Shall bring us; not for lands from sea to sea,
And wealth, and power, and peace, though these shall be;
But for the distant peoples we shall bless,
And the hushed murmurs of a world’s distress.
But when the war was over, in his “Address to the Old Year” (1866) he was all for complete and speedy reconciliation.
A time of peaceful prayer,
Of law, love, labor, honest loss and gain—
These are the visions of the coming reign
Now floating to them on this wintry air.
Fortunately, in the slow approach toward this millennial conclusion Timrod was spared the brutal blunders of the Reconstruction period, for he died within the next twelvemonth, serene in his hopes.