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.
