his song is the voice of the Southland. Born in Charleston, S.C.,
December 8th, 1829, his life cast in the seething torrent of civil war,
his voice was also the voice of Carolina, and through her of the South,
in all the rich glad life poured out in patriotic pride into
that fatal struggle, in all the valor and endurance of that dark conflict,
in all the gloom of its disaster, and in all the sacred tenderness
that clings about its memories. He was the poet of the Lost Cause,
the finest interpreter of the feelings and traditions of the splendid heroism
of a brave people. Moreover, by his catholic spirit, his wide range,
and world-wide sympathies, he is a true American poet.

The purpose of the TIMROD MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION of his native city and State,
in undertaking this new edition of his poems, is to erect
a suitable public memorial to the poet, and also to let his own words
renew and keep his own memory in his land's literature.


The earliest edition of Timrod's poems was a small volume by Ticknor & Fields,
of Boston, in 1860, just before the Civil War. This contained only
the poems of the first eight or nine years previous, and was warmly welcomed
North and South. The "New York Tribune" then greeted this small first volume
in these words: "These poems are worthy of a wide audience,
and they form a welcome offering to the common literature of our country."

In this first volume was evinced the culture, the lively fancy,
the delicate and vigorous imagination, and the finished artistic power
of his mind, even then rejoicing in the fullness and freshness
of its creations and in the unwearied flow of its natural music.
But it fell then on the great world of letters almost unheeded,
shut out by the war cloud that soon broke upon the land,