " he whose pains were only too real, into whose soul the iron had deeply entered, could forget himself in his divine art, and sing for us many a strain as fresh and breezy as the west wind laden with woodland fragrance," as healthfully inspiriting as the breath of a May morning! There were likewise in his intellect and temperament, to appear occasionally in his verses, a certain arch, Ariel-like humor and delightful playfulness of fancy. His little poem of " Baby s Age," his " Preceptor Amat, " etc., indicate a vein of sentiment genial, sportive and airy, that might, under favorable auspices, have been developed into many kindred pieces of a gay fanciful humor, calculated to relieve the per vading earnestness of his general style of composition and reflection. I cannot more fitly close this imperfect sketch, than with Dr. Bruns graphic description of Timrod s personal appear- 08 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. ance, and of some prominent traits of his social charac ter: " In stature," he says, " Tirnrod 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 pro nounced 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 atten tion 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 illy 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 en dowed. 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 mi-lie alike incapable of defence 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 MEMOIR OF HENRY TIMROD. 69 of declamation, from the corner where he sat ensconced in unregarded silence, he would suddenly sling out some sharp, sir (ft 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 1 " DEDICATION. TO K. S. G. Fair Saxon, in my lover s creed, My love were smaller than your meed, And you might justly deem it slight, As wanting truth as well as sight, If, in that image which is shrined Where thoughts are sacred, you could find A single charm, or more or less, Than you to all kind eyes possess. To me, even in the happiest dreams, Where, flushed with love s just dawning gleams, My hopes their radiant wings unfurl, You re but a simple English girl, No fairer, grace for grace arrayed, Than many a simple Southern maid ; With faults enough to make the good Seem sweeter far than else it would ; Frank in your anger and your glee, And true as English natures be, Yet not without some maiden art Which hides a loving English heart. Still there are moments, brief and bright, When fancy, by a poet s light, 72 DEDICATION. Beholds you clothed with loftier charms Than love e er gave to mortal arms. A spell is woven on the air From your brown eyes and golden hair, And all at once you seem to stand Before me as your native land, With all her greatness in your guise, And all her glory in your eyes ; And sometimes, as if angels sung, I hear her poets on your tongue. And, therefore, I, who from a boy Have felt an almost English joy In England s undecaying might, And England s love of truth and right, Next to my own young country s fame Holding her honor and her name, I who, though born where not a vale Hath ever nursed a nightingale, Have fed my muse with English song Until her feeble wing grew strong Feel, while with all the reverence meet I lay this volume at your feet, As if through your dear self I pay, For many a deep and deathless lay, For noble lessons nobly taught, For tears, for laughter, and for thought, A portion of the mighty debt We owe to Shakespeare s England yet ! POEMS or HENEY TIMEOD. KATIE. It may be through some foreign grace, And unfamiliar charm of face ; It may be that across the foam Which bore her from her childhood s home, By some strange spell, my Katie brought, Along with English creeds and thought Entangled in her golden hair Some English sunshine, warmth, and air! I cannot tell but here to-day, A thousand billowy leagues away From that green isle whose twilight skies No darker are than Katie s eyes, She seems to me, go where she will, An English girl in England still ! I meet her on the dusty street, And daisies spring about her feet ; Or, touched to life beneath her tread, An English cowslip lifts its head ; And, as to do her grace, rise up The primrose and the buttercup ! 4 74 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. 1 roam with her through fields of cane, And seem to stroll an English lane, Which, white with blossoms of the May, Spreads its green carpet in her way ! As fancy wills, the path beneath Is golden gorse, or purple heath : And now we hear in woodlands dim Their unarticulated hymn, Now walk through rippling waves of wheat, Now sink in mats of clover sweet, Or see before us from the lawn The lark go up to greet the dawn 1 All birds that love the English sky Throng round my path when she is by: The blackbird from a neighboring thorn With music brims the cup of morn, And in a thick, melodious rain The mavis pours her mellow strain ! But only when my Katie s voice Makes all the listening woods rejoice I hear with cheeks that flush and pale The passion of the nightingale ! Anon the pictures round her change, And through an ancient town we range, Whereto the shadowy memory clings Of one of England s Saxon kings, And which to shrine his fading fame Still keeps his ashes and his name. KATIE. 75 Quaint houses rise on either hand, But still the airs are fresh and bland, <^C> As if their gentle wings caressed Some new-born village of the West. A moment by the Norman tower We pause; it is the Sabbath hour! And o er the city sinks and swells The chime of old St. Mary s bells, Which still resound in Katie s ears As sweet as when in distant years She beard them peal with jocund din A merry English Christmas in ! We pass the abbey s ruined arch, And statelier grows my Katie s march, As round her. wearied with the taint Of Transatlantic pine and paint, She sees a thousand tokens cast Of England s venerable Past ! Our reverent footsteps lastly claims The younger chapel of St. James, Which, though, as English records run, Not old, had seen full many a sun, Ere to the cold December gale The thoughtful Pilgrim spread his sail. There Katie in her childish days Spelt out her prayers and lisped her praise, And doubtless, as her beauty grew, Did much as other maidens do Across the pews and down the aisle Sent many a beau-bewildering smile. 76 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. And to subserve her spirit s need Learned other things beside the creed ! There, too, to-day her knee she bows, And by her one whose darker brows Betray the Southern heart that burns Beside her, and which only turns Its thoughts to Heaven in one request, Not all unworthy to be blest, But rising from an earthlier pain Than might beseem a Christian fane. Ah ! can the guileless maiden share The wish that lifts that passionate prayer ? Is all at peace that breast within ? Good angels ! warn her of the sin ! Alas ! what boots it ? who can save A willing victim of the wave ? Who cleanse a soul that loves its guilt ? Or gather wine when wine is spilt ? We quit the holy house and gain The open air ; then, happy twain, Adown familiar streets we go, And now and then she turns to show, With fears that all is changing fast, Some spot that s sacred to her Past. Here by this way, through shadows cool, A little maid, she tripped to school ; And there each morning used to stop Before a wonder of a shop KATIE. 77 Where, built of apples and of pears, Kose pyramids of golden spheres ; While, dangling in her dazzled sight, Eipe cherries cast a crimson light. And made her think of elfin lamps, And feast and sport in fairy camps, Whereat, upon her royal throne (Most richly carved in cherry-stone), Titan ia ruled, in queenly state, The boisterous revels of the fete! Twas yonder, with their " horrid " noise, Dismissed from books, she met the boys, Who, with a barbarous scorn of girls, Glanced slightly at her sunny curls, And laughed and leaped as reckless by As though no pretty face were nigh ! But here the maiden grows demure Indeed she s not so very sure, That in a year, or haply twain, Who looked e er failed to look again, And sooth to say, I little doubt (Some azure day, the truth will out !) That certain baits in certain eyes Caught many an unsuspecting prize ; And somewhere underneath these eaves A budding flirt put forth its leaves ! Has not the sky a deeper blue, Have not the trees a greener hue, 78 POEMS OF HENRY TTMROI). , And bend they not with lordlier grace And nobler shapes above the place Where on one cloudless winter morn My Katie to this life was born ? Ah, folly! long hath fled the hour When love to sight gave keener power, And lovers looked for special boons In brighter flowers and larger moons. But wave the foliage as it may, And let the sky be ashen gray, Thus much at least a manly youth May hold and yet not blush as truth : If near that blessed spot of earth Which saw the cherished maiden s birth No softer dews than usual rise, And life there keeps its wonted guise,/ 5 Yet not the less that spot may seem As lovely as a poet s dream ; And should a fervid faith incline To make thereof a sainted shrine, Who may deny that round us throng A hundred earthly creeds as wrong, But meaner far, which yet unblamed Stalk by us and tire not ashamed ? So, therefore, Katie, as our stroll Ends at this portal, while you roll Those lustrous eyes to catch each ray That may recall some vanished day, I let them jeer and laugh who will Stoop down and kiss the sacred sill ! KATIE. 79 So strongly sometimes on the sense These fancies bold their influence, That in long well-known streets I stray Like one who fears to lose his way. The stranger, I, the native, she, Myself, not Kate, had crossed the sea; And changing place, and mixing times, I walk in unfamiliar climes ! These houses, free to every breeze That blows from warm Floridian seas, Assume a massive English air, And Close around an English square; While, if I issue from the town, An English hill looks greenly down, Or round me rolls an English park, And in the Broad I hear the Larke ! Thus when, where woodland violets hide, I rove with Katie at my side, It scarce would seem amiss to say: " Katie! my home lies far away, Beyond the pathless waste of brine, In a young land of palm and pine ! There, by the tropic heats, the soul Is touched as if with living coal, And glows with such afire as none -Can feel beneath a Northern sun, Unless my Katie s heart attest ! Tis kindled in an English breast ! Such is the land in which I live, And, Katie! such the soul I give. 80 POEMS OF HENRY TIM110D. Come ! ere another morning beam, - We ll cleave the sea with wings of steam ; And soon, despite of storm or calm, J3eneath my native groves of palm, /Kind friends shall greet, with joy and pride, The Southron and his English bride !" CAROLINA, i. The despot treads thy sacred sands, Thy pines give shelter to his bands, Thy sons stand by with idle hands, Carolina ! He breathes at ease thy airs of balm, He scorns the lances of thy palm; Oh ! who shall break thy craven calm, Carolina ! Thy ancient fame is growing dim, A spot is on thy garment s rim ; Give to the winds thy battle hymn, Carolina ! II. Call on thy children of the hill, Wake swamp and river, coast and rill, Rouse all thy strength and all thy skill, Carolina! CAROLINA. 81 Cite wealth and science, trade and art, Touch with thy fire the cautious mart, And pour thee through the people s heart, Carolina! Till even the coward spurns his fears, And all thy fields and fens and mores Shall bristle like thy palm with spears, Carolina ! in. Hold up the glories of thy dead ; Say how thy elder children bled, And point to En taw s battle-bed, Carolina ! Tell how the patriot s soul was tried, And what his dauntless breast defied ; How Rutledge ruled and Laurens died, Carolina ! Cry! till thy summons, heard at last, Shall fall like Marion s bugle- blast Re-echoed from the haunted Past, Carolina ! IV. I hear a murmur as of waves That grope their way through sunless caves, Like bodies struggling in their graves, Carolina ! 4* 82 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. And now it deepens ; slow and grand It swells, as, rolling to the land, An ocean broke upon thy strand, Carolina! Shout! let it reach the startled Huns! And roar with all thy festal guns . It is the answer of thy sons, Carolina ! v. They will not wait to hear thee call; From Sachem s Head to Su niter s wall Resounds the voice of hut and hall, Carolina ! No ! thou hast not a stain, they say, Or none save what the battle-day Shall wash in seas of blood away, Carolina ! Thy skirts indeed the foe may part. Thy robe be pierced with sword anc. dart, They shall not touch thy noble heart, Carolina I VI. Ere thou shalt own the tyrant s "thrall Ten times ten thousand men must fall; Thyjcorpse may hearken to his call, Carolina! A CRY TO ARMS. 83 When, by thy bier, in mournful throngs The women chant thy mortal wrongs, Twill be their own funereal songs, Carolina ! From thy dead breast by ruffians trod No helpless child shall look to God ; All shall be safe beneath thy sod, Carolina ! VII. Girt with such wills to do and bear, Assured in right, and mailed in prayer, Thou wilt not bow thee to despair, Carolina ! Throw thy bold banner to the breeze! Front with thy ranks the threatening seas Like thine own proud armorial trees, Carolina ! Fling down thy gauntlet to the Huns, And roar the challenge from thy guns; Then leave the future to thy sons, Carolina! A CRY TO ARMS. Ho ! woodsmen of the mountain side ! Ho! dwellers in the vales ! Ho ! ye who by the chating tide Have roughened in the gales! 84 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Leave barn and byre, leave kin and cot, Lay by the bloodless spade ; Let desk, and case, and counter rot, And burn your books of trade. The despot roves your fairest lands ; And till he flies or fears, Your fields must grow but armed bands, Your sheaves be sheaves of spears ! Give up to mildew and to rust The useless tools of gain; And feed your country s sacred dust With floods of crimson rain ! Come, with the weapons at your call With musket, pike, or knife ; He wields the deadliest blade of all Who lightest holds his life. The arm that drives its unbought blows With all a patriot s scorn, Might brain a tyrant with a rose, Or stab him with a thorn. Does any falter ? let him turn To some brave maiden s eyes, And catch the holy fires that burn In those sublunar skies.. Oh ! con Id you like yoni* women feel. And in their spirit march, A day might see your lines of steel Beneath the victor s arch. SERENADE. 85 What hope, God ! would not grow warm When thoughts like these give cheer ? The Lily calmly braves the storm, And shall the Pulm-tree fear ? No ! rather let its branches court The rack that sweeps the plain ; And from the Lily s regal port Learn how to breast the strain ! Ho ! woodsmen of the mountain side ! Ho ! dwellers in the vales ! Ho ! ye who by the roaring tide Have roughened in the gales ! Come ! nocking gayly to the fight, From forest, hill, and lake ; We battle for our Country s right, And for the Lily s sake ! SERENADE. Hide, happy damask, from the stars, What sleep enfolds behind your veil, But open to the fairy cars On which the dreams of midnight sail; And let the zephyrs rise and fall About her in the curtained gloom, And then return to tell me all The silken secrets of the room. 86 POEMS OF UENRY TIMROD. Ah, dearest ! may the elves that sway Thy fancies come from emerald plots, Where they have dozed and dreamed all day In hearts of blue forget-me-nots. And one perhaps shall whisper thus : Awake! and light the darkness, Sweet! While thou art revelling with us, He watches in the lonely street. WHY SILENT? Why am I silent from year to year ? Needs must I sing on these blue March days ? What will you say, when I tell you here, That already, I think, for a little praise, I have paid too dear ? For, I know not why, when I tell my thought, It seems as though I fling it away ; And the charm wherewith a fancy is fraught, When secret, dies with the fleeting lay Into which it is wrought. So my butterfly-dreams their golden wings But seldom unfurl from their chrysalis ; And thus I retain my loveliest things, While the world, in its worldliness, does not miss What a poet sings. TWO PORTRAITS. 87 TWO PORTRAITS. I. You say. as one who shapes a life, That you will never be a wife, And, laughing lightly, ask my aid To paint yonr future as a maid. This is the portrait.; and I take The softest colors for your sake: The springtime of your soul is dead, And forty years have bent your head ; The lines are firmer round your mouth, But still its smile is like the South. Your eyes, grown deeper, are not sad, Yet never more than gravely glad ; And the old charm still lurks within The cloven dimple of your chin. Some share, perhaps, of youthful gloss Your cheek hath shed ; but still across The delicate ear are folded down Those silken locks of chestnut brown; Though here and there a thread of gray Steals through them like a lunar ray. 88 POEMS OF UENRT T1MROD. One might suppose your life had passed Unvexed by any troubling blast; And such for all that I foreknow May be the truth ! The deeper woe ! A loveless heart is seldom stirred ; And sorrow shuns the mateless bird ; But ah ! through cares alone we reach The happiness which mocketh speech ; In the white courts beyond the stars The noblest brow is seamed with scars ; And they on earth who ve wept the most Sit highest of the heavenly host. Grant that your maiden life hath sped In music o er a golden bed, With rocks, and winds, and storms at truce, And not without a noble use ; Yet are you happy ? In your air I see a nameless want appear, And a faint shadow on your cheek Tells what the lips refuse to speak. You have had all a maid could hope In the most cloudless horoscope: TWO PORTRAITS. 89 The strength that cometh from above ; A Christian mother s holy love ; And always at your soul s demand A brother s, sister s heart and hand. Small need your heart hath had to roam Beyond the circle of your home ; And yet upon your wish attends A loving throng of genial friends. What, in a lot so sweet as this, Is wanting to complete your bliss ? And to what secret shall I trace The clouds that sometimes cross your face, And that sad look which now and then Comes, disappears, and comes again, And dies reluctantly away In those clear eyes of azure gray ? At best, and after all, the place You fill with such a serious grace, Hath much to try a woman s heart, And you but play a painful part. The world around, with little ruth, Still laughs at maids who have not youth, 90 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROT). And, right or wrong, the old maid rests The victim of its paltry jests, And still is doomed to meet and bear Its pitying smile or furtive sneer. These are indeed but petty things, And yet they touch some hearts like stings. But I acquit you of the shame Of being unresisting game ; For you are of such tempered clay As turns far stronger shafts away, And all that foes or fools could guide Would only curl that lip of pride. How then, 0. weary one ! explain The sources of that hidden pain ? Alas! you have divined at length How little you have used your strength, Which, with who knows what human good, Lies buried in that maidenhood, Where, as amid a field of flowers, You have but played with April showers. Ah ! we would wish the world less fair, If Spring alone adorned the year, TWO PORTRAITS. 