The beauty of the stars is over all."

His earnestness and deep poetic insight clothed all themes
with the beauty and light that is in and over all.

Timrod's melancholy, the finest test of high poetic quality,
when purified and spiritualized, has no Byronic bitterness,
no selfish morbidness, no impenetrable gloom, but in his own exquisite lines
it is, --

"A shadowy land, where joy and sorrow kiss,
Each still to each corrective and relief,
Where dim delights are brightened into bliss,
And nothing wholly perishes but Grief.

"Ah, me! -- not dies -- no more than spirit dies;
But in a change like death is clothed with wings;
A serious angel, with entranc|\ed eyes,
Looking to far off and celestial things."

Again, in all these poems there is a nameless spell of a simplicity,
fervid yet tender, and an imagination, strong yet delicate,
both in its perception and expression.

His style, "like noble music unto noble words," is elaborate,
yet perfectly natural. There is no trace of labor;
grace guides and power impels. So perfect is it at times in its natural power
that the mind is almost unconscious of the word-symbol in grasping immediately
the thought revealed.