ure in wood and field, her love of
flowers and trees, and all the mystery and gladness of nature, are among
the cherished memories of all her children, and vividly described by the
poet's sister.

William Henry Timrod, father of the poet, died of disease contracted
in the Florida war, and his family thereafter were in straitened
circumstances. Nevertheless, the early education of his gifted son was
provided for. Paul H. Hayne, the poet, was one of his earliest friends
and schoolmates at Charleston's best school. They sat together, and to
his brother boy-poet he first showed his earliest verses in exulting
confidence. This friendship and confidence lasted through life, and
Hayne has tenderly embalmed it in his sketch of the poet. We have this
faithful picture of him at that time:--

"Modest and diffident, with a nervous utterance, but with melody ever in
his heart and on his lip. Though always slow of speech, he was yet, like
Burns, quick to learn. The chariot wheels might jar in the gate through
which he tried to drive his winged steeds, but the horses were of
celestial temper and the car purest gold."

His school-fellows remember him as silent and shy, full of quick
impulse, and with an eager ambition, insatiable in his thirst for books,
yet mingling freely in all sports, and rejoicing unspeakably in the
weekly holiday and its long rambles through wood and field. "The sweet
security of streets" had no charm for him. He rejoiced in Nature and her
changing scenes and seasons. She was always to him comfort, refreshment,
balm. She never turned her face from him, and through all his years he
"leaned on her breast with loving trustfulness as a little child."

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

His college life at the University of Georgia was interrupted by
sickness and cramped by lack of means, and his literary plans were
foiled by necessity. Nevertheless, he left his Alma Mater with a mind
stirred to its depths, and with a large store of learning, and had
already sounded with clear note those chords which were afterwards so
vocal in melody