91 And Autumn came not with its fruit, And Autumn hymns were ever mute. So I remark without surprise That, as the unvarying season flies, From day to night, and night to day, You sicken of your endless May. In this poor life we may not cross One virtuous instinct without loss, And the soul grows not to its height Till love calls forth its utmost might. Not blind to all you might have been, And with some consciousness of sin Because with love you sometimes played, And choice, not fate, hath kept you maid You feel that you must pass from earth But half-acquainted with its worth, And that within your heart are deeps In which a nobler woman sleeps ; That not the maiden, but the wife Grasps the whole lesson of a life, While such as you but sit and dream Along the surface of its stream. 92 POEM S OF JIENRY TIMROI). And doubtless sometimes, all unsought, There comes upon your hour of thought, Despite the struggles of your will, A sense of something absent still; And then you cannot help but yearn To love and be beloved in turn, As they are loved, and love, who live As love were all that life could give; And in a transient clasp or kiss Crowd an eternity of bliss ; They who of every mortal joy Taste always twice, nor feel them cloy, Or, if woes come, in Sorrow s hour Are strengthened by a double power. II. Here ends my feeble sketch of what Might, but will never be your lot; And I foresee how oft these rhymes Shall make you smile in after- times. If I have read your nature right, It only waits a spark of light ; TWO PORTRAIT*. 93 And when that comes, as come it must, It will not fall on arid dust, Nor yet on that which breaks to flame In the first blush of maiden shame ; But on a heart which, even at rest, Is warmer than an April nest, Where, settling soft, that spark shall creep About as gently as a sleep ; Still stealing on with pace so slow Yourself will scarcely feel the glow, Till after many and many a day, Although no gleam its course betray, It shall attain the inmost shrine, And wrap it in a fire divine ! 1 know not when or whence indeed Shall fall and burst the burning seed, But oh ! once kindled, it will blaze, I know, for ever ! By its rays You will perceive, with subtler eyes, The meaning in the earth and skies, Which, with their animated chain Of grass and flowers, and sun and rain, 04 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Of green below, and blue above, Are but a type of married love. You will perceive that in the breast The germs of many virtues rest, Which, ere they feel a lover s breath, Lie in a temporary death ; And till the heart is wooed and won It is an earth without a sun. III. But now, stand forth as sweet as life ! And let me paint yon as a wife. I note some changes in your face, And in your mien a graver grace ; Yet the calm forehead lightly bears Its weight of twice a score of years ; And that one love which on this earth Can wake the heart to all its worth, And to their height can lift and bind The powers of soul, and sense, and rnind, Hath not allowed a charm to fade And the wife s lovelier than the maid. TWO PORTRAITS. 1)5 An air of still, though bright repose Tells that a tender hand bestows All that a generous manhood may To make your life one bridal day, While the kind eyes betray no less, In their blue depths of tenderness, That you have learned the truths which lie Behind that holy mystery, Which, with its blisses and its woes, Nor man nor maiden ever knows. If now, as to the eyes of one Whose glance not even thought can shun, Your soul lay open to my view, I, looking all its nature through, Could see no incompleted part, For the whole woman warms your heart. I cannot tell how many dead You, number in the cycles fled, And you but look the more serene For all the griefs you may have seen, As you had gathered from the dust The flowers of Peace, and Hope, and Trust. 96 POEMS OF IIENJIY TIMR01). Your smile is even sweeter now That when it lit your maiden brow, And that which wakes this gentler charm Coos at this moment on your arm. Your voice was always soft in youth, And had the very sound of truth, But never were its tones so mild Until you blessed your earliest child ; And when to soothe some little wrong It melts into a mother s song, The same strange sweetness which in years Long vanished filled the eyes with tears, And (even when mirthful) gave always A pathos to your girlish lays, Falls, with perchance a deeper thrill, Upon the breathless listener still. I cannot guess in what fair spot The chance of Time hath fixed your lot, Nor can I name what manly breast Gives to that head a welcome rest ; I cannot, tell if partial Fate Hath made you poor, or rich, or great: CHARLESTON. 97 But oh ! whatever be your place, I never saw a form or face To which more plainly hath been lent The blessing of a full content ! CHABLESTON. Calm as that second summer which precedes The first fall of the snow, . In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds, The City bides the foe. As yet, behind their ramparts stern and proud, Her bolted thunders sleep- Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud, / Looms o er the solemn deep. No Calpe frowns from lofty cliff or scar To guard the holy strand; But Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war Above the level sand. And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched, Unseen, beside the flood Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched * That wait and watch fur blood. Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade, W;ilk grave and thoughtful men, 98 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Whose hands may one day wield the patriot s blade As lightly as the pen. And maidens, with such eyes as would grow dim Over a bleeding hound, Seem each one to have caught the strength of him Whose sword she sadly bound. Thus girt without and garrisoned at home, Day patient following day, Old Charleston looks from roof, and spire, and dome, Across her tranquil bay. Ships, through a hundred foes, from Saxon lands And spicy Indian ports, Bring Saxon steel and iron to her hands, And Summer to her courts. But still, along yon dim Atlantic line, The only hostile smoke Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine, From some frail, floating oak. Shall the Spring dawn, and she still clad in smiles, And with an unscathed brow, Rest in the strong arms of her palm-crowned isles, As fair and free as now ? We know not ; in the temple of the Fates God has inscribed her doom ; And, all untroubled in her faith, she waits The triumph or the tomb. RTPLET. 99 RIPLEY. Rich in red honors, that upon him lie As lightly as the Summer dews Fall where he won his fame beneath the sky Of tropic Vera Cruz ; Bold scorner of the cant that has its birth In feeble or in failing powers ; A lover of all frank and genial mirth That wreathes the sword with flowers; He moves amid the warriors of the day, Just such a soldier as the art That builds its trophies upon human clay Moulds of a cheerful heart. I see him in the battle that shall shake, Ere long, old Sumter s haughty crown, And from their dreams of peaceful traffic wake The wharves of yonder town; As calm as one would greet a pleasant guest, And quaff a cup to love and life, He hurls his deadliest thunders with a jest, And laughs amid the strife. Yet not the gravest soldier of them all Surveys a field with broader scope ; And who behind that sea-encircled wall Fights with a loftier hope ? 100 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Gay Chieftain ! on the crimson rolls of Fame Thy deeds are written with the sword ; But there- are gentler thoughts which, with thy name, Thy country s page shall hoard. A nature of that rare and happy cast Which looks, unsteeled, on murder s face ; Through what dark scenes of bloodshed hast thon passed, Yet lost no social grace? So, when the bard depicts thee, thou shalt wield The weapon of a tyrant s doom, Bound which, inscribed with many a well-fought field, The rose of joy shall bloom. ETHNOGENESIS. Written during the meeting of the first Southern Congress, at Montgomery. February^ 1861. I. Hath not the morning dawned with added light ? And shall not evening call another star Out of the infinite regions of the night, To mark this day in Heaven ? \ At last, we are A nation among nations; and the world Shall soon behold in many a distant port Another flag unfurled ! Now, come what may, whose favor need we court? ETHNOGENE8I8. 101 And, under God, whose thunder need we fear? Thunk Him who placed us here Beneath so kind a sky the very sun Takes part with us; and on our errands run All breezes of the ocean ; dew and rain Do noiseless battle for us ; and the Year, And all the gentle daughters in her train, March in our ranks, and in our service wield Long spears of golden grain ! A yellow blossom as her fairy shield, June flings her azure banner to the wind, While in the order of their birth Her sisters pass, and many an ample Held Grows white beneath their steps, till now, behold, Its endless sheets unfold THE SNOW OF SOUTHERN SUMMERS! Let the earth Rejoice! beneath those fleeces soft and warm Our happy land shall sleep In a repose as deep As if we lay intrenched behind Whole leagues of Russian ice and Arctic storm I II. And what if, mad with wrongs themselves have wrought, In their own treachery caught, By their own fears made hold, And leagued with him of old, Who long since in the limits of the North 102 POEMS OF IIENR7 TTMROD. Set up his evil throne, and warred with God What if, both mad and blinded in their rage, Our foes should fling us down their mortal gage, And with a hostile step profane our sod! We shall not shrink, my brothers, but go forth To meet them, marshalled by the Lord of Hosts, And overshadowed by the mighty ghosts Of Moultrie and of Eutaw who shall foil Auxiliars such as these ? Nor these alone, But every stock and stone Shall help us ; but the very soil, And all the generous wealth it gives to toil, And all for which we love our noble land, Shall fight beside, and through us ; sea and strand, The heart of woman, and her hand, Tree, fruit, and flower, and every influence, Gentle, or grave, or grand; The winds in our defence Shall seem to blow ; to us the hills shall lend Their firmness and their calm ; And in our stiffened sinews we shall blend The strength of pine and palm ! TIL Nor would we shun the battle-ground. Though weak as we are strong ; Call up the clashing elements around, And test the right and wrong ! On one side, creeds that dare to teach What Christ and Paul refrained to preach; ETHNOGENESIS. 103 Codes built upon a broken pledge, And Charity that whets a poniard s edge ; Fair schemes that leave the neighboring poor To starve and shiver at the schemer s door, While in the world s, most liberal ranks enrolled, He turns some vast philanthropy to gold; Religion, taking every mortal form But that a pure and Christian faith makes warm, Where not to vile fanatic passion urged, Or not in vague philosophies submerged, Repulsive with all Pharisaic leaven, And making laws to stay the laws of Heaven! And on the other, scorn of sordid gain, Unblemished honor, truth without a stain, Faith, justice, reverence, charitable wealth, And, for the poor and humble, laws which give, Not the mean right to buy the right to live, But life, and home, and health ! To.doubt the end were want of trust in God, Who, if he has decreed That we must pass a redder sea Than that which rang to Miriam s holy glee, Will surely raise at need A Moses with his rod ! IV. But let our fears if fears we have be still, And turn us to the future! Could we climb Some mighty Alp, and view the coming time, 104 POEMS OF ITENRT TIMROD. The rapturous sight would fill Our eyes with happy tears! Not only for the glories which the years Shall bring us ; not for lands from sea to sea, And wealth, and power, and peace, though these shall be; But for the distant peoples we shall bless, And the hushed murmurs of a world s distress: For, to give labor to the poor, The whole sad planet o er, And save from want and crime the humblest door, Is one among the many ends for which God makes us great an d rich ! The hour perchance is not yet wholly ripe When all shall own it, but the type Whereby we shall be known in every land Is that vast gulf which lips our Southern strand, And through the cold, un tempered 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. CHRISTMAS. How grace this hallowed day ? Shall happy bells, from yonder ancient spire, Send their glad greetings to each Christmas fire Round which the children play ? CHRISTMAS. 105 Alas ! for many, a moon, That tongueless tower hath cleaved the Sabbath air, Mute as an obelisk of ice, aglare Beneath an Arctic noon. Shame to the foes that drown Our psalms of worship with their impious drum, The sweetest chimes in all the land lie dumb In some far rustic town. There, let us think, they keep, Of the dead Yules which here beside the sea They ve ushered in with old-world, English glee, Some echoes in their sleep. How shall we grace the day ? With feast, and song, and dance, and antique sports, And shout of happy children in the courts, And tales of ghost and fay ? Is there indeed a door, Where the old pastimes, with their lawful noise, And all the merry round of Christmas joys, Could enter as of yore ? Would not some pallid face Look in upon the banquet, calling up Dread shapes of battles in the wassail cup, And trouble all the place ? How could we bear the mirth, While some loved reveller of a vear ago 5* 106 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Keeps his mute Christmas now beneath the snow, In cold Virginian earth ? How shall we grace the day ? Ah ! let the thought that on this holy morn The Prince of Peace the Prince of Peace was born, Employ us, while we pray ! Pray for the peace which long Hath left this tortured land, and haply now Holds its white court on some far mountain s brow, There hardly safe from wrong ! Let every sacred fane Call its sad votaries to the shrine of God, And, with the cloister and the tented sod, Join in one solemn strain ! With pomp of Koman form, With the grave ritual brought from England s shore, And with the simple faith which asks no more Than that the heart be warm ! He, who, till time shall cease, Will watch that earth, where once, not all in vain, He died to give us peace, may not disdain A prayer whose theme is peace. Perhaps ere yet the Spring Hath died into the Summer, over all The land, the peace of His vast love shall fall, Like some protecting wing. LA BELLE JUIVE. 10? Oh, ponder what it means ! Oh, turn the rapturous thought in every way ! Oh, give the vision and the fancy play, And shape the coming scenes ! Peace in the quiet dales, Made rankly fertile by the blood of men, Peace in the woodland, and the lonely glen, Peace in the peopled vales ! Peace in the crowded town, Peace in a thousand fields of waving grain, Peace in the highway and the flowery lane, Peace on the wind-swept down ! Peace on the farthest seas, Peace in our sheltered bays and ample streams, Peace wheresoe er our starry garland gleams, And peace in every breeze ! Peace on the whirring marts, Peace where the scholar thinks, the hunter roams, Peace, God of Peace ! peace, peace, in all our homes, And peace in all our hearts ! LA BELLE JUIVE. Is it because your sable hair Is folded over brows that wear At times a too imperial air ; 108 POEMS OF HENRT TIMROD. Or is it that the thoughts which rise In those dark orbs do seek disguise Beneath the lids of Eastern eye s ; That choose whatever pose or place May chance to please, in YOU I trace The noblest woman of your race ? The crowd is sauntering at its ease, And humming like a hive of bees You take your seat and touch the keys : 1 do not hear the giddy throng ; The sea avenges Israel s wrong, And on the wind floats Miriam s song! You join me with a stately grace ; Music to Poesy gives place ; Some grand emotion lights your face : At once I stand by Mizpeh s walls ; With smiles the martyred daughter falls, And desolate are Mizpeh s halls ! Intrusive babblers come between ; With calm, pale brow and lofty mien, You thread the circle like a queen ! Then sweeps the royal Esther by ; The deep devotion in her eye Is looking If I die, I die!" AN EXOTIC. 109 You stroll the garden s flowery walks ; The plants to me are grainless stalks, And Ruth to old Naomi talks. Adopted child of Jndah s creed, Like Jndah s daughters, true at need, I see you mid the alien seed. I watch afar the gleaner sweet ; I wake like Boaz in the wheat, And find you lying at my feet! My feet! Oh ! if the spell that lures My heart through all these dreams endures, IIow soon shall I be stretched at yours ! AN EXOTIC. Not in a climate near the sun Did the cloud with its trailing fringes float, Whence, white as the down of an angel s plume, Fell the snows of her brow and throat. And the ground h id bet?n rich for a thousand years With the blood of heroes, and sages, and kings, Where the rose that blooms in her exquisite cheek Unfolded the flush of its wings. On a land where the faces are fair, though pale As a moonlit mist when the winds are still, 110 POEMS OF HENRY TIM ROD. She breaks like a morning in Paradise Through the palms of an orient hill. Her beauty, perhaps, were all too bright. But about her there broods some delicate spell, Whence the wondrous charm of the girl grows soft As the light in an English dell. There is not a story of faith and truth On the starry scroll of her country s fame, But has helped to shape her stately mien, And to touch her soul with flame. I sometimes forget, as she sweeps me a bow, That I gaze on a simple English maid, And I bend my head, as if to a queen Who is courting my lance and blade. Once, as we read, in a curtained niche, A poet who sang of her sea-throned isle, There was something of Albion s mighty Bess In the flash of her haughty smile. She seemed to gather from every age All the greatness of England about her there, And my fancy wove a royal crown Of the dusky gold of her hair. But it was no queen to whom that day, In the dim green shade of a trellised vine, I whispered a hope that had somewhat to do With a small white hand in mine. THE ROSEBUDS. The Tudor had vanished, and, as I spoke, Twas herself looked out of her frank brown eye, And an answer was burning upon her face, Ere I caught the low reply. What was it ! Nothing the world need know The stars saw our parting! Enough, that then I walked from the porch with the tread of a king, And she was a queen again ! THE ROSEBUDS. Yes, in that dainty ivory shrine, With those three pallid buds, I twine And fold away a dream divine! One night they lay upon a breast Where Love hath made his fragrant nest, And throned me as a life-long guest. Near that chaste heart they seemed to me Types of far fairer flowers to be The rosebuds of a human tree ! Buds that shall bloom beside my hearth, And there be held of richer worth Than all the kingliest gems of earth. L12 POEMS OF HENRY TIMR07). Ah me ! the pathos of the thought ! I had not deemed she wanted aught; Yet what a tenderer charm it wrought ! I know not if she marked the flame That lit my cheek, but not from shame, When one sweet image dimly came. There was a murmur soft and low; White folds of cambric, parted slow ; And little fingers played with snow ! How far my fancy dared to stray, A lover s reverence needs not say Enough the vision passed away ! Passed in a mist of happy tears, * While something in my tranced ears Hummed like the future in a seer s! A MOTHER S WAIL. My babe I my tiny babe ! my only babe ! My single rose-bud in a crown of thorns! My lamp that in that narrow hut of life, Whence I looked forth upon a night of storm! Burned with the lustre of the moon and stars! A MOTHER S WAIL. 113 My babe! my tiny babe! my only babe! Behold the bud is gone ! the thorns remain ! My lamp hath fallen from its niche ah, me ! Earth drinks the fragrant flame, and I am left Forever and forever in the dark ! My babe ! my babe ! my own and only babe ! Where art thou now ? If somewhere in the sky An angel hold thee in his radiant arms, I challenge him to clasp thy tender form "With half the fervor of a mother s love ! Forgive me, Lord! forgive my reckless grief! Forgive me that this rebel, selfish heart Would almost make me jealous for my child, Though thy own lap enthroned him. Lord, thou hast So many such! I have ah! had but one! yet. once more, my babe, to hear thy cry ! yet once more, my babe, to see thy smile ! yet once more to feel against my breast Those cool, soft hands, that warm, wet, eager mouth, With the sweet sharpness of its budding pearls ! But it must never, never more be mine To mark the growing meaning in thine eyes, To watch thy soul unfolding leaf by leaf, Or catch, with ever fresh surprise and joy, Thy dawning recognitions of the world. Three different shadows of thyself, my babe, Ch ungo with each other while I wee]). The first, 114 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. The sweetest, yet the not least fraught with pain, Clings like my living boy around my neck, Or purrs and murmurs softly at my feet ! Another is a little mound of earth ; That comes the oftenest, darling ! In my dreams, I see it heaten by the midnight rain, Or chilled beneath the moon. Ah ! what a couch For that which I have shielded from a breath That would not stir the violets on thy grave! The third, my precious babe ! the third, Lord ! Is a fair cherub face beyond the stars, Wearing the roses of a mystic bliss, Yet sometimes not unsaddened by a glance Turned earthward on a mother in her woe ! This is the vision, Lord, that I would keep Before me always. But, alas ! as yet, It is the dimmest and the rarest, too ! touch my sight, or break the cloudy bars That hide it, lest I madden where I kneel ! OUE WILLIE. Twas merry Christmas when he came, Our little boy beneath the sod; And brighter burned the Christmas flame, And merrier sped the Christmas game, OUR WILLIE. 