Harry, my little blue-eyed boy,
I love to have thee playing near;
There's music in thy shouts of joy
To a fond father's ear.
I love to see the lines of mirth
Mantle thy cheek and forehead fair,
As if all pleasures of the earth
Had met to revel there;
For gazing on thee, do I sigh
That those most happy years must flee,
And thy full share of misery
Must fall in life on thee!
There is no lasting grief below,
My Harry! that flows not from guilt;
Thou canst not read my meaning now--
In after times thou wilt.
Thou'lt read it when the churchyard clay
Shall lie upon thy father's breast,
And he, though dead, will point the way
Thou shalt be always blest.
They'll tell thee this terrestrial ball,
To man for his enjoyment given,
Is but a state of sinful thrall
To keep the soul from heaven.
My boy! the verdure-crownèd hills,
The vales where flowers innumerous blow,
The music of ten thousand rills
Will tell thee, 't is not so.
God is no tyrant who would spread
Unnumbered dainties to the eyes,
Yet teach the hungering child to dread
That touching them he dies!
No! all can do his creatures good,
He scatters round with hand profuse--
The only precept understood,
_ENJOY, BUT NOT ABUSE!_
The poet's mother was the daughter of Mr. Charles Prince, a citizen
of Charleston, whose parents had come from England just before the
Revolution. Mr. Prince had married Miss French, daughter of an officer
in the Revolution, whose family were from Switzerland. It was the
influence of his mother also that helped to form the poet's character,
and his intense and passionate love of nature. Her beautiful face and
form, her purity and goodness, her delight in all the sights and sounds
of the country, her childish rapture in wood and field, her love of
flowers and trees, and all the mystery and gladness of nature, are among
the cherished memories of all her children, and vividly described by the
poet's sister.
William Henry Timrod, father of the poet, died of disease contracted
in the Florida war, and his family thereafter were in straitened
circumstances. Nevertheless, the early education of his gifted son was
provided for. Paul H. Hayne, the poet, was one of his earliest friends
and schoolmates at Charleston's best school. They sat together, and to
his brother boy-poet he first showed his earliest verses in exulting
confidence. This friendship and confidence lasted through life, and
Hayne has tenderly embalmed it in his sketch of the poet. We have this
faithful picture of him at that time:--
"Modest and diffident, with a nervous utterance, but with melody ever in
his heart and on his lip. Though always slow of speech, he was yet, like
Burns, quick to learn. The chariot wheels might jar in the gate through
which he tried to drive his winged steeds, but the horses were of
celestial temper and the car purest gold."
His school-fellows remember him as silent and shy, full of quick
impulse, and with an eager ambition, insatiable in his thirst for books,
yet mingling freely in all sports, and rejoicing unspeakably in the
weekly holiday and its long rambles through wood and field. "The sweet
security of streets" had no charm for him. He rejoiced in Nature and her
changing scenes and seasons. She was always to him comfort, refreshment,
balm. She never turned her face from him, and through all his years he
"leaned on her breast with loving trustfulness as a little child."
But he had other teachers. He studied all classic literature. "The
Æschylean drama had no attraction for him; he reveled in the rich and
elegant strains of Virgil, and of the many toned lyre of Horace and the
silver lute of Catullus." From the full and inexhaustible fountain of
English letters he drank unceasingly. Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton,
Burns, Wordsworth, and, later, Tennyson were his immediate inspiration.
His college life at the University of Georgia was interrupted by
sickness and cramped by lack of means, and his literary plans were
foiled by necessity. Nevertheless, he left his Alma Mater with a mind
stirred to its depths, and with a large store of learning, and had
already sounded with clear note those chords which were afterwards so
vocal in melody.
Dr. J. Dickson Bruns has left this graphic description of Timrod's
personal appearance, and of some prominent traits of his social
character:--
"In stature," he says, "Timrod was far below the medium height. He
had always excelled in boyish sports, and, as he grew to manhood, his
unusual breadth of shoulder still seemed to indicate a physical vigor
which the slender wrists, thin, transparent hands, and habitually lax
attitude but too plainly contradicted.
"The square jaw was almost stern in its strongly pronounced lines, the
mouth large, the lips exquisitely sensitive, the gray eyes set deeply
under massive brows, and full of a melancholy and pleading tenderness,
which attracted attention to his face at once, as the face of one who
had thought and suffered much.
