his loved and loving pines, with memories happy,
though touched to tender sadness by the sorrows that had come to the
old-time group of friends, blessed with the companionship of the two
loving souls who were dearest to him of all the world, he sang the
melodies of his heart till a cold hand swept across the strings of his
wonderful harp and chilled them to silence.

In his last year of earth he was invited to deliver at Vanderbilt
University a series of lectures on poetry and literature. Before the
invitation reached him he had "fallen into that perfect peace that
waits for all."

"THE FLAME-BORN POET"

HENRY TIMROD

A writer on Southern poets heads his article on one of the most gifted
of our children of song, "Henry Timrod, the Unfortunate Singer."

At first glance the title may seem appropriate. Viewed by the standard
set up by the world, there was little of the wine of success in
Timrod's cup of life. Bitter drafts of the waters of Marah were served
to him in the iron goblet of Fate. But he lived. Of how many of the
so-called favorites of Fortune could that be said? Through the mists
of his twilit life, he caught glimpses of a sun-radiant morning of
wondrous glory.

Thirty years after Timrod's death a Northern critic, writing of the
new birth of interest in Timrod's work, said: "Time is the ideal
editor." Surely, Editor Time's blue pencil has dealt kindly with our
flame-born poet.

In Charleston, December 8, 1829, the "little blue-eyed boy" of his
father's verse first opened his eyes upon a world that would give him
all its beauty and much of its sadness, verifying the paternal
prophecy:

And thy full share of misery
Must fall in life on thee!

In early childhood he was destined to lose the loving father to whom
his "shouts of joy" were the sweetest strain in life's harmony.

Henry Timrod and Paul Hayne, within a month of the same age, were
seat-mates in school. Writing of him many years later, Hayne tells of
the time that Timrod made the thrilling discovery that he was a poet;
that being, perhaps, the most exciting epoch in any life. Coming into
school one morning, he showed Paul his first attempt at verse-writing,
which Hayne describes as "a ballad of stirring adventures and
sanguinary catastrophe," which he thought wonderful, the youthful
author, of course, sharing that conviction. Convictions are easy at
thirteen, even when one has not the glamour of the sea and the romance
of ol