Part 4 (2/2)

Through the glowing picture which Nature unfolded before him he looked into the heart of the truth symbolized there and gave us messages from woods and sky and sea. While it may be said that a poet can make his own environment, yet he is fortunate who finds his place where nature has done so much to fit the outward scene to the inward longing.

In Charleston he met ”Katie, the Fair Saxon,” brown-eyed and with

Entangled in her golden hair Some English suns.h.i.+ne, warmth and air.

He straightway entered into the kingdom of Love, and that suns.h.i.+ne made a radiance over the few years he had left to give to love and art.

In the city of his home he answered his own ”Cry to Arms” when the ”festal guns” roared out their challenge. Had his physique been as strong as his patriotism, his sword might have rivaled his pen in reflecting honor upon his beautiful city. Even then the seeds of consumption had developed, and he was discharged from field service.

Still wis.h.i.+ng to remain in the service of his country, he tried the work of war correspondent, reaching the front just after the battle of s.h.i.+loh. Overcome by the horrors of the retreat, he returned to Charleston, and was soon after appointed a.s.sistant editor of the _Daily South Carolinian_, published in Columbia. He removed to the capital, where his prospects became bright enough to permit his marriage to Kate Goodwin, the English girl to whom his Muse pays such glowing tribute.

In May, 1864, Simms was in Columbia, and on his return to ”Woodlands”

wrote to Hayne that Timrod was in better health and spirits than for years, saying: ”He has only to prepare a couple of dwarf essays, making a single column, and the pleasant public is satisfied. These he does so well that they have reason to be so. Briefly, our friend is in a fair way to fatten and be happy.”

This prosperity came to an end when the capital city fell a victim to the fires of war, and Timrod returned to the city of his birth, where for a time the publication of the _South Carolinian_ was continued, he writing editorials nominally for fifteen dollars a month, practically for exercise in facile expression, as the small stipend promised was never paid. With the paper, he soon returned to Columbia, where after a time he secured work in the office of Governor Orr, writing to Hayne that twice he copied papers from ten o'clock one morning till sunrise of the next.

With the close of the session, his work ended, and in the spring he visited Paul Hayne at Copse Hill. Hayne says: ”He found me with my family established in a crazy wooden shanty, dignified as a cottage, near the track of the main Georgia railroad, about sixteen miles from Augusta.” To Timrod, that ”crazy wooden shanty,” set in immemorial pines and made radiant by the presence of his poet friend, was finer than a palace. On that ”windy, frowzy, barren hill,” as Maurice Thompson called it, the two old friends spent together the spring days of '67--such days as lingered in golden beauty in the memory of one of them and have come down to us in immortal verse.

Again in August of that year he visited Copse Hill, hoping to find health among the pines. Of these last days Paul Hayne wrote years later:

In the latter summer-tide of this same year I again persuaded him to visit me. Ah! how sacred now, how sad and sweet, are the memories of that rich, clear, prodigal August of '67!

We would rest on the hillsides, in the swaying golden shadows, watching together the t.i.tanic ma.s.ses of snow-white clouds which floated slowly and vaguely through the sky, suggesting by their form, whiteness, and serene motion, despite the season, flotillas of icebergs upon Arctic seas. Like lazzaroni we basked in the quiet noons, sunk into the depths of reverie, or perhaps of yet more ”charmed sleep.” Or we smoked, conversing lazily between the puffs,

”Next to some pine whose antique roots just peeped From out the crumbling bases of the sand.”

But the evenings, with their gorgeous sunsets, ”rolling down like a chorus” and the ”gray-eyed melancholy gloaming,” were the favorite hours of the day with him.

One of those pines was especially his own, by his love and his choice of its shade as a resting place. Of it Paul Hayne wrote when his friend had pa.s.sed from its shadows for the last time:

The same majestic pine is lifted high Against the twilight sky, The same low, melancholy music grieves Amid the topmost leaves, As when I watched and mused and dreamed with him Beneath those shadows dim.

Such dreams we can dimly imagine sometimes when we stand beneath a glorious pine and try to translate its whisperings into words, and watch ”the last rays of sunset s.h.i.+mmering down, flashed like a royal crown.” Sometimes we catch glimpses of such radiant visions when we stand in the pine shadows and think, as Hayne did so often after that beautiful August, ”Of one who comes no more.” Under that stately tree he

Seemed to drink the sunset like strong wine Or, hushed in trance divine, Hailed the first shy and timorous glance from far Of evening's virgin star.

In all his years after, Paul Hayne held in his heart the picture of his friend with head against that ”mighty trunk” when

The unquiet pa.s.sion died from out his eyes, As lightning from stilled skies.

So through that glowing August on Copse Hill the two Southern poets walked and talked and built their shrine to the s.h.i.+ning Olympic G.o.ddess to whom their lives were dedicated.

When summer had wrapped about her the purple and crimson glories of her brilliant 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOUSE WHERE TIMROD LIVED DURING HIS LAST YEARS 1108 Henderson Street, Columbia, S.C.]

Impelled by circ.u.mstances 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.”

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