"His walk was quick and nervous, with an energy in it that betokened
decision of character, but ill sustained by the stammering speech;
for in society he was the shyest and most undemonstrative of men. To a
single friend whom he trusted, he would pour out his inmost heart; but
let two or three be gathered together, above all, introduce a stranger,
and he instantly became a quiet, unobtrusive listener, though never a
moody or uncongenial one!
"Among men of letters, he was always esteemed as a most sympathetic
companion; timid, reserved, unready, if taken by surprise, but highly
cultivated, and still more highly endowed.
"The key to his social character was to be found in the feminine
gentleness of his temperament. He shrank from noisy debate, and the
wordy clash of argument, as from a blow. It stunned and bewildered him,
and left him, in the mêlée, alike incapable of defense or attack. And
yet, when some burly protagonist would thrust himself too rudely
into the ring, and try to bear down opposition by sheer vehemence
of declamation, from the corner where he sat ensconced in unregarded
silence, _HE WOULD SUDDENLY SLING OUT SOME SHARP, SWIFT PEBBLE OF
THOUGHT_, which he had been slowly rounding, and smite with an aim so
keen and true as rarely failed to bring down the boastful Anakim!"
In Charleston, as a first effort in life, for a brief period Timrod
attempted the law, but found that jealous mistress unsuited to his life
work, though he had all the opportunity afforded him in the office of
his friend, the Hon. J. L. Petigru, the great jurist. Leaving the bar,
he thenceforward devoted himself to literature and to his art.
Charleston to Timrod was home, and he always returned with kindling
spirit to the city of his love. There were all his happiest associations
and the delight of purest friendships,--W. Gilmore Simms and Paul Hayne,
and the rest of the literary coterie that presided over "Russell's
Magazine", and Judge Bryan and Dr. Bruns (to whom Hayne dedicated his
edition of Timrod's poems), and others were of this glad fellowship,
and his social hours were bright in their intercourse and in the cordial
appreciation of his genius and the tender love they bore him. These he
never forgot, and returning after the ravage of war to his impoverished
and suffering city, he writes, in the last year of his young life, "My
eyes were blind to everything and everybody but a few old friends."
Suited by endowment and prepared by special study for a professorship,
still all his efforts for the academic chair failed, and, finally, he
was compelled to become a private teacher, an office the sacredness of
which he profoundly realized. In his leisure hours he now gave himself
up to deeper study of nature, literature, and man. It was in these few
years of quiet retreat that he wrote the poems contained in the first
edition of his works, 1859-60, which, laden with all the poet's longing
to be heard, were little heeded in the first great shock of war. Indeed,
in such a storm, what shelter could a poet find? An ardent Carolinian,
devoted to his native State with an allegiance as to his country,
he left his books and study, and threw himself into the struggle, a
volunteer in the army. In the first years of the war he was in and
near Charleston, and wrote those memorable poems and martial lyrics:
"Carolina", "A Cry to Arms", "Charleston", "Ripley", "Ethnogenesis",
and "The Cotton Boll", which deeply stirred the heart of his State, and,
indeed, of the whole South. His was the voice of his people. Under its
spell the public response was quick, and promised largest honor and
world-wide fame for the poet. The project formed by some of the most
eminent men of the State, late in 1862, was to publish an illustrated
and highly embellished edition of his works in London. The war
correspondent of the "London Illustrated News", Vizitelly, himself an
artist, promised original illustrations, and the future seemed bright
for the gratification of his heart's desire, to be known and heard
in the great literary centre of the English-speaking world. But
disappointment again was his lot. Amid the increasing stress of the
conflict, every public and private energy in the South was absorbed in
maintaining the ever weakening struggle; and with all art and literature
and learning our poet's hopes were buried in the common grave of war;
not because he was not loved and cherished, and his genius appreciated,
but because a terrible need was upon his people, and desperate issues
were draining their life-blood. Then he went to the front. Too weak for
the field (for the fatal weakness that finally sapped his life was then
upon him), he was compelled, under medical direction, to retire from
the battle ranks, and made a last desperate effort to serve the cause he
loved as a war correspondent. In this capacity he joined the great army
of the West after the battle of Shiloh. The story of his camp life
was indeed pathetic. Dr. Bruns writes of him then: "One can scarcely
conceive of a situation more hopelessly wretched than that of a mere
child in the world's ways suddenly flung down into the heart of that
strong retreat, and tossed like a straw on the crest of those refluent
waves from which he escaped as by a miracle." Home he came, baffled,
dispirited, and sore hurt, to receive the succor of generous friendship,
and for a brief time a safe congenial refuge, in 1864, in an editor's
chair of the "South Carolinian", at the capital of his native State.