115 Because within the house there lay A shape as tiny as a fay The Christmas gift of God ! In wreaths and garlands on the walls The holly hung its ruby balls, The mistletoe its pearls ; And a Christmas tree s fantastic fruits Woke laughter like a choir of flutes From happy boys and girls. For the mirth, which else had swelled as shrill As a school let loose to its errant will, Was softened by the thought, That in a dim hushed room above A mother s pains in a mother s love Were only just forgot. The jest, the tale, the toast, the glee, All took a sober tone ; We spoke of the babe upstairs, as we Held festival for him alone. When the bells rang in the Christmas morn, It scarcely seemed a sin to say That they rang because that babe was born, Not less than for the sacred day. Ah ! Christ forgive us for the crime Which drowned the memories of the time In a merely mortal bliss ! We owned the error when the mirth Of another Christmas lit the hearth Of every home but this. When, in that lonely burial-ground, 116 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. With every Christmas sight and sound Removed or shunned, we kept A mournful Christmas by the mound Where little Willie slept ! Ah, hapless mother ! darling wife ! I might say nothing more, And the dull cold world would hold The story of that precious life As amply told ! Shall we, shall you and I, before That world s unsympathetic eyes Lay other relics from our store Of tender memories? What could it know of the joy and love That throbbed and smiled and wept above An unresponsive thing? And who could share the ecstatic thrill With which we watched the upturned bill Of our bird at its living spring? Shall we tell how in the time gone by, Beneath all changes of the sky, And in an ordinary home Amid the city s din, Life was to us a crystal dome, Our babe the flame therein ? Ah ! this were jargon on the mart ; And though some gentle friend, And many and many a suffering heart, Would weep and comprehend, OUR WILLIE. ]17 Yet even these might fail to see What we saw daily in the child Not the mere creature undefiled, But the winged cherub soon to be. That wandering hand which seemed to reach At angel finger-tips, And that murmur like a mystic speech Upon the rosy lips, That something in the serious face Holier than even its infant grace, And that rapt gaze on empty space, Which made us, half believing, say, " Ah, little wide-eyed seer ! who knows But that for you this chamber glows With stately shapes and solemn shows ?" Which touched us, too, with vague alarms. Lest in the circle of our arms We held a being less akin To his parents in a world of sin Than to beings not of clay : How could we speak in human phrase, Of such scarce earthly traits and ways, What would not seem A doting dream, In the creed of these sordid days ? No ! let us keep Deep, deep, In sorrowing heart and aching brain, This story hidden with the pain. 118 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Which, since that blue October night When Willie vanished from our sight, Must haunt us even in our sleep. In the gloom of the chamber where he died, And by that grave which, through our care, From Yule to Yule of every year, Is made like Spring to bloom; And where, at times, we catch the sigh As of an angel floating nigh, Who longs but has not power to tell That in that violet-shrouded cell Lies nothing better than the shell Which he had cast aside By that sweet grave, in that dark room, We may weave at will for each other s ear, Of that life, and that love, and that early doom, The tale which is shadowed here: To us alone it will always be As fresh as our own misery ; But enough, alas ! for the world is said, In the brief " Here lieth " of the dead! CABMEN TRIUMPHALE. Go forth and bid the land rejoice, Yet not too gladly, my song ! Breathe softly, as if mirth would wrong The solemn rapture of thy voice. CARMEN TRIUMPHALE. Be nothing lightly done or said This happy day ! Our joy should flow Accordant with the lofty woe That wails above the noble dead. Let him whose brow and bivast were calm While yet the battle la) with God, Look down upon the crimson sod And gravely wear his mournful palm; And him, whose heart still weak from fear Beats all too gayly for the time, Know that intemperate glee is crime While one dead hero claims a tear. Yet go thou forth, my song! and thrill, With sober joy, the troubled days ; A nation s hymn of grateful praise May not be hushed for private ill. Our foes are fallen ! Flash, ye wires ! The mighty tidings far and nigh ! Ye cities! write them on the sky In purple and in emerald fires ! They came with many a haughty boast; Their threats were heard on every breeze ; They darkened half the neighboring seas ; And swooped like vultures on the coast. False recreants in all knightly strife, Their way was wet with woman s tears ; 120 POEMS OF UENRY TIMROD. Behind them flamed the toil of years, And bloodshed stained the sheaves of liie. They fought as tyrants fight, or slaves ; God gave the dastards to our hands ; Their bones are bleaching on the sands, Or mouldering slow in shallow graves. What though we hear about our path The heavens with howls of vengeance rent ? The venom of their hate is spent ; We need not heed their fangless wrath. Meantime the stream they strove to chain Now drinks a thousand springs, and sweeps With broadening breast, and mightier deeps, And rushes onward to the main ; While down the swelling current glides Our Ship of State before the blast, With streamers poured from every mast, Her thunders roaring from her sides. Lord ! bid the frenzied tempest cease, Hang out thy rainbow on the sea ! Laugh round her, waves ! in silver glee, And speed her to the port of peace ! ADDRESS. 121 ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF THE NEW THEATRE AT RICHMOND. A PRIZE POEM. A fairy ring Drawn in the crimson of a battle-plain From whose weird circle every loathsome thing And sight and sound of pain Are banished, while about it in the air, And from the ground, and from the low-hung skiej, Throng, in a vision fail- As ever lit a prophet s dying eyes, Gleams of that unseen world That lies about us, rainbow-tinted shapes With starry wings unfurled, Poised for a moment on such airy capes As pierce the golden foam Of sunset s silent main Would image what in this enchanted dome, Amid the night of war and death In which the armed city draws its breath, We have built up ! For though no wizard wand or magic cup The spell hath wrought, Within this charmed fune, we ope the gates Of that divines t Fairy-land, Where under loftier fates Than rule the vulgar earth on which we stand, Move the bright creatures of the realm of thought. 122 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Shut for one happy evening from the flood That roars around us, here you may behold As if a desert way Could blossom and unfold A garden fresh with May Substantialized in breathing flesh and blood, Souls that upon the poet s page Have lived from age to age, And yet have never donned this mortal clay. A golden strand Shall sometimes spread before you like the isle Where fair Miranda s smile Met the sweet stranger whom the father s art Had led unto her heart, Which, like a bud that waited for the light. Burst into bloom at sight ! Love shall grow softer in each maiden s eyes As Juliet leans her cheek upon her hand, And prattles to the night. Anon, a reverend form, With tattered robe and forehead bare, That challenge all the torments of the air, Goes by ! And the pent feelings choke in one long sigh, While, as the mimic thunder rolls, you hear The noble wreck of Lear Reproach like things of life the ancient skies, And commune with the storm ! Lo ! next a dim and silent chamber where, Wrapt in glad dreams in which, perchance, the Moor Tells his strange story o er, ADDRESS. 123 The gentle Desdemona chastely lies, Unconscious of the loving murderer nigh. Then through a hush like death Stalks Denmark s mailed ghost ! And Hamlet enters with that thoughtful breath Which is the trumpet to a countless host Of reasons, but which wakes no deed from sleep; For while it calls to strife, He pauses on the very brink of fact To toy as with the shadow of an act, And utter those wise saws that cut so deep Into the core of life ! Nor shall be wanting many a scene Where forms of more familiar mien, Moving through lowlier pathways, shall present The world of every day, Such as it whirls along the busy quay, Or sits beneath a rustic orchard wall, Or floats about a fashion-freighted hall, Or toils in attics dark the night away. Love, hate, grief, joy, gain, glory, shame, shall meet, As in the round wherein our lives are pent; Chance for a while shall seem to reign, While Goodness roves like Guilt about the street, And Guilt looks innocent. But all at last shall vindicate the right, Crime shall be meted with its proper pain, Motes shall be taken from the doubter s sight, And Fortune s general justice rendered plain. 1^4 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Of honest laughter there shall be no dearth, Wit shall shake hands with humor grave and sweet, Our wisdom shall not be too wise for mirth, Nor kindred follies want a fool to greet. As sometimes from the meanest spot of earth A sudden beauty unexpected starts, So you shall find some germs of hidden worth Within the vilest hearts; And now and then, when in those moods that turn To the cold Muse that whips a fault with sneers, You shall, perchance, be strangely touched to learn You ve struck a spring of tears! But while we lead you thus from change to change, Shall we not find within our ample range Some type to elevate a people s heart Some hero who shall teach a hero s part In this distracted time ? Eise from thy sleep of ages, noble Tell ! And, with the Alpine thunders of thy voice, As if across the billows unen thralled Thy Alps unto the Alleghanies called, Bid Liberty rejoice! Proclaim upon this trans- Atlantic strand The deeds which, more than their own awful mien Make every crag of Switzerland sublime ! And say to those whose feeble souls would lean. Not on themselves, but on some outstretched hand, That once a single mind sufficed to quell THE COTTON BOLL. 1 The malice of a tyrant; let them know That each may crowd in every well-aimed blow, Not the poor strength alone of arm and brand, But the whole spirit of a mighty land! Bid Liberty rejoice ! Aye, though its day Be far or near, these clouds shall yet be red With the large promise of the coming ray. Meanwhile, with that calm courage which can smile Amid the terrors of the wildest fray, Let us among the charms of Art awhile Fleet the deep gloom away ; Nor yet forget that on each hand and head Rest the dear rights for which we fight and pray. 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 thread, Draw forth the folded strands, 126 POEMS OF HENRT TIMEOD. Than which the trembling line, By whose frail help yon startled spider fled Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging bed. Is scarce more fine ; And as the tangled skein Unravels in my hands, Betwixt me and the noonday light, A veil seems lifted, and for miles and miles The landscape broadens on my sight, As, in the little boll, there lurked a spell Like that which, in the ocean shell, With mystic sound, Breaks down the narrow walls that hem us round, And turns some city lane Into the restless main, With all his capes and isles! Yonder bird, Which floats, as if at rest, In those blue tracts above the thunder, where No vapors cloud the stainless air, And never sound is heard, Unless at such rare time When, from the City of the Blest, Rings down some golden chime, Sees not from his high place So vast a cirque of summer space As widens round me in one mighty field, Which, rimmed by seas and sands, Doth hail its earliest daylight in the beams THE COTTON BOLL. 127 Of gray Atlantic dawns ; And, broad as realms made up of many lands, Is lost afar Behind the crimson hills and purple lawns Of sunset, among plains which roll their streams Against the Evening Star ! And lo ! To the remotest point of sight, Although I gaze upon no waste of snow. The endless field is white ; And the whole landscape glows, For many a shining league away, With such accumulated light As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day! Nor lack there (for the vision grows, And the small charm within my hands More potent even than the fabled one, Which oped whatever golden mystery Lay hid in fairy wood or magic vale, The curious ointment of the Arabian tale Beyond all mortal sense Doth stretch my sight s horizon, and I see, Beneath its simple influence, As if with Uriel s crown, I stood in some great temple of the Sun, And looked, as Uriel, down !) Nor lack there pastures rich and fields all green With all the common gifts of God, For temperate airs and torrid sheen Weave Edens of the sod ; 128 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Through lands which look one sea of billowy gold Broad rivers wind their devious ways ; A hundred isles in their embraces fold A hundred luminous bays ; And through yon purple haze Vast mountains lift their plumed peaks cloud- crowned ; And, save where up their sides the ploughman creeps, An unhewn forest girds them grandly round, In whose dark shades a future navy sleeps ! Ye Stars, which, though unseen, yet with me gaze Upon this loveliest fragment of the earth! Thou Sun, that kindlest all thy gentlest rays Above it, as to light a favorite hearth ! Ye Clouds, that in your temples in the West See nothing brighter than its humblest flowers! And you, ye Winds, that on the ocean s breast Are kissed to coolness ere ye reach its bowers ! Bear witness with me in my song of praise, And tell the world that, since the world began, No fairer land hath fired a poet s lays. Or given a home to man ! But these are charms already widely blown ! His be the meed whose pencil s trace Hath touched our very swamps with grace, And round whose tuneful way All Southern laurels bloom ; The Poet of "The Woodlands," unto whom Alike are known THE COTTON BOLL. 129 The flute s low breathing and the trumpet s tone, And the soft west wind s sighs ; But who shall utter all the debt, Land wherein all powers are met That bind a people s heart, The world doth owe thee at this day, And which it never can repay, Yet scarcely deigns to own ! Where sleeps the poet who shall fitly sing The source wherefrom doth spring That mighty commerce which, confined To the mean channels of no selfish mart, Goes out to every shore Of this broad earth, and throngs the sea with ships That bear no thunders; hushes hungry lips In alien lands ; Joins with a delicate web remotest strands; And gladdening rich and poor, Doth gild Parisian domes, Or feed the cottage-smoke of English homes, And only bounds its blessings by mankind ! In offices like these, thy mission lies, My Country ! and it shall not end As long as rain shall fall and Heaven bend In blue above thee ; though thy foes be hard And cruel as their weapons, it shall guard Thy hearth-stones as a bulwark ; make thee great In white and bloodless state ; And haply, as the years increase 6 130 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Still working through its humbler reach With that large wisdom which the ages teach Kevive the half-dead dream of universal peace ! As men who labor in that mine Of Cornwall, hollowed out beneath the bed Of ocean, when a storm rolls overhead, Hear the dull booming of the world of brine Above them, and a mighty muffled roar Of winds and waters, yet toil calmly on, And split the rock, and pile the massive ore, Or carve a niche, or shape the arched roof; So I, as calmly, weave my woof Of song, chanting the days to come, Unsilenced, though the quiet summer air Stirs with the bruit of battles, and each dawn Wakes from its starry silence to the hum Of many gathering armies. Still, In that we sometimes hear, Upon the Northern winds, the voice of woe Not wholly drowned in triumph, though I know The end must crown us, and a few brief years Dry all our tears, I may not sing too gladly. To Thy will Eesigned, Lord ! we cannot all forget That there is much even Victory must regret. And, therefore, not too long From the great burthen of our country s wrong Delay frur just release ! And, if it may be, save These sacred fields of peace SPRING. 131 From stain of patriot or of hostile blood ! Oh, help us, Lord ! to roll the crimson flood Back on its course, and, while our banners wing Northward, strike with us ! till the Goth shall cling To his own blasted altar-stones, and crave Mercy ; and we shall grant it, and dictate The lenient future of his fate There, where some rotting ships and crumbling quays Shall one day mark the Port which ruled the Western seas. 