Poems of Henry Timrod [8]
already to look back with longing regret to `Copse Hill'. You have all made me feel as if I had TWO beloved homes!
"I wish that I could divide myself between them; or that I had wings, so that I might flit from one to other in a moment.
"I hope soon to write you at length. Yours," etc.
Again on the 16th I heard from him, thus: --
"Yesterday I had a still more copious hemorrhage! . . .
"I am lying supine in bed, forbidden to speak or make any exertion whatever. But I can't resist the temptation of dropping you a line, in the hope of calling forth a score or two from you in return.
"An awkward time this for me to be sick! We are destitute of funds, almost of food. But God will provide!
"I send you a Sonnet, written the other day, as an Obituary for Mr. Harris Simons. Tell me what you think of it -- be sure! Love to your mother, wife, and my precious Willie [since the death of his own child he had turned with a yearning affection to my boy]. Let me hear from you soon -- VERY soon! You'll do me more good than medicines!" etc.
On the 25th of the month confidence in Timrod's recovery was confirmed by a letter from Mrs. Goodwin: --
"Our brother," she writes, "is decidedly better; and if there be no recurrence of the hemorrhage will, I hope, be soon convalescent!"
A week and upwards passed on in silence. I received no more communications from Columbia. But early in October a vaguely threatening report reached my ears. On the 9th it was mournfully confirmed. Forty-eight hours before, Henry Timrod had expired!
On the 7th of October, the mortal remains of the poet, so worn and shattered, were buried in the cemetery of Trinity Church, Columbia.
There, in the ruined capital of his native State, whence scholarship, culture, and social purity have been banished to give place to the orgies of semi-barbarians and the political 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," -- and he has consecrated his gift to its noblest uses in the discharge of that "high and holy debt".
As lover of man and nature, his sympathy was universal; no theme was too humble for his pen. "The same law that moulds a planet forms a drop of dew." "Humility is power!" "We may trace the mighty sun above even by the shadow of a slender flower." Yet he dealt not with the fleeting; that was only the passing form of the abiding. Passionately fond as he was of Nature, and nourished and refreshed by her always, he never wrote a line of mere descriptive poetry. Nature is only the symbol, the image, to interpret his spiritual meaning. He felt with Milton, in his noble words, that the abiding work is not raised in the heat of youth or the vapors of wine, or by "invocation to dame Memory and
"I wish that I could divide myself between them; or that I had wings, so that I might flit from one to other in a moment.
"I hope soon to write you at length. Yours," etc.
Again on the 16th I heard from him, thus: --
"Yesterday I had a still more copious hemorrhage! . . .
"I am lying supine in bed, forbidden to speak or make any exertion whatever. But I can't resist the temptation of dropping you a line, in the hope of calling forth a score or two from you in return.
"An awkward time this for me to be sick! We are destitute of funds, almost of food. But God will provide!
"I send you a Sonnet, written the other day, as an Obituary for Mr. Harris Simons. Tell me what you think of it -- be sure! Love to your mother, wife, and my precious Willie [since the death of his own child he had turned with a yearning affection to my boy]. Let me hear from you soon -- VERY soon! You'll do me more good than medicines!" etc.
On the 25th of the month confidence in Timrod's recovery was confirmed by a letter from Mrs. Goodwin: --
"Our brother," she writes, "is decidedly better; and if there be no recurrence of the hemorrhage will, I hope, be soon convalescent!"
A week and upwards passed on in silence. I received no more communications from Columbia. But early in October a vaguely threatening report reached my ears. On the 9th it was mournfully confirmed. Forty-eight hours before, Henry Timrod had expired!
On the 7th of October, the mortal remains of the poet, so worn and shattered, were buried in the cemetery of Trinity Church, Columbia.
There, in the ruined capital of his native State, whence scholarship, culture, and social purity have been banished to give place to the orgies of semi-barbarians and the political 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," -- and he has consecrated his gift to its noblest uses in the discharge of that "high and holy debt".
As lover of man and nature, his sympathy was universal; no theme was too humble for his pen. "The same law that moulds a planet forms a drop of dew." "Humility is power!" "We may trace the mighty sun above even by the shadow of a slender flower." Yet he dealt not with the fleeting; that was only the passing form of the abiding. Passionately fond as he was of Nature, and nourished and refreshed by her always, he never wrote a line of mere descriptive poetry. Nature is only the symbol, the image, to interpret his spiritual meaning. He felt with Milton, in his noble words, that the abiding work is not raised in the heat of youth or the vapors of wine, or by "invocation to dame Memory and