To Harry

Harry, my little blue-eyed boy,I love to have thee playing near;There's music in thy shouts of joyTo a fond father's ear.

I love to see the lines of mirthMantle thy cheek and forehead fair,As if all pleasures of the earthHad met to revel there;

For gazing on thee, do I sighThat those most happy years must flee,And thy full share of miseryMust 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 clayShall lie upon thy father's breast,And he, though dead, will point the wayThou shalt be always blest.

They'll tell thee this terrestrial ball,To man for his enjoyment given,Is but a state of sinful thrallTo keep the soul from heaven.

My boy! the verdure-crownèd hills,The vales where flowers innumerous blow,The music of ten thousand rillsWill tell thee, 't is not so.

God is no tyrant who would spreadUnnumbered dainties to the eyes,Yet teach the hungering child to dreadThat touching them he dies!

No! all can do his creatures good,He scatters round with hand profuse--The only precept understood,

But he had other teachers. He studied all classic literature. "TheÆschylean drama had no attraction for him; he reveled in the rich andelegant strains of Virgil, and of the many toned lyre of Horace and thesilver lute of Catullus." From the full and inexhaustible fountain ofEnglish letters he drank unceasingly. Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton,Burns, Wordsworth, and, later, Tennyson were his immediate inspiration.

"In seeds of laurel in the earthThe blossom of your fame is blown,And somewhere waiting for its birth,The shaft is in the stone."

Harp of the South! no more, no moreThy silvery strings shall quiver,The one strong hand might win thy strainsIs chilled and stilled forever.

Our one sweet singer breaks no moreThe 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 sinceThat whisper--"HE IS GONE!"

See where he lies--his last sad homeOf all memorial bare,Save for a little heap of leavesThe winds have gathered there!

One fair frail shell from some far seaLies lone above his breast,Sad emblem and sole epitaphTo mark his place of rest.

The sweet winds murmur in its heartA music soft and low,As they would bring their secrets stillTo him who sleeps below.

And lo! one tender, tearful bloomWins upward through the grass,As some sweet thought he left unsungWere blossoming at last.

Wild weeds grow rank about the place,A dark, cold spot, and drear;The dull neglect that marked his lifeHas followed even here.

Around shine many a marble shaftAnd polished pillars fair,And strangers stand on Timrod's graveTo praise them, unaware!

"Hold up the glories of thy dead!"To thine own self be true,Land that he loved! Come, honor nowThis grave that honors you!

"Next to some pine whose antique roots just peepedFrom out the crumbling bases of the sand."

"Hail, twilight! sovereign of one peaceful hour!Not dull art thou as undiscerning night;But only studious to remove from sightDay's mutable distinctions."

"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 lassCome out and smell the ricks of hay adown the croft with me, O!"

"I left your climate to my injury. But not only for the sake of myhealth, I begin already to look back with longing regret to 'CopseHill'. You have all made me feel as if I had TWO beloved homes!

"The mission of Genius on Earth! To uplift,Purify, and confirm, by its own gracious gift,The world,"--

"All lovely things, and gentle--the sweet laughOf children, Girlhood's kiss, and Friendship's clasp,The boy that sporteth with the old man's staff,The baby, and the breast its fingers grasp--All that exalts the grounds of happiness,All griefs that hallow, and all joys that bless,

"To me are sacred; at my holy shrineLove breathes its latest dreams, its earliest hints;I turn life's tasteless waters into wine,And flush them through and through with purple tints.Wherever Earth is fair, and Heaven looks down,I rear my altars, and I wear my crown."

"There is no unimpressive spot on earth,The beauty of the stars is over all."

"A shadowy land, where joy and sorrow kiss,Each still to each corrective and relief,Where dim delights are brightened into bliss,And nothing wholly perishes but Grief.

"Ah, me!--not dies--no more than spirit dies;But in a change like death is clothed with wings;A serious angel, with entrancèd eyes,Looking to far off and celestial things."

"But the typeWhereby we shall be known in every landIs that vast gulf which lips our Southern strand,And through the cold, untempered ocean poursIts genial streams, that far off Arctic shoresMay sometimes catch upon the softened breezeStrange tropic warmth and hints of summer seas."

"No fairer land hath fired a poet's lays,Or given a home to man!"

"'I hear a murmur as of wavesThat grope their way through sunless caves,Like bodies struggling in their graves,Carolina!And now it deepens; slow and grandIt swells, as rolling to the land,An ocean broke upon the strand,Carolina!Shout! let it reach the startled Huns!And roar with all thy festal guns!It is the answer of thy sons,Carolina!'"

"There is no holier spot of groundThan where defeated valor lies,By mourning beauty crowned!"

"not dies, no more than Spirit dies;But in a change like death was clothed with wings."