was correcting the proof-sheets of his own poems, and he passed away
with them by his side, stained with his life-blood.

In the autumn of 1867 he was laid by his beloved child
in Trinity churchyard, Columbia, S.C. General Hampton, Governor Thompson,
and other great Carolinians bore him to the grave, --
a grave that, through the sackcloth of the Reconstruction period
in South Carolina, remained without a stone. But as he himself
wrote of the host of the Southern dead of the war, --

"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."

In later years loving friends reared a small memorial shaft to mark his grave.
It was in that dark period that Carl McKinley's genius was touched
to these fine lines.


At Timrod's Grave. 1877.


Harp of the South! no more, no more
Thy silvery strings shall quiver,
The one strong hand might win thy strains
Is chilled and stilled forever.

Our one sweet singer breaks no more
The silence sad and long,