e 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,