Here his strong pen wrote the stirring editorials of that critical time,
and there, tempted by the passing hour of comparative calm, he married
Miss Kate Goodwin, "Katie, the fair Saxon" of his exquisite song. Here
the war that had broken all his plans, and wrecked his health and hopes,
and made literature for a time in the South a beggar's vocation, left
him with wife and child, the "darling Willie" of his verse, dependent
upon his already sapped and fast failing strength for support. Here he
saw the capital of his native State, marked for vengeance, pitilessly
destroyed by fire and sword. Here gaunt ruin stalked and want entered
his own home, made desolate as all the hearthstones of his people.
Here the peace that ensued was the peace of the desert! Here the
army, defeated and broken, came back after the long heroic struggle to
blackened chimneys, sole vestige of home, and the South, with not even
bread for her famished children, still stood in solemn silence by those
deeper furrows watered with blood. The suffering that he endured was the
common suffering of those around him,--actual physical want and lack of
the commonest comforts of life, felt most keenly by his sensitive nature
and delicate constitution. In the midst of this fierce stress, his
darling boy, the crown of his life, died. All his affections, it seemed,
were poured out at once, as water spilled upon the ground. He was dying
of consumption, and earth shadows crowded around him.
Though long in feeble health, his last illness was brief. The best
physicians lovingly gave their skillful ministration, and the State's
most eminent men, in their common need, tenderly cared for him and his.
With death before him, he clung passionately to his art, absorbed in
that alone and in the great Beyond. His latest occupation was correcting
the proof-sheets of his own poems, and he passed away with them by his
side, stained with his life-blood.
In the autumn of 1867 he was laid by his beloved child in Trinity
churchyard, Columbia, S.C. General Hampton, Governor Thompson, and other
great Carolinians bore him to the grave,--a grave that, through the
sackcloth of the Reconstruction period in South Carolina, remained
without a stone. But as he himself wrote of the host of the Southern
dead of the war,--
"In seeds of laurel in the earth
The blossom of your fame is blown,
And somewhere waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone."
In later years loving friends reared a small memorial shaft to mark
his grave. It was in that dark period that Carl McKinley's genius was
touched to these fine lines.
At Timrod's Grave. 1877.
Harp of the South! no more, no more
Thy silvery strings shall quiver,
The one strong hand might win thy strains
Is chilled and stilled forever.
Our one sweet singer breaks no more
The silence sad and long,
The land is hushed from shore to shore,
It brooks no feebler song!
No other voice can charm our ears,
None other soothe our pain;
Better these echoes lingering yet,
Than any ruder strain.
For singing, Fate has given sighs,
For music we make moan;
Oh, who may touch the harp-strings since
That whisper--"_HE IS GONE!_"
See where he lies--his last sad home
Of all memorial bare,
Save for a little heap of leaves
The winds have gathered there!
One fair frail shell from some far sea
Lies lone above his breast,
Sad emblem and sole epitaph
To mark his place of rest.
The sweet winds murmur in its heart
A music soft and low,
As they would bring their secrets still
To him who sleeps below.
And lo! one tender, tearful bloom
Wins upward through the grass,
As some sweet thought he left unsung
Were blossoming at last.
Wild weeds grow rank about the place,
A dark, cold spot, and drear;
The dull neglect that marked his life
Has followed even here.
Around shine many a marble shaft
And polished pillars fair,
And strangers stand on Timrod's grave
To praise them, unaware!
"Hold up the glories of thy dead!"
To thine own self be true,
Land that he loved! Come, honor now
This grave that honors you!
The one characteristic above all others that marked the poet's life was
his unfaltering trust,--the soul's unclouded sky, a quenchless radiance
of blessed sunlight amid the deep darkness that encompassed him.
As in his poetry there is no false note, no doubtful sentiment, no
selfish grief, even when he sings with breast against the thorn, so in
his life do we find no word of bitterness or moaning or complaining.