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. 132 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Yet still on every side we trace the band 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 ; SPRING. 133 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! lam May!" Ah ! who would couple thoughts of war and crime With such a blessed 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 011 this desecrated mould, Methinks that I behold, Lifting her bloody daisies up to God, Spring kneeling on the sod, 134 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. 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 UNKNOWN DEAD. The rain is plashing on my sill, But all the winds of Heaven are still ; And so it falls with that dull sound Which thrills us in the church-yard ground, When the first spadeful drops like lead Upon the coffin of the dead. Beyond my streaming window-pane, I cannot see the neighboring vane, Yet from its old familiar tower The bell comes, muffled, through the shower What strange and unsuspected link Of feeling touched, has made me think While with a vacant soul and eye I watch that gray and stony sky Of nameless graves on battle-plains Washed by a single winter s rains, Where, some beneath Virginian hills, And some by green Atlantic rills, Some by the waters of the West, A myriad unknown heroes rest. Ah ! not the chiefs, who, dying, see THE UNKNOWN DEAD. 135 Their flags in front of victory, Or, at their life-blood s noble cost Pay for a battle nobly lost, Claim from their monumental beds The bitterest tears a nation sheds. Beneath yon lonely mound the spot By all save some fond few forgot Lie the true martyrs of the fight Which strikes for freedom and for right. Of them, their patriot zeal and pride, The lofty faith that with them died, No grateful page shall farther tell Than that so many bravely fell; And we can only dimly guess What worlds of all this world s distress, What utter woe, despair, and dearth, Their fate has brought to many a hearth. Just such a sky as this should weep Above them, always, where they sleep ; Yet, haply, at this very hour, Their graves are like a lover s bower ; And Nature s self, with eyes unwet, Oblivious of the crimson debt To which she owes her April grace, Laughs gayly o er their burial-place. 136 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. THE TWO ARMIES. Two armies stand enrolled beneath The banner with the starry wreath ; One, facing battle, blight and blast, Through twice a hundred fields has passed; Its deeds against a ruffian foe, Stream, valley, hill, and mountain know, Till every wind that sweeps the land Goes, glory laden, from the strand. The other, with a narrower scope, Yet led by not less grand a hope, Hath won, perhaps, as proud a place, And wears its fame with meeker grace. Wives march beneath its glittering sign, Eond mothers swell the lovely line, And many a sweetheart hides her blush In the young patriot s generous flush. No breeze of battle ever fanned The colors of that tender band ; Its office is beside the bed, Where throbs some sick or wounded head. It does not court the soldier s tomb, But plies the needle and the loom ; And, by a thousand peaceful deeds, Supplies a struggling nation s needs. Nor is that army s gentle might CTnfelt amid the deadly fight ; A VISION OF POESY. 137 It nerves the son s, the husband s hand, It points the lover s fearless brand ; It thrills the languid, warms the cold, Gives even new courage to the bold; And sometimes lifts the veriest clod To its own lofty trust in God. When Heaven shall blow the trump of peace, And bid this weary warfare cease, Their several missions nobly done, The triumph grasped, and freedom won, Both armies, from their toils at rest, Alike may claim the victor s crest, But each shall see its dearest prize Gleam softly from the other s eyes. A VISION OF POESY. PART I. i. In a far country, and a distant age, Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth, A boy was born of humble parentage ; The stars that shone upon his lonely birth, Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame Yet no tradition hath preserved his name. 138 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. II. "Tis said that on the night when he was born, A beauteous shape swept slowly through the room; Its eyes broke on the infant like a morn, And his cheek brightened like a rose in bloom ; But as it passed away there followed after A sigh of pain, and sounds of elvish laughter. in. And so his parents deemed him to be blest Beyond the lot of mortals; they were poor As the most timid bird that stored its nest With the stray gleanings at their cottage-door : Yet they contrived to rear their little dove, And he repaid them with the tenderest love. IV. The child was very beautiful in sooth, And as he waxed in years grew lovelier still ; On his fair brow the aureole of truth Beamed, and the purest maidens, with a thrill, Looked in his eyes, and from their heaven of blue Saw thoughts like sinless Angels peering through. Y. Need there was none of censure or of praise To mould him to the kind parental hand ; Yet there was ever something in. his ways, Which those about him could not understand; A self-withdrawn and independent bliss, Beside the father s love, the mother s kiss. A VISION OF POESY. 130 4 VI. For oft, when he believed himself alone, They caught brief snatches of mysterious rhymes, Which he would murmur in an undertone, Like a pleased bee s in summer; and at times A strange far look would come into his eyes, As if he saw a vision in the skies. VII. And he upon a simple leaf would pore As if its very texture unto him Had some deep meaning; sometimes by the door, From noon until a summer-day grew dim, He lay and watched the clouds ; and to his thought Night with her stars but fitful slumbers brought. VIII. In the long hours of twilight, when the breeze Talked in low tones along the woodland rills. Or the loud North its stormy minstrelsies Blent with wild noises from the distant hills, The boy his rosy hand against his ear Curved like a sea-shell hushed as some rapt seer, IX. Followed the sounds, and ever and again, As the wind came and went, in storm or play, He seemed to hearken as to some far strain Of mingled voices calling him away; And they who watched him held their breath to trace The still and fixed attention in his face. 140 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. X. Once, on a cold and loud-voiced winter night, The three were seated by their cottage-fire The mother watching by its nickering light The wakeful urchin, and the dozing sire ; There was a brief, quick motion like a bird s, And the boy s thought thus rippled into words: XL " mother ! thou hast taught me many things, But none I think more beautiful than speech A nobler power than even those broad wings I used to pray for, when I longed to reach That distant peak which on our vale looks down, And wears the star of evening for a crown. XII. " But, mother, while our human words are rife To us with meaning, other sounds there be Which seem, and are, the language of a life Around, yet unlike ours: winds talk ; the sea Murmurs articulately, and-the sky Listens, and answers, though inaudibly. XIII. "By stream and spring, in glades and woodlands loiie, Beside our very cot, I ve gathered flowers Inscribed with signs and characters unknown ; But the frail scrolls still baffle all my powers : What is this language and where is the key That opes its weird and wondrous mystery ? A VISION OF POESY. 141 XIV. " The forests know it, and the mountains know, And it is written in the sunset s dyes ; A revelation to the world below Is daily going on before our eyes ; And, but for sinful thoughts, I do not doubt That we could spell the thrilling secret out. xv. "0 mother! somewhere on this lovely earth I lived, and understood that mystic tongue, But, for some reason, to my second birth Only the dullest memories have clung, Like that fair tree that even while blossoming Keeps the dead berries of a former spring. XVI. " Who shall put life in these ? my nightly dreams Some teacher of supernal powers foretell ; A fair and stately shape appears, which seems Bright with all truth ; and once, in a dark dell Within the forest, unto me there came A voice that must be hers, which called my name." XVII. Puzzled and frightened, wondering more and more, The mother heard, but did not comprehend ; " So early dallying with forbidden lore ! Oh, what will chance, and wherein will it end ? My child ! my child ! " she caught him to her breast, " Oh, let me kiss these wildering thoughts to rest ! 148 POEMS OF HENRT TIMROD. XVIII. " They cannot come from God, who freely gives All that we need to have, or ought to know ; Beware, my son ! some evil influence strives To grieve thy parents, and to work thee woe ; Alas ! the vision I misunderstood ! It could not be an angel fair and good." XIX. And then, in low and tremulous tones, she told The story of his birth-night ; the boy s eyes, As the wild tale went on, were bright and bold, With a weird look that did not seem surprise : " Perhaps," he said, "this lady and her elves Will one day come, and take me to themselves." xx. " And wouldst thou leave us ? " " Dearest mother, no ! Hush ! I will check these thoughts that give thee pain ; Or, if they flow, as they perchance must flow, At least I will not utter them again ; Hark ! didst thou hear a voice like many streams ? Mother! it is the spirit of my dreams ! " XXI. Thenceforth, whatever impulse stirred below, In the deep heart beneath that childish breast, Those lips were sealed, and though the eye would glow, Yet the brow wore an air of perfect rest ; A VISION OF POESY. 143 Cheerful, content, with calm though strong control He shut the temple-portals of his soul. XXII. And when too restlessly the mighty throng Of fancies woke within his teeming mind, All silently they formed in glorious song, And floated off unheard, and undivined, Perchance not lost with many a voiceless prayer They reached the sky, and found some record there. XXIII. Softly and swiftly sped the quiet days; The thoughtful boy has blossomed into youth, And still no maiden would have feared his gaze, And still his biow was noble with the truth : Yet, though he masks the pain with pious art, There burns a restless fever in his heart. XXIV. A childish dream is now a deathless need Which drives him to far hills and distant wilds ; The solemn faith and fervor of his creed Bold as a martyrs, simple as a child s ; The eagle knew him as she knew the blast, And the deer did not flee him as he passed. XXY. But gentle even in his wildest mood, Always, and most, he loved the bluest weather, 144 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. And in some soft and sunny solitude Couched like a milder sunshine on the heather, He communed with the winds, and with the birds, As if they might have answered him in words. XXVI. Deep buried in the forest was a nook Eemote and quiet as its quiet skies ; He knew it, sought it, loved it as a book Full of his own sweet thoughts and memories; Dark oaks and fluted chestnuts gathering round, Pillared and greenly domed a sloping mound. XXVII. Whereof white, purple, azure, golden, red, Confused like hues of sunset the wild flowers Wove a rich dais; through crosslights overhead Glanced the clear sunshine, fell the fruitful showers, And here the shyest bird would fold her wings ; Here fled the fairest and the gentlest things. XXVIII. Thither, one night of mist and moonlight, came The youth, with nothing deeper in his thoughts Than to behold beneath the silver flame New aspects of his fair and favorite spot; A single ray attained the ground, and shed Just light enough to guide the wanderer s tread. A VISION OF POESY. 145 XXIX. And high and hushed arose the stately trees, Yet shut within themselves, like dungeons, where Lay fettered all the secrets of the breeze ; Silent, but not as slumbering, all things there Wore to the youth s aroused imagination An air of deep and solemn expectation. XXX. "Hath Heaven," the youth exclaimed, " a sweeter spot, Or Earth another like it? yet even here The old mystery dwells ! and though I read it not, Here most I hope it is, or seems so near; So many hints come to me, but, alas ! I cannot grasp the shadows as they pass. XXXI. " Here, from the very turf beneath me, I Catch, but just catch, I know not what faint sound, And darkly guess that from yon silent sky Float starry emanations to the ground; These ears are deaf, these human eyes are blind, I want a purer heart, a subtler mind. XXXII. " Sometimes could it be fancy ? I have felt The presence of a spirit who might speak ; As down in lowly reverence 1 knelt Its very breath hath kissed my burning cheek ; 7 146 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. But I in vain have hushed my own to hear A wing or whisper stir the silent air!" XXXIII. Is not the breeze articulate ? Hark ! Oh, hark ! A distant murmur, like a voice of floods ; And onward sweeping slowly through the dark, Bursts like a call the night-wind from the woods ! Low bow the flowers, the trees fling loose their dreams, And through the waving roof a fresher moonlight streams. XXXIV. " Mortal! " the word crept slowly round the place As if that wind had breathed it ! From no star Streams that soft lustre on the dreamer s face. Again a hushing calm! while faint and far The breeze goes calling onward through the night. Dear God ! what vision chains that wide-strained sight ? XXXV. Over the grass and flowers, and up the slope Glides a white cloud of mist, self-moved and slow, That, pausing at the hillock s moonlit cope, Swayed like a flame of silver ; from below The breathless youth with beating heart beholds A mystic motion in its argent folds. XXXVI. Yet his young soul is bold, and hope grows warm, As flashing through that cloud of shadowy crape, A VISION OF POESY. 147 With sweep of robes, and then a gleaming arm. Slowly developing, at last took shape A face and form unutterably bright, That cast a golden glamour on the night. XXXVII. But for the glory round it it would seem Almost a mortal maiden ; and the boy, Unto whom love was yet an innocent dream, Shivered and crimsoned with an unknown joy ; As to the young Spring bounds the passionate South, He could have clasped and kissed her mouth to mouth. XXXVIII. Yet something checked, that was and was not dread, Till in a low sweet voice the maiden spake ; She was the Fairy of his dreams, she said, And loved him simply for his human sake; And that in heaven, wherefrom she took her birth, They called her Poesy, the angel of the earth. xxxix. " And ever since that immemorial hour, When the glad morning-stars together sung, My task hath been, beneath a mightier Power, To keep the world forever fresh and young ; I give it not its fruitage and its green, But clothe it with a glory all unseen. 148 POEMS OF HENRT TIMROD. XL. " I sow the germ which buds in human art, And, with my sister, Science, I explore With light the dark recesses of the heart, And nerve the will, and teach the wish to soar; I touch with grace the body s meanest clay, While noble souls are nobler for my sway. XLI. " Before my power the kings of earth have bowed ; I am the voice of Freedom, and the sword Leaps from its scabbard when I call aloud ; Wherever life in sacrifice is poured, Wherever martyrs die or patriots bleed, I weave the chaplet and award the meed. XLII. " Where Passion stoops, or strays, is cold, or dead, I lift from error, or to action thrill ! Or if it rage too madly in its bed, The tempest hushes at my peace ! be still ! I know how far its tides should sink or swell, And they obey my sceptre and my spell. XLIII. "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 A VISION OF POESY. 149 All that exalts the grounds of happiness, All griefs that hallow, and all joys that bless, XLIV. " 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. XLV. "I am the unseen spirit thou hast sought, I woke those shadowy questionings that vex Thy young mind, lost in its own cloud of thought, And rouse the soul they trouble and perplex ; I filled thy days with visions, and thy nights Blessed with all sweetest sounds and fairy sights. XLVI. " Not here, not in this world, may I disclose The mysteries in which this life is hearsed ; Some doubts there be that, with some earthly woes, By Death alone shall wholly be dispersed; Yet on those very doubts from this low sod Thy soul shall pass beyond the stars to Grod. XLVII. " And so to knowledge, climbing grade by grade, Thou shalt attain whatever mortals can, 150 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. And what thou maysfc discover by my aid Thou shalt translate unto thy brother man ; And men shall bless the power that flings a ray Into their night from thy diviner day. XLVIII. " For, from thy lofty height, thy words shall fall Upon their spirits like bright cataracts That front a sunrise ; thou shalt hear them call Amid their endless waste of arid facts, As wearily they plod their way along, Upon the rhythmic zephyrs of thy song. XLIX. All this is in thy reach, but much depends Upon thyself thy future I await ; I give the genius, point the proper ends, But the true bard is his own only Fate ; Into thy soul my soul have I infused ; Take care thy lofty powers be wisely used. " The Poet owes a high and holy debt, Which, if he feel, he craves not to be heard For the poor boon of praise, or place, nor yet Does the mere joy of song, as with the bird Of many voices, prompt the choral lay That cheers that gentle pilgrim on his way. A VISION OF POESY. 15] LI. " Nor may he always sweep the passionate lyre, Which is his heart, only for such relief As an impatient spirit may desire, Lest, from the grave which hides a private grief, The spells of song call up some pallid wraith To blast or ban a mortal hope or faith. LII. " Yet over his deep soul, with all its crowd Of varying hopes and fears, he still must brood; As from its azure height a tranquil cloud Watches its own bright changes in the flood ; Self-reading, not self-loving they are twain And sounding, while he mourns, the depths of pain. LIII. " Thus shall his songs attain the common breast, Dyed in his own life s blood, the sign and seal, Even as the thorns which are the martyr s crest, That do attest his office, and appeal Unto the universal human heart In sanction of his mission and his art. LIV. "Much yet remains unsaid pure must he be; Oh, blessed are the pure! for they shall hear Where others hear not, see where others see With a dazed vision : who have drawn most near My shrine, have ever brought a spirit cased And mailed in a body clean and chaste. 152 POEMS OF HENRT TIMROD. LV. " The Poet to the whole wide world belongs, Even as the teacher is the child s I said No selfish aim should ever mar his songs, But self wears many guises ; men may wed Self in another, and the soul may be Self to its centre, all unconsciously. LVI. "And therefore must the Poet watch, lest he, In the dark struggle of this life, should take Stains which he might not notice; he must flee Falsehood, however winsome, and forsake All for the Truth, assured that Truth alone Is Beauty, and can make him all my own. LVII. "And he must be as armed warrior strong, And he must be as gentle as a girl, And he must front, and sometimes suffer wrong, With brow unbent, and lip untaught to curl; For wrath, and scorn, and pride, however just, Fill the clear spirit s eyes with earthly dust." The story came to rne it recks not whence In fragments ; Oh ! if I could tell it all, If human speech indeed could tell it all, J T were not a whit less wondrous, than if I Should find, untouched in leaf and stem, and bright As when it bloomed three thousand years ago, A VISION OF POESY. 