"That love and mercy, Father, still are thine,"—
he felt a pathetic desire to linger awhile in the love of his tender, patient, helpful wife:—
"A little while I fain would linger here;
Behold! who knows what soul-dividing bars
Earth's faithful loves may part in other stars?
Nor can love deem the face of death is fair:
A little while I still would linger here."
Paul Hamilton Hayne passed away July 6, 1886. As already brought out in the course of this sketch, he was not only a gifted singer, but also a noble man. His extraordinary poetic gifts have not yet been fully recognized. Less gifted singers have been placed above him. No biography has been written to record with fond minuteness the story of his admirable life and achievement. His writings in prose, and a few of his choicest lyrics, still remain unpublished. Let us hope that this reproach to Southern letters may soon be removed, and that this laureate of the South may yet come to the full inheritance of fame to which the children of genius are inalienably entitled.
CHAPTER IV
HENRY TIMROD
In some respects there is a striking similarity in the lives of the three Southern poets, Hayne, Timrod, and Lanier. They were alike victims of misfortune, and in their greatest tribulations they exhibited the same heroic patience and fortitude.
"They knew alike what suffering starts
From fettering need and ceaseless pain;
But still with brave and cheerful hearts,
Whose message hope and joy imparts,
They sang their deathless strain."
The fate of Timrod was the saddest of them all. Gifted with uncommon genius, he never saw its full fruitage; and over and over again, when some precious hope seemed about to be realized, it was cruelly dashed to the ground. There is, perhaps, no sadder story in the annals of literature.
Henry Timrod was born in Charleston, South Carolina, December 28, 1829. He was older than his friend Hayne by twenty-three days. The law of heredity seems to find exemplification in his genius. The Timrods, a family of German descent, were long identified with the history of South Carolina. The poet's grandfather belonged to the German Fusiliers of Charleston, a volunteer company organized in 1775, after the battle of Lexington, for the defense of the American colonies. In the Seminole War, the poet's father, Captain William Henry Timrod, commanded the German Fusiliers in Florida. He was a gifted man, whose talents attracted an admiring circle of friends. "By the simple mastery of genius," says Hayne, "he gained no trifling influence among the highest intellectual and social circles of a city noted at that period for aristocratic exclusiveness."