Even amid the terrible blight of war and its final utter ruin,
prophet-like, he speaks in faith and hope and courage. His own
heart breaking, and life ebbing, he writes of Spring as the true
Reconstructionist, and pleads her message to his stricken people. It is
so true and prophetic that we quote the words written in April, 1866.
"For Spring is a true Reconstructionist,--a reconstructionist in the
best and most practical sense. There is not a nook in the land in which
she is not at this moment exerting her influence in preparing a way for
the restoration of the South. No politician may oppose her; her power
defies embarrassment; but she is not altogether independent of help. She
brings us balmy airs and gentle dews, golden suns and silver rains; and
she says to us, 'These are the materials of the only work in which you
need be at present concerned; avail yourselves of them to reclothe your
naked country and feed your impoverished people, and you will find that,
in the discharge of that task, you have taken the course which will
most certainly and most peacefully conduct you to the position which you
desire. Turn not aside to bandy epithets with your enemies; stuff your
ears, like the princess in the Arabian Nights, against words of insult
and wrong; pause not to muse over your condition, or to question your
prospects; but toil on bravely, silently, surely....'
"Such are the words of wise and kindly counsel, which, if we attend
rightly, we may all hear in the winds and read in the skies of Spring.
Nowhere, however, does she speak with so eloquent a voice or so pathetic
an effect as in this ruined town. She covers our devastated courts with
images of renovation in the shape of flowers; she hangs once more in our
blasted gardens the fragrant lamps of the jessamine; in our streets
she kindles the maple like a beacon; and from amidst the charred and
blackened ruins of once happy homes she pours, through the mouth of her
favorite musician, the mocking-bird, a song of hope and joy. What is the
lesson which she designs by these means to convey? It may be summed in a
single sentence,--forgetfulness of the past, effort in the present, and
trust for the future."
Such was the lofty creed and last hopeful, but dying message to his
brothers of the South, whose war songs he had written, and the requiem
of whose martyred hosts he had chanted.
Such was the tragedy that ended in October, 1867, with the hero at the
age of thirty-seven; glory, genius, anguish, tears, but unconquerable
faith and heroic fortitude. His larger life scarce begun, his full power
felt, but only half expressed, he realized deeply--
"The petty done, the vast undone!"
He yearned with passionate longing and hope and conscious might to
fulfill an even greater mission; but in the infinite providence of God
the full fruitage of this exquisite soul was for another sphere. He was
indeed "one of those who stirred us, a friend of man and a lover. In no
country of this earth could he long have been an alien, and that may now
be said of his spirit. In no part of this universe could it feel lonely
or unbefriended; it was in harmony with all that flowers or gives
perfume in life."
The story of his last days, as given by his poet-friend, Paul Hayne,
at the latter's cottage among the pines, is of tender and peculiar
interest, and we quote it here, as it was written in 1873:--
... In the latter summer-tide of this same year (1867), I again
persuaded him to visit me. Ah! how sacred now, how sad and sweet, are
the memories of that rich, clear, prodigal August of '67!
We would rest on the hillsides, in the swaying golden shadows, watching
together the Titanic masses of snow-white clouds which floated slowly
and vaguely through the sky, suggesting by their form, whiteness, and
serene motion, despite the season, flotillas of icebergs upon Arctic
seas. Like Lazzaroni we basked in the quiet noons, sunk into the depths
of reverie, or perhaps of yet more "charmed sleep". Or we smoked,
conversing lazily between the puffs,
"Next to some pine whose antique roots just peeped
From out the crumbling bases of the sand."
But the evenings, with their gorgeous sunsets "rolling down like a
chorus" and the "gray-eyed melancholy gloaming", were the favorite
hours of the day with him. He would often apostrophize twilight in the
language of Wordsworth's sonnet:--
"Hail, twilight! sovereign of one peaceful hour!
Not dull art thou as undiscerning night;
But only studious to remove from sight
Day's mutable distinctions."
"Yes," said he, "she is indeed sovereign of _ONE PEACEFUL HOUR!_ In the
hardest, busiest time one feels the calm, merciful-minded queen stealing
upon one in the fading light, and 'whispering', as Ford has it (or is it
Fletcher?),--'_WHISPERING_ tranquillity'."
When in-doors and disposed to read, he took much pleasure in perusing
the poems of Robert Buchanan and Miss Ingelow. The latter's "Ballads"
particularly delighted him. One, written "in the old English manner",
he quickly learned by heart, repeating it with a relish and fervor
indescribable.