153 On some Idalian slope, a perfect rose. Alas ! a leaf or two, and they perchance Scarce worth the hiving, one or two dead leaves Are the sole harvest of a summer s toil. There was a moment, ne er to be recalled, When to the Poet s hope within my heart, They wore a tint like life s, but in my hand, I know not why, they withered. I have heard Somewhere, of some dead monarch, from the tomb, Where he had slept a century and more, Brought forth, that when the coffin was laid bare, Albeit the body in its mouldering robes Was fleshless, yet one feature still remained Perfect, or perfect seemed at least ; the eyes Gleamed for a second on the startled crowd, And then went out in ashes. Even thus The story, when I drew it from the grave Where it had lain so long, did seem, I thought, Not wholly lifeless ; but even while I gazed To fix its features on my heart, and called The world to wonder with me, lo ! it proved I looked upon a corpse ! What further fell In that lone forest nook, how much was taught, How much was only hinted, what the youth Promised, if promise were required, to do Or strive for, what the gifts he bore away Or added powers or blessings how at last, The vision ended and he sought his home, How lived there, and how long, and when he passed 154 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Into the busy "world to seek his fate, I know not, and if any ever knew, The tale hath perished from the earth ; for here The slender thread on which iny song is strung Breaks off, and many after-years of life Are lost to sight, the life to reappear Only towards its close as of a dream We catch the end and opening, but forget That which had joined them in the dreaming brain ; Or as a mountain with a belt of mist That shows his base, and far above, a peak With a blue plume of pines. But turn the page And read the only hints that yet remain. PART II. It is not winter yet, but that sweet time In autumn when the first cool days are past ; A week ago, the leaves were hoar with rime, And some have dropped before the North wind s blast ; But the mild hours are back, and at mid-noon, The day hath all the genial warmth of June. n. What slender form lies stretched along the mound ? Can it be his, the Wanderer s, with that brow A VISION OF POESY. 155 Gray in its prime, those eyes that wander round Listlessly, with a jaded glance that now Seems to see nothing where it rests, and then Pores on each trivial object in its ken ? in. See how a gentle maid s wan fingers clasp The last fond love-notes of some faithless hand ; Thus, with a transient interest, his weak grasp Holds a few leaves as when of old he scanned The meaning in their gold and crimson streaks ; But the sweet dream has vanished! hush ! he speaks ! IV. " Once more, once more, after long pain and toil, And yet not long, if I should count by years, I breathe my native air, and tread the soil I trod in childhood ; if I shed no tears, No happy tears, t is* that their fount is dry, And joy that cannot weep must sigh, must sigh. v. " These leaves, my boyish books in days of yore, When, as the weeks sped by, I seemed to stand Ever upon the brink of some wild lore These leaves shall make my bed, and for the hand Of God is on me, chilling brain and breath I shall not ask a softer couch in death. 156 POEMS OF HENRY VI. " Here was it that I saw, or dreamed I saw, * I know not which, that shape of love and light. Spirit of Song ! have I not owned thy" law ? Have I not taught, or striven to teach the right, And kept my heart as clean, my life as sweet, As mortals may, when mortals mortals meet ? VII. " Thou knowst how I went forth, my youthful breast On fire with thee, amid the paths of men ; Once in my wanderings, my lone footsteps pressed A mountain forest; in a sombre glen, Down which its thunderous boom a cataract flung, A little bird, unheeded, built and sung. VIII. " So fell my voice amid the whirl and rush Of human passions ; if unto my art Sorrow hath sometimes owed a gentler gush, I know it not ; if any Poet-heart Hath kindled at my songs its light divine, I know it not ; no ray came back to mine. IX. " Alone in crowds, once more I sought to make Of senseless things my friends; the clouds that burn Above the sunset, and the flowers that shake Their odors in the wind these would not turn A VISION OF POESY. 157 Their faces from me ; far from cities, I Forgot the scornful world that passed me by. x. " Yet even the world s cold slights I might have borne, Nor fled, though sorrowing; but I shrank at last When one sweet face, too sweet, I thought, for scorn, Looked scornfully upon me; then I passed From all that youth had dreamed or manhood planned, Into the self that none would understand. XI. " She was I never wronged her womanhood By crowning it with praises not her own She was all earth s, and earth s, too, in that mood When she brings forth her fairest; I atone Now, in this fading brow and failing frame, That such a soul such soul as mine could tame. XII. " Clay to its kindred clay ! I loved, in sooth, Too deeply and too purely to be blest ; With something more of lust and less of truth She would have sunk all blushes on my breast, And but I must not blame her in my ear Death whispers! and the end, thank God! draws near ! " xrn. Hist ! on the perfect silence of the place Comes and dies off a sound like far-off rain 158 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. With voices mingled ; on the Poet s face A shadow, where no shadow should have lain, Falls the next moment: nothing meets his sight, Yet something moves betwixt him and the light. XIV. And a voice murmurs, " Wonder not, but hear ! ME to behold again thou need st not seek; Yet by the dim-felt influence on the air, And by the mystic shadow on thy cheek, Know, though thou mayst not touch with fleshly hands, The genius of thy life beside thee stands ! xv. " Unto no fault, weary-hearted one ! Unto no fault of man s thou ow st thy fate ; All human hearts that beat this earth upon, All human thoughts and human passions wait Upon the genuine bard, to him belong, And help in their own way the Poet s song. XVI. "How blame the world? for the world hast thou wrought ? Or wast thou but as one who aims to fling The weight of some unutterable thought Down like a burden ? what from questioning Too subtly thy own spirit, and to speech But half subduing themes beyond the reach A VISION OF POESY. 159 XVII. " Of mortal reason ; what from living much In that dark world of shadows, where the soul Wanders bewildered, striving still to clutch, Yet never clutching once, a shadowy goal, Which always flies, and while it flies seems near, Thy songs were riddles hard to mortal ear. XVIII. " This was the hidden selfishness that marred Thy teachings ever ; this the false key-note That on such souls as might have loved thee jarred Like an unearthly language ; thou didst float On a strange water; those who stood on land Gazed, but they could not leave their beaten strand. XIX. " Your elements were different, and apart The world s and thine and even in those intense And watchful broodings o er thy inmost heart, It was thy own peculiar difference That thou didst seek ; nor didst thou care to find Aught that would bring thee nearer to thy kind. xx. "Not thus the Poet, who in blood and brain Would represent his race and speak for all, Weaves the bright woof of that impassioned strain Which drapes, as if for some high festival Of pure delights whence few of human birth May rightly be shut out the common earth. 160 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. XXI. " As the same law that moulds a planet, rounds A drop of dew, so the great Poet spheres Worlds in himself; no selfish limit bounds A sympathy that folds all characters, All ranks, all passions, and all life almost In its wide circle. Like some noble host, XXII. " He spreads the riches of his soul, and bids Partake who will. Age has its saws of truth, And love is for the maiden s drooping lids, And words of passion for the earnest youth ; Wisdom for all ; and when it seeks relief, Tears, and their solace for the heart of grief. XXIII. " Nor less on him than thee the mysteries Within him and about him ever weigh The meanings in the stars, and in the breeze, All the weird wonders of the common day, Truths that the merest point removes from reach, And thoughts that pause upon the brink of speech ; XXIV. " But on the surface of his song these lie As shadows, not as darkness ; and alway, Even though it breathe the secrets of the sky, There is a human purpose in the lay ; Thus some tall fir that whispers to the stars Shields at its base a cotter s lattice-bars. A VISION OF POESY. 161 XXV. " Even such my Poet ! for thou still art mine ! Thou mightst have been, and now have calmly died, A priest, and not a victim at the shrine ; Alas! yet was it all thy fault? I chide, Perchance, myself within thee, and the fate To which thy power was solely consecrate. XXVI. " Thy life hath not been wholly without use, Albeit that use is partly hidden now : In thy unmingled scorn of any truce With this world s specious falsehoods, often thou Hast uttered, through some all unworldly song. Truths that for man might else have slumbered long. XXVII. " And these not always vainly on the crowd Have fallen ; some are cherished now, and some, In mystic phrases wrapped as in a shroud, Wait the diviner, who as yet is dumb Upon the breast of God the gate of birth Closed on a dreamless ignorance of earth. XXVIH. u And therefore, though thy name shall pass away, Even as a cloud that hath wept all its showers, Yet as that cloud shall live again one day In the glad grass, and in the happy flowers, So in thy thoughts, though clothed in sweeter rhymes. Thy life shall bear its flowers in future times." 162 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. THE PAST. To-day s most trivial act may hold the seed Of future fruitfulness, or future dearth ; Oh, cherish always every word and deed ! The simplest record of thyself hath. worth. If thou hast ever slighted one old thought, Beware lest Grief enforce the truth at last; The time must come wherein thou shalt be taught The value and the beauty of the Past. Not merely as a warner and a guide, " A voice behind thee," sounding to the strife ; But something never to be put aside, A part and parcel of thy present life. Not as a distant and a darkened sky, Through which the stars peep, and the moonbeams glow; But a surrounding atmosphere, whereby We live and breathe, sustained in pain and woe. 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 entranced eyes, Looking to far-off and celestial things. PRECEPTOR AM AT. 163 PRECEPTOR AMAT. It is time (it was time long ago) I should sever This chain why I wear it I know not forever ! Yet I cling to the bond, e en while sick of the mask I must wear, as of one whom his commonplace task And proof-armorofdullnesshave steeled to her charms ! Ah ! how lovely she looked as she flung from her arms, In heaps to this table (now starred with the stains Of her booty yet wet with those yesterday rains), These roses and lilies, and what? let me see! Then was off in a moment, but turned with a glee. That lit her sweet face as with moonlight, to say, As t was almost too late for a lesson to-day, She meant to usurp, for this morning at least, My office of Tutor ; and instead of a feast Of such mouthfuls as polupliloisboio thalasses, With which I fed her, I should study the grasses (Love-grasses she called them), the buds, and the flowers Of which I know nothing ; and if " with my powers," I did not learn all she could teach in that time. And thank her, perhaps, in a sweet English rhyme, If I did not do this, and she flung back her hair, And shook her bright head with a menacing air, She d be oh ! she d be a real Saracen Omar To a certain much- valued edition of Homer ! But these flowers ! I believe I could number as soon The shadowy thoughts of a last summer s noon, 164 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Or recall with their phases, each one after one, The clouds that came down to the death of the Sun. Cirrus, Stratus, or Nimbus, some evening last year, As unravel the web of one genus ! Why, there, As they lie by my desk in that glistering heap, All tangled together like dreams in the sleep Of a bliss-fevered heart, I might turn them and turn Till night, in a puzzle of pleasure, and learn Not a fact, not a secret I prize half so much, As, how rough is this leaf when I think of her touch. There s one now blown yonder ! what can be its name ? A topaz wine-colored, the wine in a flame ; And another that s hued like the pulp of a melon, But sprinkled all o er as with seed-pearls of Ceylon ; And a third! its white petals just clouded with pink ! And a fourth, that blue star ! and then this, too ! I think If one brought me this moment an amethyst cup, From which, through a liquor of amber, looked up, With a glow as of eyes in their elfin-like lustre, Stones culled from all lands in a sunshiny cluster, From the ruby that burns in the sands of Mysore To the beryl of Daunia, with gems from the core Of the mountains of Persia (I talk like a boy In the flush of some new, and yet half- tasted joy) ; But I think if that cup and its jewels together Were placed by the side of this child of the weather (This one which she touched with her mouth, and let slip From her fingers by chance, as her exquisite lip, PRECEPTOR AMAT. 165 With a music befitting the language divine, Gave the roll of the Greek s multitudinous line), I should take not the gems but enough ! let me shut In the blossom that woke it, my folly, and put Both away in my bosom there, in a heart-niche, One shall outlive the other is t hard to tell which? In the name of all starry and beautiful things, What is it ? the cross in the centre, these rings, And the petals that shoot in an intricate maze, From the disk which is lilac or purple ? like rays In a blue Aureole ! And so now will she wot, When I sit by her side with my brows in a knot. And praise her so calmly, or chide her perhaps, If her voice falter once in its musical lapse, As I ve done, I confess, just to gaze at a flush In the white of her throat, or to watch the quick rush Of the tear she sheds smiling, as, drooping her curls O er that book I keep shrined like a casket of pearls, She reads on in low tones of such tremulous sweetness, That (in spite of some faults) I am forced, in discreet ness, To silence, lest mine, growing hoarse, should betray What I must not reveal will she guess now, I say, How, for all his grave looks, the stern, passionless Tutor, With more than the love of her youthfulest suitor, 166 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Is hiding somewhere in the shroud of his vest. By a heart that is beating wild wings in its nest, This flower, thrown aside in the sport of a minute, And which he holds dear as though folded within it Lay the germ of the bliss that he dreams of! Ah, me ! It is hard to love thus, yet to seem and to be A thing for indifference, faint praise, or cold blame, When you long (by the right of deep passion, the claim, On the loved of the loving, at least to be heard) To take the white hand, and with glance, touch, and word, Burn your way to the heart ! That her step on the stair ? Be still thou fond flatterer ! How little I care For your favorites, see! they are all of them, look! On the spot where they fell, and but here is your book! DREAMS. "Who first said " false as dreams ? " Not one who saw Into the wild and wondrous world they sway; No thinker who hath read their mystic law ; No Poet who hath weaved them in his lay. Else had he known that through the human breast Cross and recross a thousand fleeting gleams, DREAMS. 167 That, passed unnoticed in the day s unrest, Come out at night, like stars, in shining dreams ; That minds too busy or too dull to mark The dim suggestion of the noisier hours, By dreams in the deep silence of the dark, Are roused at midnight with their folded powers. Like that old fount beneath Dodona s oaks, That, dry and voiceless in the garish noon, When the calm night arose with modest looks, Caught with full wave the sparkle of the moon. If, now and then, a ghastly shape glide in, And fright us with its horrid gloom or glee, It is the ghost of some forgotten sin We failed to exorcise on bended knee. And that sweet face which only yesternight Came to thy solace, dreamer (didst thou read The blessing in its eyes of tearful light ?) Was but the spirit of some gentle deed. Each has its lesson ; for our dreams in sooth, Come they in shape of demons, gods, or elves, Are allegories with deep hearts of truth That tell us solemn secrets of ourselves. 168 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. THE PROBLEM. Not to win thy favor, maiden, not to steal away thy heart, Have I ever sought thy presence, ever stooped to any art; Thou wast but a wildering problem, which I aimed to solve, and then Make it matter for my note-book, or a picture for my pen. So, I daily conned thee over, thinking it no dangerous task, Peeping underneath thy lashes, peering underneath thy mask For thou wear st one no denial ! there is much with in thine eyes; But those stars have other secrets than are patent in their skies. And I read thee, read thee closely, every grace and every sin, Looked behind the outward seeming to the strange wild world within, Where thy future self is forming, where I saw no matter what ! There was something less than angel, there was many an earthly spot ; Yet so beautiful thy errors that I had no heart for blame, And thy virtues made thee dearer than my dearest hopes of fame ; THE PROBLEM. 169 All so blended, that in wishing one peculiar trait removed, We indeed might make thee better, but less lovely and less loved. All my mind was in the study so two thrilling fort nights passed All my mind was in the study till my heart was touched at last. Well ! and then the book was finished, the absorbing task was done, I awoke as one who had been dreaming in a noonday sun ; With a fever on my forehead, and a throbbing in my brain, In my soul delirious wishes, in my heart a lasting pain; Yet so hopeless, yet so cureless as in every great despair I was very calm and silent, and I never stooped to prayer, Like a sick man unattended, reckless of the coming death, Only for he knows it certain, and he feels no sister s breath. All the while as by an Ate, with no pity in her face, Yet with eyes of witching beauty, and with form of matchless grace, I was haunted by thy presence, oh! for weary nights and days, I was haunted by thy spirit, I was troubled by thy gaze, 170 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. And the question which to answer I had taxed a subtle brain, What thou art, and what thou wilt be, came again and yet again ; With its opposite deductions, it recurred a thousand times, Like a coward s apprehensions, like a madman s favor ite rhymes. But to-night my thoughts flow calmer in thy room I think I stand, See a fair white page before thee, and a pen within thy hand; And thy fingers sweep the paper, and a light is in thine eyes, Whilst I read thy secret fancies, whilst I hear thy secret sighs. What they are I will not whisper, those are lovely, these are deep, But one name is left unwritten, that is only breathed in sleep. Is it wonder that my passion bursts at once from out its nest ? I have bent my knee before thee, and my love is all confessed ; Though I knew that name unwritten was another name than mine, Though I felt those sighs half murmured what I could but half divine. Aye ! I hear thy haughty answer ! Aye ! I see thy proud lip curl ! THE PROBLEM. 