Henry Timrod (1828–1867)

Timrod was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and attended the University of Georgia (then Franklin College), where he developed an intense interest in the classical writers. This interest was displayed in Poems, a small collection of nature lyrics published in 1860, the only volume of his poetry show more published during his lifetime. Prevented by tuberculosis from serving in the Civil War, Timrod became a war correspondent and rose to the position of editor of the Columbia South Carolinian, supporting the Confederate cause with his pen. However, Sherman's capture and burning of Columbia in February 1865 marked the end of any chance Timrod had for a secure life. He died in poverty and despair little more than two years after Lee's surrender at Appomattox. From the time that another southern poet, Paul H. Hayne (Timrod's friend since their Charleston school days), collected and published The Poems of Henry Timrod in 1873, Timrod has been recognized as the "Laureate of the Confederacy." is classical purity of form, coupled with his intellectual and moral austerity, prevent his poetry from becoming mired in the sentimentality that is characteristic of so much nineteenth-century poetry of the American South. Certainly, the best of his poems are those, such as "The Cotton Boll," "A Cry to Arms," and "Ode Sung at the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead," that memorialized the losses and sorrows of his region during its long ordeal. (Bowker Author Biography) show less