§28. "Ode Sung at Magnolia Cemetery". III. Poets of the Civil War II. Vol. 16. Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part I. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907

Reference > Cambridge History > Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part I > Poets of the Civil War II > Ode Sung at Magnolia Cemetery

Peace; Resignation

The Poets after the War

CONTENTS · VOLUME CONTENTS · INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVI. Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part I.

III. Poets of the Civil War II.

§ 28. Ode Sung at Magnolia Cemetery.

Two years after the war, Timrod, suffering from tuberculosis and the direst poverty, wrote his greatest poem, the Ode Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S. C., 1867. The poem is a fit ending to any consideration of Southern War Poetry, for it is the last word to be said of those who died and of those who would honour their memory.

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,

Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;

Though yet no marble column craves

The pilgrim here to pause.

In seeds of laurel in the earth

The blossom of your fame is blown,

And somewhere, waiting for its birth,

The shaft is in the stone!

III

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years

Which keep in trust your storied tombs,

Behold! your sisters bring their tears