171 "What presumption, and what folly! "why, I only love a girl With some very winning graces, with some very noble traits, But no better than a thousand who have bent to humbler fates. That I ask not ; I have, maiden, just as haught a soul as thine ; If thou think st thy place above me, thou shalt never stoop to mine. Yet as long as blood runs redly, yet as long as mental worth Is a nobler gift than fortune, is a holier thing than birth, I will claim the right to utter, to the high and to the low, That I love them, or I hate them, that I am a friend or foe. Nor shall any slight unman me ; I have yet some little strength, Yet my song shall sound as sweetly, yet a power be mine at length ! Then, oh, then ! but moans are idle hear me, pitying saints above ! With a chaplet on my forehead, I will justify my love. And perhaps when thou art leaning on some less devoted breast, Thou shalt murmur, "He was worthier than my blinded spirit guessed." 172 POEMS OF HENRT TIMROD. THE ARCTIC VOYAGER. Shall I desist, twice baffled ? Once by land, And once by sea, I fought and strove with storms, All shades of danger, tides, and weary calms ; Head-currents, cold and famine, savage beasts, And men more savage; all the while my face Looked northward toward the pole ; if mortal strength Could have sustained me, I had never turned Till I had seen the star which never sets Freeze in the Arctic zenith. That I failed To solve the mysteries of the ice-bound world, Was not because I faltered in the quest. Witness those pathless forests which conceal The bones of perished comrades, that long march, Blood-tracked o er flint and snow, and one dread night By Athabasca, when a cherished life Flowed to give life to others. This, and worse, I suffered let it pass it has not tamed My spirit nor the faith which was my strength. Despite of waning years, despite the world Which doubts, the few who dare, I purpose now A purpose long and thoughtfully resolved, Through all its grounds of reasonable hope To seek beyond the ice which guards the Pole, A sea of open water ; for I hold, Not without proofs, that such a sea exists, And may be reached, though since this earth was made No keel hath ploughed it, and to mortal ear A YEAR S COURTSHIP. 173 No wind hath told its secrets .... With this tide I sail ; if all be well, this very moon Shall see my ship beyond the southern cape Of Greenland, and far up the bay through which, With diamond spire and gorgeous pinnacle, The fleets of winter pass to warmer seas. Whether, my hardy shipmates ! we shall reach Our bourne, and come with tales of wonder back, Or whether we shall lose the precious time, Locked in thick ice, or whether some strange fate Shall end us all, I know not ; but I know A lofty hope, if earnestly pursued, Is its own crown, and never in this life Is labor wholly fruitless. In this faith I shall not count the chances sure that all A prudent foresight asks we shall not want, And all that bold and patient hearts can do Ye will not leave undone. The rest is God s ! A YEAR S COUETSHIP. I saw her, Harry, first, in March You know the street that leadeth down By the old bridge s crumbling arch ? Just where it leaves the dusty town A lonely house stands grim and dark You ve seen it ? then I need not say 174 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. How quaint the place is did you mark An ivied window ? well ! one day, I, chasing some forgotten dream, And in a poet s idlest mood, Caught, as I passed, a white hand s gleam A shutter opened there she stood Training the ivy to its prop. Two dark eyes and a brow of snow Flashed down upon me did I stop ? She says I did I do not know. But all that day did something glow Just where the heart beats ; frail and slight, A germ had slipped its shell, and now Was pushing softly for the light. And April saw me at her feet, Dear month of sunshine and of rain ! My very fears were sometimes sweet, And hope was often touched with pain. For she was frank, and she was coy, A willful April in her ways : And in a dream of doubtful joy I passed some truly April days. May came, and on that arch, sweet mouth, The smile was graver in its play, And, softening with the softening South, My April melted into May. A YEAR S COURTSHIP. 175 She loved me, yet my heart would doubt, And ere I spoke the month was June One warm still night we wandered out To watch a slowly setting moon. Something which I saw not my eyes Were not on heaven a star, perchance, Or some bright drapery of the skies, Had caught her earnest, upper glance. And as she paused Hal ! we have played Upon the very spot a fir Just touched me with its dreamy shade, But the full moonlight fell on her And as she paused I know not why I longed to speak, yet could not speak ; The bashful are the boldest I I stooped and gently kissed her cheek. A murmur (else some fragrant air Stirred softly) and the faintest start Hal ! we were the happiest pair ! Hal ! I clasped her heart to heart ! And kissed away some tears that gushed ; But how she trembled, timid dove, When my soul broke its silence, flushed With a whole burning June of love. . Since then a happy year hath sped Through months that seemed all June and May, 176 POEMS OF HENRT TIMROD. And soon a March sun, overhead, Will usher in the crowning day. Twelve blessed moons that seemed to glow All summer, Hal ! my peerless Kate ! She is the dearest " Angel ? " no ! Thank God ! but you shall see her wait. So all is told ! I count on thee To see the Priest, Hal ! Pass the wine ! Here s to my darling wife to.be ! And here s to when thou find st her thine ! DRAMATIC FEAGMEJSTT. Let the boy have his will ! I tell thee, brother, We treat these little ones too much like flowers, Training them, in blind selfishness,, to deck Sticks of our poor setting, when they might, If left to clamber where themselves incline, Find nobler props to cling to, fitter place, And sweeter air to bloom in. It is wrong Thou striv st to sow with feelings all thine own, With thoughts and hopes, anxieties and aims, Born of thine own peculiar self, and fed Upon a certain round of circumstance, A soul as different and distinct from thine As love of goodness is from love of glory, Or noble poesy from noble prose. DRAMATIC FRAGMENT. 177 I could forgive thee, if thou wast of them Who do their fated parts in this world s business, Scarce knowing how or why for common minds See not the difference twixt themselves and others But thou, thou, with the visions which thy youth did cherish Substantialized upon thy regal brow, Shouldst. boast a deeper insight. "We are born, It is my faith, in miniature completeness, And like each other only in our weakness. Even with our mother s milk upon our lips, Our smiles have different meanings, and our hands Press with degrees of softness to her bosom. It is not change whatever in the heart That wears its semblance, we, in looking back, With gratulation or regret, perceive It is not change we undergo, but only Growth or development. Yes ! what is childhood But after all a sort of golden daylight, A beautiful and blessed wealth of sunshine. Wherein the powers and passions of the soul Sleep starlike but existent, till the night Of gathering years shall call the slumbers forth, And they rise up in glory ? Early grief, A shadow like the darkness of eclipse, Hath sometimes waked them sooner. 178 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. THE SUMMER BOWER. It is a place whither I ve often gone For peace, and found it, secret, hushed, and cool, A beautiful recess in neighboring woods. Trees of the soberest hues, thick-leaved and tall, Arch it overhead and column it around, Framing a covert, natural and wild, Domelike and dim ; though nowhere so enclosed But that the gentlest breezes reach the spot Unwearied and unweakened. Sound is here A transient and unfrequent visitor ; Yet if the day be calm, not often then. Whilst the high pines in one another s arms Sleep, you may sometimes with unstartled ear Catch the far fall of voices, how remote You know not, and you do not care to know. The turf is soft and green, but not a flower Lights the recess, save one, star-shaped and bright I do not know its name which here and there Gleams like a sapphire set in emerald. A narrow opening in the branched roof, A single one, is large enough to show, With that half glimpse a dreamer loves so much, The blue air and the blessing of the sky. Thither I always bent my idle steps, When griefs depressed, or joys disturbed my heart, And found the calm I looked for, or returned Strong with the quiet rapture in my soul. THE SUMMER BOWER. 179 But one day, One of those July days when winds have fled One knows not whither, I, most sick in mind With thoughts that shall be nameless, yet, no doubt, Wrong, or at least unhealthful, since though dark With gloom, and touched with discontent, they had No adequate excuse, nor cause, nor end, I, with these thoughts, and on this summer day, Entered the accustomed haunt, and found for once No medicinal virtue. Not a leaf Stirred with the whispering welcome which 1 sought, But in a close and humid atmosphere, Every fair plant and implicated bough Hung lax and lifeless. Something in the place, Its utter stillness, the unusual heat, And some more secret influence, I thought, Weighed on the sense like sin. Above I saw, Though not a cloud was visible in heaven, The pallid sky look through a glazed mist Like a blue eye in death. The change, perhaps, Was natural enough ; my jaundiced sight, The weather, and the time explain it all : Yet have I drawn a lesson from the spot, And shrined it in these verses for my heart. Thenceforth those tranquil precincts I have sought Not less, and in all shades of various moods; But always shun to desecrate the spot By vain repinings, sickly sentiments, 180 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Or inconclusive sorrows. Nature, though Pure as she was in Eden when her breath Kissed the white brow of Eve, doth not refuse, In her own way and with a just reserve, To sympathize with human suffering; But for the pains, the fever, and. the fret Engendered of a weak, unquiet heart, She hath no solace ; and who seeks her when These be the troubles over which he moans, Reads in her unreplying lineaments Eebukes, that, to the guilty consciousness, Strike like contempt. A RHAPSODY OF A SOUTHERN WINTER NIGHT. Oh ! dost thou flatter falsely, Hope ? The day hath scarcely passed that saw thy birth, Yet thy white wings are plumed to all their scope, And hour by hour thine eyes have gathered light, And grown so large and bright, That my whole future life unfolds what seems, Beneath their gentle beams, A path that leads athwart some guiltless earth, To which a star is dropping from the night ! Not many moons ago, But when these leafless beds were all aglow With summer s dearest treasures, I A SOUTHERN WINTER NIGHT. . 181 Was reading in this lonely garden-nook; A July noon was cloudless in the sky, And soon I put my shallow studies by ; Then, sick at heart, and angered by the book, Which, in good sooth, was but the long-drawn sigh Of some one who had quarrelled with his kind, Vexed at the very proofs which I had sought, And all annoyed while all alert to find A plausible likeness of my own dark thought, I cast me down beneath yon oak s wide boughs, And, shielding with both hands my throbbing brows, Watched lazily the shadows of my brain. The feeble tide of peevishness went down, And left a flat dull waste of dreary pain, Which seemed to clog the blood in every vein ; The world, of course, put on its darkest frown- In all its realms I saw no mortal crown Which did not wound or crush some restless head ; And hope, and will, and motive, all were dead. So, passive as a stone, I felt too low To claim a kindred with the humblest flower ; Even that would bare its bosom to a shower, While I henceforth would take no pains to live, Nor place myself where I might feel or give A single impulse whence a wish could grow. There was a tulip scarce a gossamer s throw Beyond that platanus. A little child, Most dear to me, looked through the fence and smiled A hint that I should pluck it for her sake. Ah, me ! I trust I was not well awake 182 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. The voice was very sweet, Yet a faint languor kept me in my seat. I saw a pouted lip, a toss, and heard Some low expostulating tones, but stirred Not even a leafs length, till the pretty fay, Wondering, and half abashed at the wild feat, Climbed the low pales, and laughed my gloom away. And here again, but led by other powers, A morning and a golden afternoon, These happy stars, and yonder setting moon, Have seen me speed, unreckoned and untasked, A round of precious hours. Oh ! here, where in that summer noon I basked, And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers, To justify a life of sensuous rest, A question dear as home or heaven was asked, And without language answered. I was blest ! Blest with those nameless boons too sweet to trust Unto the telltale confidence of song. Love to his own glad self is sometimes coy, And even thus much doth seem to do him wrong; While in the fears which chasten mortal joy, Is one that shuts the lips, lest speech too free, With the cold touch of hard reality, Should turn its priceless jewels into dust. Since that long kiss which closed the morning s talk, I have not strayed beyond this garden walk. As yet a vague delight is all I know, A sense of joy so wild tis almost pain, A SOUTHERN WINTER NIGHT. 183 And like a trouble drives me to and fro, And will not pause to count its own sweet gain. I am so happy ! that is all my thought. To-morrow I will turn it round and round, And seek to know its limits and its ground. To-morrow I will task my heart to learn The duties which shall spring from such a seed, And where it must be sown, and how be wrought. But oh ! this reckless bliss is bliss indeed! And for one day I choose to seal the urn Wherein is shrined Love s missal and his creed. Meantime I give my fancy all it craves ; Like him who found the West when first he caught The light that glittered from the world he sought, And furled his sails till Dawn should show the land ; While in glad dreams he saw the ambient waves Go rippling brightly up a golden strand. Hath there not been a softer breath at play In the long woodland aisles than often sweeps At this rough season through their solemn deeps A gentle Ariel sent by gentle May, Who knew it was the morn On which a hope was born, To greet the flower ere it was fully blown, And nurse it as some lily of her own ? And wherefore, save to grace a happy day, Did the whole West at blushing sunset glow With clouds that, floating up in bridal snow, Passed witli the festal eve, rose-crowned, away ? 184 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. And now, if I may trust my straining sight, The heavens appear with added stars to-night, And deeper depths, and more celestial height, Than hath been reached except in dreams or death. Hush, sweetest South ! I love thy delicate breath ; But hush ! methought I felt an angel s kiss ! Oh ! all that lives is happy in my bliss. That lonely fir, which always seems As though it locked dark secrets in itself, Hideth a gentle elf, Whose wand shall send me soon a frolic troop Of rainbow visions, and of moonlit dreams. Can joy be weary, that my eyelids droop ? To-night I shall not seek my curtained nest, But even here find rest. Who whispered then ? And what are they that peep Betwixt the foliage in the tree-top there ? Come, Fairy Shadows ! for the morn is near, When to your sombre pine ye all must creep; Come, ye wild pilots of the darkness, ere My spirit sinks into the gulf of Sleep ; Even now it circles round and round the deep Appear! Appear! FLOWER-LIFE. I think that, next to your sweet eyes, And pleasant books, and starry skies, I love the world of flowers ; FLOWER-LIFE. 185 Less for their beauty of a day, Than for the tender things they say, And for a creed I ve held alway, That they are sentient powers. It may be matter for a smile And I laugh secretly the while I speak the fancy out But that they love, and that they woo, And that they often marry too, And do as noisier creatures do, I ve not the faintest doubt. And so, I cannot deem it right To take them from the glad sunlight, As I have sometimes dared ; Though not without an anxious sigh Lest this should break some gentle tie, Some covenant of friendship, I Had better far have spared. And when, in wild or thoughtless hours, My hand hath crushed the tiniest flowers, I ne er could shut from sight The corpses of the tender things, With other drear imaginings, And little angel-flowers with wings Would haunt me through the night. Oh ! say you, friend, the creed is fraught With sad, and even with painful thought, Nor could you bear to know 186 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. That such capacities belong To creatures helpless against wrong, At once too weak to fly the strong Or front the feeblest foe ? So be it always, then, with you ; So be it whether false or true I press my faith on none ; If other fancies please you more, The flowers shall blossom as before, Dear as the Sibyl-leaves of yore, But senseless, every one. Yet, though I give you no reply, It were not hard to justify My creed to partial ears ; But, conscious of the cruel part, My rhymes would flow with faltering art, I could not plead against your heart. Nor reason with your tears. YOUTH AND MANHOOD. Another year ! a short one, if it flow Like that just past, And I shall stand if years can make me so A man at last. Yet, while the hours permit me, I would pause And contemplate YOUTH AND MANHOOD. 187 The lot whereto unalterable laws Have bound my fate. Yet, from the starry regions of my youth, The empyreal height Where dreams are happiness, and feeling truth, And life delight From that ethereal and serene abode My soul would gaze Downward upon the wide and winding road, Where manhood plays ; Plays with the baubles and the gauds of earth Wealth, power, and fame Nor knows that in the twelvemonth after birth He did the same. Where the descent begins, through long defiles I see them wind ; And some are looking down with hopeful smiles, And some are blind. And farther on a gay and glorious green Dazzles the sight, While noble forms are moving o er the scene, Like things of light. Towers, temples, domes of perfect symmetry Rise broad and high, With pinnacles among the clouds ; ah, me ! None touch the sky. 188 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. None pierce the pure and lofty atmosphere "Which I breathe now, And the strong spirits that inhabit there, Live God sees how. Sick of the very treasure which they heap ; Their tearless eyes Sealed ever in a heaven-forgetting sleep, Whose dreams are lies ; And so, a motley, unattractive throng, They toil and plod, Dead to the holy ecstasies of song, To love, and God. Dear God! if that I may not keep through life My trust, my truth, And that I must, in yonder endless strife, Lose faith with youth ; If the same toil which indurates the hand Must steel the heart, Till, in the wonders of the ideal land, It have no part ; Oh! take me hence! I would no longer stay Beneath the sky ; Give me to chant one pure and deathless lay, And let me die ! A SUMMER SHOWER. 