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Read Ebook: Poems of Henry Timrod; with Memoir by Timrod Henry
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Ebook has 826 lines and 63418 words, and 17 pages
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.
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 , 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."
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.
Here is the opening stanza:--
"Come out and hear the waters shoot, the owlet hoot, the owlet hoot; Yon crescent moon, a golden boat, hangs dim behind the tree, O! The dropping thorn makes white the grass, O! sweetest lass, and sweetest lass Come out and smell the ricks of hay adown the croft with me, O!"
With but a slight effort of memory I can vividly recall his voice and manner in repeating these simple yet beautiful lines.
They were the last verses I ever heard from the poet's lips.
"About Shakespeare's age," I suggested.
On the 13th of September, ten days after Timrod's return to Columbia, he wrote me the following note:--
"I did not come home an instant too soon. I found them without money or provisions. Fortunately I brought with me a small sum. I won't tell you how small, but six dollars of it was from the editor of the 'Opinion' for my last poem.
"I left your climate to my injury. But not only for the sake of my health, I begin already to look back with longing regret to 'Copse Hill'. You have all made me feel as if I had TWO beloved homes!
"I wish that I could divide myself between them; or that I had wings, so that I might flit from one to other in a moment.
"I hope soon to write you at length. Yours," etc.
Again on the 16th I heard from him, thus:--
"Yesterday I had a still more copious hemorrhage!...
"I am lying supine in bed, forbidden to speak or make any exertion whatever. But I can't resist the temptation of dropping you a line, in the hope of calling forth a score or two from you in return.
"An awkward time this for me to be sick! We are destitute of funds, almost of food. But God will provide!
"I send you a Sonnet, written the other day, as an Obituary for Mr. Harris Simons. Tell me what you think of it--be sure! Love to your mother, wife, and my precious Willie . Let me hear from you soon--VERY soon! You'll do me more good than medicines!" etc.
On the 25th of the month confidence in Timrod's recovery was confirmed by a letter from Mrs. Goodwin:--
"Our brother," she writes, "is decidedly better; and if there be no recurrence of the hemorrhage will, I hope, be soon convalescent!"
A week and upwards passed on in silence. I received no more communications from Columbia. But early in October a vaguely threatening report reached my ears. On the 9th it was mournfully confirmed. Forty-eight hours before, Henry Timrod had expired!
On the 7th of October, the mortal remains of the poet, so worn and shattered, were buried in the cemetery of Trinity Church, Columbia.
There, in the ruined capital of his native State, whence scholarship, culture, and social purity have been banished to give place to the orgies of semi-barbarians and the political 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 skeptical of thinkers, in contemplation of SUCH a life and SUCH a death, must instinctively look 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."
The poetic creed of Timrod, expressed in his "Vision of Poesy", set the impress upon all his work. Conscious of his power, he reverently believed in the mission of the poet as prophet and teacher,--
"The mission of Genius on Earth! To uplift, Purify, and confirm, by its own gracious gift, The world,"--
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