lliant life and drifted into the tomb of past things, Timrod
left the friend of his heart alone with the "soft wind-angels" and
memories of "that quiet eve"

When, deeply, thrillingly,
He spake of lofty hopes which vanquish Death;
And on his mortal breath
A language of immortal meanings hung
That fired his heart and tongue.

[Illustration: HOUSE WHERE TIMROD LIVED DURING HIS LAST YEARS
1108 Henderson Street, Columbia, S.C.]

Impelled by circumstances to leave the pines before their inspiring
breath had given him of their life, he had little strength to renew
the battle for existence, and of the sacrifice of his possessions to
which he had been forced to resort he writes to Hayne: "We have eaten
two silver pitchers, one or two dozen silver forks, several sofas,
innumerable chairs, and a huge bedstead."

We should like to think of life as flowing on serenely in that pretty
cottage on Henderson Street, Columbia, its wide front veranda crowned
with a combed roof supported by a row of white columns. In its cool
dimness we may in fancy see the nature-loving poet at eventide looking
into the greenery of a friendly tree stretching great arms lovingly to
the shadowy porch. A taller tree stands sentinel at the gate, as if to
guard the poet-soul from the world and close it around with the beauty
that it loved.

But life did not bring him any more of joy or success than he had
achieved in the long years of toil and sorrow and disappointment,
brightened by the flame of his own genius throwing upon the dark wall
of existence the pictures that imagination drew with magic hand upon
his sympathetic, ever responsive mind. On the sixth of October, after
that month of iridescent beauty on Copse Hill, came the days of which
he had written long before:

As it purples in the zenith,
As it brightens on the lawn,
There's a hush of death about me,
And a whisper, "He is gone!"

On Copse Hill, "Under the Pine," his lifelong friend stood and
sorrowfully questioned:

O Tree! have not his poet-touch, his dreams
So full of heavenly gleams,
Wrought through the folded dulness of thy bark,
And all thy nature dark
Stirred to slow throbbings, and the fluttering fire
Of faint, unknown desire?

Near the end of his last visit he had told Paul Hayne that he did not
wish to live to be old--"an octogenarian, far less a centenarian,
like old Parr." He hoped that he might