189 A SUMMER SHOWER. Welcome, rain or tempest From yon airy powers, We have languished for them Many sultry hours, And earth is sick and wan, and pines with all her flowers. What have they been doing In the burning June ? Riding with the genii ? Visiting the moon ? Or sleeping on the ice amid an arctic noon ? Bring they with them jewels From the sunset lands ? What are these they scatter With such lavish hands ? There are no brighter gems in Raolconda s sands. Pattering on the gravel, Dropping from the eaves, Glancing in the grass, and Tinkling on the leaves, They flash the liquid pearls as flung from fairy sieves. Meanwhile, unreluctant, Earth like Danae lies ; 190 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Listen ! is it fancy, That beneath us sighs, As that warm lap receives the largesse of the skies ? Jove, it is, descendeth In those crystal rills; And this world- wide tremor Is a pulse that thrills To a god s life infused through veins of velvet hills. Wait, thou jealous sunshine, Break not on their bliss ; Earth will blush in roses Many a day for this, And bend a brighter brow beneath thy burning kiss. BABY S AGE. She came with April blooms and showers ; We count her little life by flowers. As buds the rose upon her cheek, We choose a flower for every week. A week of hyacinths, we say, And one of heart s-ease, ushered May ; And then because two wishes met Upon the rose and violet I liked the Beauty, Kate, the Nun The violet and the rose count one. A week the apple marked with white ; A week the lily scored in light ; HARK TO THE SHOUTING WIND. 191 Eed poppies closed May s happy moon, And tulips this blue week in June. Here end as yet the flowery links; To-day begins the week of pinks ; But soon so grave, and deep, and wise The meaning grows in Baby s eyes, So very deep for Baby s age We think to date a week with sage ! HARK TO THE SHOUTING WIND. Hark to the shouting Wind ! Hark to the flying Rain ! And I care not though I never see A bright blue sky again. There are thoughts in my breast to-day That are not for human speech ; But I hear them in the driving storm, And the roar upon the beach. And oh, to be with that ship That I watch through the blinding brine! Wind ! for thy sweep of land and sea ! Sea ! for a voice like thine ! Shout on, thou pitiless Wind, To the frightened and flying Rain ! 1 care not though I never see A calm blue sky again. 192 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. THE MESSENGER ROSE. If you have seen a richer glow, Pray, tell me where your roses blow ! Look ! coral-leaved ! and mark these spots ! Red staining red in crimson clots, Like a sweet lip bitten through In a pique. There, where that hue Is spilt in drops, some fairy thing Hath gashed the azure of its wing, Or thence, perhaps, this very morn, Plucked the splinters of a thorn. Rose ! I make thy bliss my care! In my lady s dusky hair Thou shalt burn this coming night, With even a richer crimson light. To requite me thou shalt tell What I might not say as well How I love her; how, in brief, On a certain crimson leaf In my bosom, is a debt Writ in deeper crimson yet. If she wonder what it be But she ll guess it, I foresee Tell her that I date it, pray, From the first sweet night in May. TOO LONG, SPIRIT OF STORM! 193 TOO LONG, SPIEIT OF STORM! Too long, Spirit of Storm, Thy lightning sleeps in its sheath ! I am sick to the soul of yon pallid sky, And the moveless sea beneath. Come down in thy strength on the deep ! Worse dangers there are in life, When the waves are still, and the skies look fair, Than in their wildest strife. A friend I knew, whose days Were as calm as this sky overhead ; But one blue morn that was fairest of all, The heart in his bosom fell dead. And they thought him alive while he walked The streets that he walked in youth Ah ! little they guessed the seeming man Was a soulless corpse in sooth. Come down in thy strength, Storm ! And lash the deep till it raves ! I am sick to the soul of that quiet sea, Which hides ten thousand graves. 9 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. THE LILY CONFIDANTE. Lily ! lady of the garden ! i Let me press my lip to thine ! Love must tell its story, Lily ! Listen thou to mine. Two I choose to know the secret Thee, and yonder wordless flute ; Dragons watch me, tender Lily, And thou must be mute. There s a maiden, and her name is . . . . Hist! was that a rose-leaf fell ? See, the rose is listening, Lily, And the rose may tell. Lily-browed and lily-hearted, She is very dear to me ; Lovely? yes, if being lovely Is resembling thee. Six to half a score of summers Make the sweetest of the " teens v Not too young to guess, dear Lily, What a lover means. Laughing girl, and thoughtful woman, I am puzzled how to woo Shall I praise, or pique her, Lily ? Tell me what to do. -THE LILY CONFIDANTE. 195 " Silly lover, if thy Lily Like her sister lilies be, Thou must woo, if thou wouldst wear her, With a simple plea. " Love s the lover s only magic. Truth the very subtlest art ; Love that feigns, and lips that flatter, Win no modest heart. " Like the dewdrop in my bosom, Be thy guileless language, youth ; Falsehood buyeth falsehood only, Truth must purchase truth. " As thou talkest at the fireside, With the little children by As thou prayest in the darkness, When thy G-od is nigh " With a speech as chaste and gentle, And such meanings as become Ktir of child, or ear of angel, Speak, or be thou dumb. " Woo her thus, and she shall give thee Of her heart the sinless whole, All the girl within her bosom, And her woman s soul." 190 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. ON PRESSING SOME FLOWERS. So, they are dead ! Love ! when they passed From thee to me, our fingers met ; withered darlings of the May! I feel those fairy fingers yet. And for the bliss ye brought me then, Your faded forms are precious things ; No flowers so fair, no buds so sweet Shall bloom through all my future springs. And so, pale ones ! with hands as soft As if I closed a baby s eyes, I ll lay you in some favorite book Made sacred by a poet s sighs. Your lips shall press the sweetest song, The sweetest, saddest song I know, As ye had perished, in your pride, Of some lone bard s melodious woe. Oh, Love ! hath love no holier shrine ! Oh, heart ! could love but lend the power, I d lay thy crimson pages bare, And every leaf should fold its flower. SONNET. 197 A COMMON THOUGHT. Somewhere on this earthly planet In the dust of flowers to be, In the dewdrop, in the sunshine, Sleeps a solemn day for me. At this wakeful hour of midnight I behold it dawn in mist, And I hear a sound of sobbing Through the darkness hist ! oh, hist ! In a dim and musky chamber, I am breathing life away ; Some one draws a curtain softly, And I watch the broadening day. As it purples in the zenith, As it brightens on the lawn, There s a hush of death about me, And a whisper, " He is gone ! " SONNET. Poet ! if on a lasting fame be bent Thy unperturbing hopes, thou wilt not roam Too far from thine own happy heart and home ; Cling to the lowly earth, and be content! So shall thy name be dear to many a heart; So shall the noblest truths by thee be taught ; 198 POEMS OF HKNRT TIMROD. The flower and fruit of wholesome human thought Bless the sweet labors of thy gentle art. The brightest stars are nearest to the earth, And we may track the mighty sun above, Even by the shadow of a slender flower. Always, bard, humility is power ! And thou may st draw from matters of the hearth Truths wide as nations, and as deep as love. SONNET. Most men know love but as a part of life ; They hide it in some corner of the breast, Even from themselves ; and only when they rest In the brief pauses of that daily strife, Wherewith the world might else be not so rife, They draw it forth (as one draws forth a toy To soothe some ardent, kiss-exacting boy) And hold it up to sister, child, or wife. Ah me ! why may not love and life be one ? Why walk we thus alone, when by our side, Love, like a visible God, might be our guide ? How would the marts grow noble ! and the street, Worn like a dungeon-floor by weary feet, Seem then a golden court-way of the Sun ! SONNET. 199 SONNET. Life ever seems as from its present site It aimed to lure us. Mountains of the past It melts, with all their crags and caverns vast, Into a purple cloud ! Across the night "Which hides what is to be, it shoots a light All rosy with the yet unrisen dawn. Not the near daisies, but yon distant height Attracts us, lying on this emerald lawn. And always, be the landscape what it may Blue, misty hill or sweep of glimmering plain It is the eye s endeavor still to gain The fine, faint limit of the bounding day. God, haply, in this mystic mode, would fain Hint of a happier home, far, far away ! SONNET. They dub thee idler, smiling sneeringly, And why ? because, forsooth, so many moons, Here dwelling voiceless by the voiceful sea, Thou hast not set thy thoughts to paltry tunes In song or sonnet. Them these golden noons Oppress not with their beauty ; they could prate, Even while a prophet read the solemn runes On which is hanging some imperial fate. How know they, these good gossips, what to thee The ocean and its wanderers may have brought? 200 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. How know they, in their busy vacancy, With what far aim thy spirit may be fraught ? Or that thou dost not bow thee silently Before some great unutterable thought ? SONNET. Some truths there be are better left unsaid ; Much is there that we may not speak unblamed. On words, as wings, how many joys have fled! The jealous fairies love not to be named. There is an old-world tale of one whose bed A genius graced, to all, save him, unknown ; One day the secret passed his lips, and sped As secrets speed thenceforth he slept alone. Too much, oh ! far too much is told in books ; Too broad a daylight wraps us all and each. Ah! it is well that, deeper than our looks, Some secrets lie beyond conjecture s reach. Ah ! it is well that in the soul are nooks That will not open to the keys of speech. SONNET. I scarcely grieve, Nature ! at the lot That pent my life within a city s bounds, And shut me from thy sweetest sights and sounds. Perhaps I had not learned, if some lone cot SONNET. 201 Had nursed a dreamy childhood, what the mart Taught me amid its turmoil ; so my youth Had missed full many a stern but wholesome truth. Here, too, Nature ! in this haunt of Art, Thy power is on me, and I own thy thrall. There is no unimpressive spot on earth ! The beauty of the stars is over all, And Day and Darkness visit every hearth. Clouds do not scorn us: yonder factory s smoke Looked like a golden mist when morning broke. SONNET. Grief dies like joy ; the tears upon my cheek Will disappear like dew. Dear God ! I know Thy kindly Providence hath made it so, And thank thee for the law. I am too weak To make a friend of Sorrow, or to wear, With that dark angel ever by my side (Though to thy heaven there be no better guide), A front of manly calm. Yet, for I hear How woe hath cleansed, how grief can deify, So weak a thing it seems that grief should die, And love and friendship with it, I could pray, That if it might not gloom upon my brow. Nor weigh upon my arm as it doth now, No grief of mine should ever pass away. 9* 202 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. SONNET. At last, beloved Nature ! I have met Thee face to face upon thy breezy hills, And boldly, where thy inmost bowers are set, Gazed on thee naked in thy mountain rills. "When first I felt thy breath upon my brow, Tears of strange ecstasy gushed out like rain, And with a longing, passionate as vain, I strove to clasp thee. But, I know not how, Always before me didst thou seem to glide ; And often from one sunny mountain-side, Upon the next bright peak I saw thee kneel, And heard thy voice upon the billowy blast ; But, climbing, only reached that shrine to feel The shadow of a Presence which had passed. SONNET. tfCT I know not why, but all this weary day, Suggested by no definite grief or pain, Sad fancies have been flitting through my brain ; Now it has been a vessel losing way, Bounding a stormy headland ; now a gray Dull waste of clouds above a wintry main ; And then, a banner, drooping in the rain, And meadows beaten into bloody clay. Strolling at random with this shadowy woe At heart, I chanced to wander hither ! Lo ! SONNET. 203 A league of desolate marsh-land, with its lush, Hot grasses in a noisome, tide-left bed, And faint, warm airs, that rustle in the hush, Like whispers round the hody of the dead ! SONNET. (WRITTEN ox A VERY SMALL SHEET OF NOTE- PAPER.) Were I the poet-laureate of the fairies, Who in a rose-leaf finds too broad a page ; Or could I, like your beautiful canaries, Sing with free heart and happy, in a cage; Perhaps I might within this little space (As in some Eastern tale, by magic power, A giant is imprisoned in a flower) Have told you something with a poet s grace. But I need wider limits, ampler scope, A world of freedom for a world of passion, And even then, the glory of my hope Would not be uttered in its stateliest fashion ; Yet, lady, when fit language shall have told it, You ll find one little heart enough to hold it ! 204 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. 1866. ADDKESSED TO THE OLD YEAR. Art thou not glad to close Thy wearied eyes, saddest child of Time, Eyes which have looked on every mortal crime, And swept the piteous round of mortal woes ? In dark Plutonian caves, Beneath the lowest deep, go, hide thy head ; Or earth thee where the blood that thou hast shed May trickle on thee from thy countless graves ! Take with thee all thy gloom And guilt, and all our griefs, save what the breast, Without a wrong to some dear shadowy guest, May not surrender even to the tomb. No tear shall weep thy fall, When, as the midnight bell doth toll thy fate, Another lifts the sceptre of thy state, And sits a monarch in thine ancient hall. Him all the hours attend, With a new hope like morning in their eyes ; Him the fair earth and him these radiant skies Hail as their sovereign, welcome as their friend. Him, too, the nations wait ; "0 lead us from the shadow of the Past," I860 ADDRESSED TO THE OLD YEAR. 205 In a long wail like this December blast, They cry, and, crying, grow less desolate. How he will shape his sway They ask not for old doubts and fears will cling And yet they trust that, somehow, he will bring A sweeter sunshine than thy mildest day. Beneath his gentle hand They hope to see no meadow, vale, or hill Stained with a deeper red than roses spill, When some too boisterous zephyr sweeps the land. A time of peaceful prayer, Of law, love, labor, honest loss and gain These are the visions of the coming reign Now floating to them on this wintry air. ADDITIONAL POEMS. ODE. SUNG ON THE OCCASION OF DECORATING THE GRAVES OF THE CONFEDERATE DEAD, AT MAGNOLIA CEME TERY, CHARLESTON, S. C., 1867. Sleep sweetly in your humble graves, Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause ; Though yet no marble column craves The pilgrim here to pause. 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. Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years Which keep in trust your storied tombs, Behold! your sisters bring their tears, And these memorial blooms. IV. Small tributes ! but your shades will smile More proudly on these wreaths to-day, Than when some cannon-moulded pile Shall overlook this bav. 210 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. V. Stoop, angels, hither from the skies! There is no holier spot of ground Than where defeated valor lies, By mourning beauty crowned! HYMN. SUNG AT A SACRED CONCERT AT COLUMBIA, S. 0. I. Faint falls the gen tie voice of prayer In the wild sounds that fill the air, Yet, Lord, we know that voice is heard, Not less than if Thy throne it stirred. II. Thine ear, thou tender One,is caught, If we but bend the knee in thought ; No choral song that shakes the sky Floats farther than the Christian s sigh. in. Not all the darkness of the land Can hide the lifted eye and hand; Nor need the clanging conflict cease, To make Thee hear our cries for peace. THE STREAM IS FL WING FROM THE WEST. 2 1 1 THE STREAM IS FLOWING FROM THE WEST. The stream is flowing from the west ; As if it poured from yonder skies, It wears upon its rippling breast The sunset s golden dyes ; And bearing onward to the sea, Twill clasp the isle that holdeth thee. I dip my hand within the wave ; Ah ! how impressionless and cold ! I touch it with my lip, and lave My forehead in the gold. It is a trivial thought, but sweet, Perhaps the wave will kiss thy feet. Alas ! I leave no trace behind As little on the senseless stream As on thy heart, or on thy mind ; Which was the simpler dream, To win that warm, wild love of thine, Or make the water whisper mine?- Dear stream ! some moons must wax and wane Ere I again shall cross thy tide, And then, perhaps, a viewless chain Will drag me to her side, To love with all my spirit s scope, To wish, do everything but hope. 2 1 2 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. STANZAS. A MOTHER GAZES UPON HER DAUGHTER, ARRAYED FOR AN APPROACHING BRIDAL. WRITTEN IN IL LUSTRATION OF A TABLEAU VIVANT. Is she not lovely ! Oh ! when, long ago, My own dead mother gazed upon my face, As I stood blushing near in bridal snow, I had not half her beauty and her grace. Yet that fond mother praised, the world caressed, And one adored me how shall he who soon Shall wear my gentle flower upon his breast, Prize to its utmost worth the priceless boon ? Shall he not gird her, guard her, make her rich, (Not as the world is rich, in outward show,) With all the love and watchful kindness which A wise and tender manhood may bestow ? Oh ! I shall part from her with many tears, My earthly treasure, pure and un defiled! And not without a weight of anxious fears For the new future of my darling child. And yet for well I know that virgin heart- No wifely duty will she leave undone ; Nor will her love neglect that woman s art Which courts and keeps a love already won. RETIREMENT. 2 1 8 In no light girlish levity she goes Unto the altar where they wait her now, But with a thoughtful, prayerful heart that knows The solemn purport of a marriage vow. And she will keep, with all her soul s deep truth, The lightest pledge which binds her love and life ; And she will be no less in age than youth My noble child will be a noble wife. And he, her lover ! husband ! what of him ? Yes, he will shield, I think, my bud from blight ! Yet griefs will come enough ! my eyes are dim With tears I must not shed at least, to-night. Bless thee, my daughter! Oh ! she is so fair ! Heaven bend above thee with its starriest skies! And make thee truly all thou dost appear Unto a lover s and thy mother s eyes ! EETIREMENT. My gentle friend ! I hold no creed so false As that which dares to teach that we are born For battle only, and that in this life The soul, if it would burn with starlike power, Must needs forsooth be kindled by the sparks Struck from the shock of clashing human hearts. 