The Lily Confidante

Lily! lady of the garden!
Let me press my lip to thine!
Love must tell its story, Lily!
Listen thou to mine.

Two I choose to know the secret --
Thee, and yonder wordless flute;
Dragons watch me, tender Lily,
And thou must be mute.

There's a maiden, and her name is . . .
Hist! was that a rose-leaf fell?
See, the rose is listening, Lily,
And the rose may tell.

Lily-browed and lily-hearted,
She is very dear to me;
Lovely? yes, if being lovely
Is -- resembling thee.

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poem by Henry Timrod
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A Cry to Arms

Ho! woodsmen of the mountain side!
Ho! dwellers in the vales!
Ho! ye who by the chafing tide
Have roughened in the gales!
Leave barn and byre, leave kin and cot,
Lay by the bloodless spade;
Let desk, and case, and counter rot,
And burn your books of trade.

The despot roves your fairest lands;
And till he flies or fears,
Your fields must grow but arm|\ed bands,
Your sheaves be sheaves of spears!
Give up to mildew and to rust
The useless tools of gain;
And feed your country's sacred dust
With floods of crimson rain!

Come, with the weapons at your call --
With musket, pike, or knife;

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poem by Henry Timrod
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A Mother Gazes Upon Her Daughter

Is she not lovely! Oh! when, long ago,
My own dead mother gazed upon my face,
As I stood blushing near in bridal snow,
I had not half her beauty and her grace.

Yet that fond mother praised, the world caressed,
And ONE adored me -- how shall HE who soon
Shall wear my gentle flower upon his breast,
Prize to its utmost worth the priceless boon?

Shall he not gird her, guard her, make her rich,
(Not as the world is rich, in outward show,)
With all the love and watchful kindness which
A wise and tender manhood may bestow?

Oh! I shall part from her with many tears,
My earthly treasure, pure and undefiled!
And not without a weight of anxious fears
For the new future of my darling child.

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poem by Henry Timrod
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Charleston

Calm as that second summer which precedes
The first fall of the snow,
In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds,
The City bides the foe.

As yet, behind their ramparts stern and proud,
Her bolted thunders sleep --
Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud,
Looms o'er the solemn deep.

No Calpe frowns from lofty cliff or scar
To guard the holy strand;
But Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war
Above the level sand.

And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched,
Unseen, beside the flood --
Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched
That wait and watch for blood.

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poem by Henry Timrod
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Retirement

My gentle friend! I hold no creed so false
As that which dares to teach that we are born
For battle only, and that in this life
The soul, if it would burn with starlike power,
Must needs forsooth be kindled by the sparks
Struck from the shock of clashing human hearts.
There is a wisdom that grows up in strife,
And one -- I like it best -- that sits at home
And learns its lessons of a thoughtful ease.
So come! a lonely house awaits thee! -- there
Nor praise, nor blame shall reach us, save what love
Of knowledge for itself shall wake at times
In our own bosoms; come! and we will build
A wall of quiet thought, and gentle books,
Betwixt us and the hard and bitter world.
Sometimes -- for we need not be anchorites --
A distant friend shall cheer us through the Post,
Or some Gazette -- of course no partisan --
Shall bring us pleasant news of pleasant things;
Then, twisted into graceful allumettes,

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poem by Henry Timrod
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Stanzas: A Mother Gazes Upon Her Daughter, Arrayed For An Approaching Bridal.

Written in Illustration of a Tableau Vivant

Is she not lovely! Oh! when, long ago,
My own dead mother gazed upon my face,
As I stood blushing near in bridal snow,
I had not half her beauty and her grace.

Yet that fond mother praised, the world caressed,
And ONE adored me -- how shall HE who soon
Shall wear my gentle flower upon his breast,
Prize to its utmost worth the priceless boon?

Shall he not gird her, guard her, make her rich,
(Not as the world is rich, in outward show,)
With all the love and watchful kindness which
A wise and tender manhood may bestow?

Oh! I shall part from her with many tears,
My earthly treasure, pure and undefiled!

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poem by Henry Timrod
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The Unknown Dead

The rain is plashing on my sill,
But all the winds of Heaven are still;
And so it falls with that dull sound
Which thrills us in the church-yard ground,
When the first spadeful drops like lead
Upon the coffin of the dead.
Beyond my streaming window-pane,
I cannot see the neighboring vane,
Yet from its old familiar tower
The bell comes, muffled, through the shower.
What strange and unsuspected link
Of feeling touched, has made me think --
While with a vacant soul and eye
I watch that gray and stony sky --
Of nameless graves on battle-plains
Washed by a single winter's rains,
Where, some beneath Virginian hills,
And some by green Atlantic rills,
Some by the waters of the West,
A myriad unknown heroes rest.

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poem by Henry Timrod
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Flower-Life

I think that, next to your sweet eyes,
And pleasant books, and starry skies,
I love the world of flowers;
Less for their beauty of a day,
Than for the tender things they say,
And for a creed I've held alway,
That they are sentient powers.

It may be matter for a smile --
And I laugh secretly the while
I speak the fancy out --
But that they love, and that they woo,
And that they often marry too,
And do as noisier creatures do,
I've not the faintest doubt.

And so, I cannot deem it right
To take them from the glad sunlight,
As I have sometimes dared;
Though not without an anxious sigh

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poem by Henry Timrod
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Dramatic Fragment

Let the boy have his will! I tell thee, brother,
We treat these little ones too much like flowers,
Training them, in blind selfishness, to deck
Sticks of our poor setting, when they might,
If left to clamber where themselves incline,
Find nobler props to cling to, fitter place,
And sweeter air to bloom in. It is wrong --
Thou striv'st to sow with feelings all thine own,
With thoughts and hopes, anxieties and aims,
Born of thine own peculiar self, and fed
Upon a certain round of circumstance,
A soul as different and distinct from thine
As love of goodness is from love of glory,
Or noble poesy from noble prose.
I could forgive thee, if thou wast of them
Who do their fated parts in this world's business,
Scarce knowing how or why -- for common minds
See not the difference 'twixt themselves and others --
But thou, thou, with the visions which thy youth did cherish
Substantialized upon thy regal brow,

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poem by Henry Timrod
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Youth And Manhood

Another year! a short one, if it flow
Like that just past,
And I shall stand -- if years can make me so --
A man at last.

Yet, while the hours permit me, I would pause
And contemplate
The lot whereto unalterable laws
Have bound my fate.

Yet, from the starry regions of my youth,
The empyreal height
Where dreams are happiness, and feeling truth,
And life delight --

From that ethereal and serene abode
My soul would gaze
Downward upon the wide and winding road,
Where manhood plays;

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poem by Henry Timrod
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