TIMROD, HENRY, an American poet, born at Charleston, S. C., December 8, 1829; died at Columbia, S. C., October 6, 1867. He entered the University of Georgia at sixteen, but ill-health and straitened circumstances compelled him to leave before completing the course, and for ten years he was engaged as a private tutor, writing many poems which were published in Southern periodicals. When the Civil War broke out, he earnestly espoused the cause of the Confederacy, and wrote many war-songs. After a short service as war correspondent at Shiloh, he became editor of a newspaper at Columbia. The advance of Sherman's army through the Carolinas reduced him to penury, and for the brief remainder of his life he was able to earn only a bare subsistence by his pen and by acting as a clerk. Under the pressure of over-work and privation his health gave way entirely. His last words were, " I shall soon drink of the river of Eternal Life." In 1873 his Poems were collected and edited by Paul H. Hayne, who prefixed a Biographical Sketch of the author.

Mr. Timrod's poetry is of the school of Wordsworth-studious, thoughtful, and meditative rather than passionate or sensuous, showing often high finish, and always a lofty ideal. Had fortune been more propitious and his life been spared, there

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can hardly be a doubt that he would have made. for himself a high place in American letters. His name is one which should be ever dear to his native State and to the sunny clime which he loved so well.

THE SOUTHERN LAND.

Yonder bird

Which floats, as if at rest,

In those blue tracks 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 the earliest daylight in the beams
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 the plains that roll their streams
Against the Evening Star!

And lo!

To the remotest point of sight,

Although I gaze upon no waste of snows,

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 pastures rich and fields all green
With all the common gifts of God,

For temperate airs and torrid sheen

Weave Edens of the sod.

Through lands which look one billowy sea of 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 plumèd peaks cloud-crowned;
And save where up their sides the ploughman creeps,
An unknown 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 yon temples of the West
See nothing brighter than its humblest flowers,
And you, ye winds that in 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!

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, and 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
Resigned, O Lord! we cannot all forget
That there is much even victory must regret.

VOL. XXIII.-6

And therefore, not too long

From the great burden of our country's wrong
Delay our just release!

And, if it may be, save

These sacred fields of peace

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 trembling quays Shall one day mark the port which ruled the Western

seas.

ODE TO CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS.*

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.

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years

Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
Behold, your sisters bring their tears,
And these memorial blooms.

Small tributes, but your shades will smile
More proudly on these wreaths to-day
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
Shall overlook this bay.

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies,
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned.

* Sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of the Confederate dead at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S. C.

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,
Fond 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
Unfelt amid the deadly fight;

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,