Carolina!
And now it deepens; slow and grand
It swells, as rolling to the land,
An ocean broke upon the strand,
Carolina!
Shout! let it reach the startled Huns!
And roar with all thy festal guns!
It is the answer of thy sons,
Carolina!'"

Profoundly appealing as are Timrod's war strains, for they are
the heart-cry of a people, still it should be noted that there is
scarcely a battle ode that does not close with an invocation to peace,
such was the lofty nature of the poet. War to him was only the drawn sword
of right, and truth, and justice, which accomplished, the prayer for peace
was ever on his lips, as witness the noble invocation to Peace,
closing his "Christmas", that has so often stirred and hushed at once
the heart of the South.

The Ode, written for Memorial Day, April, 1867, of the Confederate graves
at Charleston, was his last production. He had sung in lofty strains
each phase of the struggle, its hope, its courage, its fear, its despair;
he now sings his latest song, a wreath of flowers upon the unmarked graves
of the Southern dead, and has hallowed these sacred mounds to his people
in the words, --

"There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned!"