214 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. There is a wisdom that grows up in strife, And one I like it best that sits at home And learns its lessons of a thoughtful ease. So come ! a lonely house awaits thee ! there Nor praise, nor blame shall reach us, save what love Of knowledge for itself shall wake at times In oar own bosoms ; come ! and we will build A wall of quiet thought, and gentle books, Betwixt us and the hard and bitter world. Sometimes for we need not be anchorites A distant friend shall cheer us through the Post, Or some Gazette of course no partisan Shall bring us pleasant news of pleasant things; Then, twisted into graceful allumettes, Each ancient joke shall blaze with genuine flame To light our pipes and candles ; but to wars, Whether of words or weapons, we shall be Deaf so we twain shall pass away the time Ev u as a pair of happy lovers, who, Alone, within some quiet garden-nook, With a clear night of stars above their heads, Just hear, betwixt their kisses and their talk, The tumult of a tempest rolling through A chain of neighboring mountains ; they awhile Pause to admire a flash that only shows The smile upon their faces, but, full soon, Turn with a quick, glad impulse, and perhaps A conscious wile that brings them closer yet, To dally with their own fond hearts, and play With the sweet flowers that blossom at their feet. VOX ET PRETEREA NIHIL. 215 VOX ET PRETEREA NIHIL. I ve been haunted all night, I ve been haunted all day, By the ghost of a song, by the shade of a lay, That with meaningless words and profusion of rhyme, To a dreamy and musical rhythm keeps time. A simple, but still a most magical strain, Its dim monotones have bewildered my brain With a specious and cunning appearance of thought, I seem to be catching but never have caught. I know it embodies some very sweet things, And can almost divine the low burden it sings; But again, and again, and still ever again, It has died on my ear at the touch of my pen. And so it keeps courting and shunning my quest, As a bird that has just been aroused from her nest, Too fond to depart, and too frightened to stay, Now circles about you, now nutters away. Oh ! give me fit words for that exquisite song, And thou could st not, proud beauty! be obdurate long; It would come like the voice of a saint from above, And win thee to kindness, and melt thee to love. Not gilded with fancy, nor frigid with art, But simple as feeling, and warm as the heart, It would murmur my name with so charming a tone, As would almost persuade thee to wish it thine own. 2 1 6 POEMS OF HEXR Y TIMROD. HYMK SUNG AT AN ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASYLUM OF ORPHANS AT CHARLESTON. We scarce, God ! could lisp thy name. When those who loved us passed away, And left us but thy love to claim, With but an infant s strength to pray. Thou gav st that Refuge and that Shrine, At which we learn to know thy ways ; Father ! the fatherless are thine ! Thou wilt not spurn the orphan s praise. Yet hear a single cry of pain ! Lord! whilst we dream in quiet beds, The summer sun and winter rain Beat still on many homeless heads. And o er this weary earth, we know, Young outcasts roam the waste and wave; And little hands are clasped in woe Above some tender mother s grave. Ye winds ! keep every storm aloof, And kiss away the tears they weep ! Ye skies, that make their only roof, Look gently on their houseless sleep! TO A CAPTIVE OWL. 217 And thou, Friend and Father! find A home to shield their helpless youth ! Dear hearts to love sweet ties to bind And guide and guard them in the truth ! TO A CAPTIVE OWL. I should be dumb before thee, feathered sage! And gaze upon thy phiz with solemn awe, Bat for a most audacious wish to gauge The hoarded wisdom of thy learned craw. Art thou, grave bird ! so wondrous wise indeed ? Speak freely, without fear of jest or jibe What is thy moral and religious creed ? And what the metaphysics of thy tribe ? A Poet, curious in birds and brutes, I do not question thee in idle play ; What is thy station ? What are thy pursuits ? Doubtless thou hast thy pleasures what are they ? Or is t thy wont to muse and mouse at once, Entice thy prey with airs of meditation, And with the unvarying habits of a dunce, To dine in solemn depths of contemplation ? 10 218 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. There may be much. the world at least says so Behind that ponderous brow and thoughtful gaze; Yet sucli a great philosopher should know, It is by no means wise to think always. And, Bird, despite thy meditative air, I hold thy stock of wit but paltry pelf Thou show st that same grave aspect everywhere, And wouldst look thoughtful, stuffed, upon a shelf. I grieve to be so plain, renowiie d Bird Thy fame s a flam, and thou an empty fowl ; And what is more, upon a Poet s word I d say as much, wert thou Minerva s owl. 4 So doff th imposture of those heavy brows ; They do not serve to hide thy instincts base And if thou must be sometimes munching mouse, Munch it. Owl ! with less profound a face. LOVE S LOGIC. And if I ask thee for a kiss, I ask no more than this sweet breeze, With far less title to the bliss, Steals every minute at his ease. LOVE S LOGIC. 219 And yet how placid is .thy brow ! It seems to woo the bold caress, While now he takes his kiss, and now All sorts of freedoms with thy dress. Or if I dare thy hand to touch, Hath nothing pressed its palm before ? A flower, I m sure, hath done as much, And ah ! some senseless diamond more. It strikes me, love, the very rings, Now sparkling on that hand of thine, Could tell some truly startling things, If they had tongues or touch like mine. Indeed, indeed, I do not know Of all that thou hast power to grant, A boon for which I could not show Some pretty precedent extant. Suppose, for instance, I should clasp Thus, so, and thus! thy slender waist I would not hold within my grasp More than this loosened zone embraced. Oh ! put the anger from thine eyes, Or shut them if they still must frown ; Those lids, despite yon garish skies, Can bring a timely darkness down. Then, if in that convenient night, My lips should press thy dewy mouth, The touch shall be so soft, so light, Thou lt fancy me this gentle South. 220 POEMS OF HENE7 TIMEOD. SECOND LOVE. Could I reveal the secret joy Thy presence always with it brings, The memories so strangely waked . Of long forgotten things, The love, the hope, the fear, the grief, Which with that voice come back to me,- Thou wonldst forgive the impassioned gaze So often turned on thee. It was, indeed, that early love, But foretaste of this second one, The soft light of the morning star Before the morning sun. The same dark beauty in her eyes, The same blonde hair and placid brow, The same deep-meaning, quiet smile Thou bendest on me now, She might have been, she was no more Than what a prescient hope could make,- A dear presentiment of thee I loved but for thy sake. LINES TO R. L. 221 HYMN. SUNG AT THE CONSECRATION OF MAGNOLIA CEME TERY, CHARLESTON, S. C. Whose was the hand that painted thee, Death! In the false aspect of a ruthless foe, Despair and sorrow waiting on thy breath gentle Power! who could have wronged thee so? Thou rather should st be crowned with fadeless flowers, Of lusting fragrance and celestial hue ; Or be thy couch amid funereal bowers, But let the stars and sunlight sparkle through. So, with these thoughts before us, we have fixed And beautified, Death ! thy mansion here, Where gloom and gladness grave and garden mixed, Make it a place to love, and not to fear. Heaven ! shed thy most propitious dews around ! Ye holy stars ! look down with tender eyes, And gild and guard, and consecrate the ground Where we may rest, and whence we pray to rise. LINES TO R. L. That which we are and shall be is made up Of what we have been. On the autumn leaf The crimson stains bear witness of its spring; 222 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. And, on its perfect nodes, the ocean shell Notches the slow, strange changes of its growth.. Ourselves are our own records ; if we looked Rightly into that blotted crimson page Within our bosoms, then there were no need To chronicle our stories ; for the heart Hath, like the earth, its strata, -and contains Its past within its present. Well for us, And our most cherished secrets, that within The round of being few there are who read Beneath the surface. Else our very forms, The merest gesture of our hands, might tell Much we would hide forever. Know you not Those eyes, in whose dark heaven I have gazed More curiously than on my favorite stars, Are deeper for such griefs as they have seen, And brighter for the fancies they have shrined, And sweeter for the loves which they have talked? Oh ! that I had the power to read their smiles, Or sound the depth of all their glorious gloom. So should I learn your history from its birth, Through all its glad and grave experiences, Better than if (your journal in my hand, Written as only women write, with all A woman s shades and shapes of feeling, traced As with the fine touch of a needle s point) I followed you from that bright hour when first I saw you in the garden mid the flowers, To that wherein a letter from your hand Made me all rich with the dear name of friend. MADELINE. 223 MADELINE. lady ! if, until thi hour, I ve gazed in those, bewildering eyes, Yet never owned their touching power, But when thou could st not hear my sighs; It has not been that love has slept One single moment in my soul, Or that on lip or look I kept A stern and stoical control ; But that I saw, but that I felt, In every tone and glance of thine, Whate er "they spoke, where er they dwelt, How small, how poor a part was mine ; And that I deeply, dearly knew, That hidden, hopeless love confessed, The fatal words would lose me, too, Even the weak friendship I possessed. And so, I masked my secret well; The very love within my breast Became the strange, but potent spell By which I forced it into rest. Yet there were times I scarce know how These eager lips refrained to speak, Some kindly smile would light thy brow, And I grew passionate and weak ; The secret sparkled at my eyes, And love but half repressed its sighs, Then had I gazed an instant more, 224 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Or dwelt one moment on that brow, I might have changed the smile it wore, To what perhaps it weareth now, And spite of all I feared to meet, Confessed that passion at thy feet. To save my heart, to spare thine own, There was one remedy alone. I fled, I shunned thy very touch, It cost me much, God ! how much ! But if some burning tears were shed, Lady ! I let them freely flow ; At least, they left unbreathed, unsaid, A worse and wilder woe. But now, now that we part indeed, And that I may not think as then, That as I wish, or as I need, I may return again, Now that for months, perhaps for years I see no limit in my fears My home shall be some distant spot, Where thou where even thy name is not, And since I shall not see the frown, Such wild, mad language must bring down, Could I albeit I may not sue In hope to bend thy steadfast will Could I have breathed this word, adieu, And kept my secret still ? Doubtless thou know st the Hebrew story The tale s with me a favorite one MADELINE. 225 How Raphael left the Courts of Glory, And walked with Ju dab s honored Son ; And how the twain together dwelt, And how they, talked upon the road, How often too they must have knelt As equals to the same kind God ; And still the mortal never guessed, How much and deeply he was blessed, Till when the Angel s mission done The spell which drew him earth wards, riven The lover saved the maiden won He plumed again his wings for Heaven ; Madeline ! as unaware Thou hast been followed everywhere, And girt and guarded by a love, As warm, as tender in its care, As pure, ay, powerful in prayer, As any saint above ! Like the bright inmate of the skies, It only looked with friendly eyes, And still had worn the illusive guise, And thus at least been half concealed ; But at this parting, painful hour, It spreads its wings, unfolds its power, And stands, like Raphael, revealed. More, Lady ! I would wish to speak, But it were vain, and words are weak, And now that I have bared my breast, Perchance thou wilt infer the rest. So, so, farewell ! I need not say 10* 226 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. I look, I ask for no reply, The cold and scarcely pitying " nay " I read in that unmelted eye; Yet one dear favor, let m.e pray ! Days, months, however slow to me, Must drag at last their length away, And I return if not to thee At least to breathe the same sweet air That woos thy lips and waves thy hair. Oh, then ! these daring lines forgot Look, speak, as thou hadst read them not. So, Lady, may I still retain A right I would not lose again, For all that gold or guilt can buy, Or all that Heaven itself deny, A right such love may justly claim, Of seeing thee in friendship s name. Give me but this, and still at whiles, A portion of thy faintest smiles, It were enough to bless ; I may not, dare not ask for more Than boon so rich, and yet so poor, But I should die with less. TO WHOM? TO WHOM ? Awake upon a couch of pain, I see a star betwixt the trees ; Across yon darkening field of cane, Comes slow and soft the evening breeze. My curtain s folds are faintly stirred ; And moving lightly in her rest, I hear the chirrup of a bird, That dreameth in some neighboring nest. Last night I took no note of these How it was passed I scarce can say ; Twas not in prayers to Heaven for ease, Twas not in wishes for the day. Impatient tears, and passionate sighs, Touched as with fire the pulse of pain, I cursed, and cursed the wildering eyes That burned this fever in my brain. Oh ! blessings on the quiet hour ! My thoughts in calmer current flow ; She is not conscious of her power, And hath no knowledge of my woe. Perhaps, if like yon peaceful star, She looked upon my burning brow, She would not pity from afar, But kiss me as the breeze does now. 228 POEMS OF HENRT TIMROD. TO THEE. Draw close the lattice and the door ! Shut out the very stars above ! No other eyes than mine shall pore Upon this thrilling tale of love. As, since the book was open last, Along its dear and sacred text No other eyes than thine have passed Be mine the eyes that trace it next ! Oh! very nobly is it wrought, This web of love s divinest light, But not to feed my soul with thought, Hang I upon the book to-night ; I read it only for thy sake, To every page my lips I press The very leaves appear to make A silken rustle like thy dress. And so, as each blest page I turn, I seem, with many a secret thrill, To touch a soft white hand, and burn To clasp and kiss it at my will. Oh ! if a fancy be so sweet These shadowy fingers touching mine How wildly would my pulses beat, If they could feel the beat of thine ! STORM AND CALM. 229 STOEM AND CALM. Sweet are these kisses of the South, As dropped from woman s rosiest mouth, And tenderer are those azure skies Than this world s tenderest pair of eyes! But ah ! beneath such influence Thought is too often lost in Sense ; And Action, faltering as we thrill, Sinks in the unnerved arms of "Will. Awake, thou stormy North, and blast The subtle spells around us cast ; , Beat from our limbs these flowery chains With the sharp scourges of thy rains ! Bring with thee from thy Polar cave All the wild songs of wind and wave, Of toppling berg and grinding floe, And the dread avalanche of snow ! Wrap us in Arctic night and clouds ! Yell like a fiend amid the shrouds Of some slow-sinking vessel, when He hears the shrieks of drowning men ! Blend in thy mighty voice whatever Of danger, terror, and despair Thou hast encountered in thy sweep Across the land and o er the deep. 230 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Pour in our ears all notes of woe, That, as these very moments now, Else like a harsh discordant psalm, While we lie here in tropic calm. Sting our weak hearts with bitter shame, Bear us along with thee like flame ; And prove that even to destroy More God-like may be than to toy And rust or rot in idle joy ! SONNET. Which are the clouds, and which the mountains ? See, They mix and melt together ! Yon blue hill Looks fleeting as the vapors which distil Their dews upon its summit, while the free And far-off clouds, now solid, dark, and still, An aspect wear of calm eternity. Each seems the other, as our fancies will The cloud a mount, the mount a cloud, and we Gaze doubtfully. So everywhere on earth, This foothold where we stand with slipping feet, The unsubstantial and substantial meet, And we are fooled until made wise by Time. Is not the obvious lesson something worth, Lady ? or have I wov n an idle rhyme ? SONNET. SONNET. What gossamer lures thee now ? What hope, what name Is on thy lips ? What dreams to fruit have grown ? Thou who hast turned one Poet-heart to stone, Is thine yet burning with its seraph flame ? Let me give back a warning of thine own, That, falling from thee many moons ago, Sank on my soul like the prophetic moan Of some young Sibyl shadowing her own woe. The words are thine, and will not do thee wrong, I only bind their solemn charge to song. Thy tread is on a quicksand oh ! be wise ! Nor, in the passionate eagerness of youth, Mistake thy bosom-serpent s glittering eyes For the calm lights of Reason and of Truth. SONNET. I thank you, kind and best beloved friend, With the same thanks one murmurs to a sister. When, for some gentle favor, he hath kissed her, Less for the gifts than for the love you send, Less for the flowers, than what the flowers convey, If I, indeed, divine their meaning truly, And not unto myself ascribe, unduly, 232 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD. Things which you neither meant nor wished to say. Oh! tell me, is the hope then all misplaced ? And am I flattered by my own affection ? But in. your beauteous gift, methought I traced Something above, a short-lived predilection, And which, for that I know no dearer name, I designate as love, without love s flame. SONNET. Are these wild thoughts, thus fettered in my rhymes, Indeed the product of my heart and brain ? How strange that on my ear the rhythmic strain Falls like faint memories of far-off times ! When did I feel the sorrow, act the part, Which I have striv n to shadow forth in song ? In what dead century swept that mingled throng Of mighty pains and pleasures through my heart? Not in the yesterdays of that still life Which I have passed so free and far from strife, But somewhere in this weary world I know, In some strange land, beneath some orient clime, I saw or shared a martyrdom sublime, And felt a deeper grief than any later woe. 14 DAY USE IRETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED i LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. JbeloW. 2196 a i APR 8 68 -3PM *w9$V^ f REC D LD MAY 7 71 -2PM 4 1 i x f\ * y& AUIOWSCCIRC AUC RECEIVED F 19-92 Y fttfti 1932 I , -CIRCULATION PS ^ i \f LD 2lA-45m-9, 67 (H5067slO)476B General Library University of California Berkeley I.C. BERKELEY UBRAR1ES CD31371M71