A golden pallor of voluptuous light Filled the warm southern night: The moon, clear orbed, above the sylvan scene Moved like a stately queen, So rife with conscious beauty all the while, What could she do but smile At her own perfect loveliness below, Glassed in the tranquil flow Of crystal fountains and unruffled streams? Even his war poems are gentle and softly poetic. After the war he lapsed into lyrics of retrospect and contemplation with a minor note always of gentle resignation. He lived to write elegies on Timrod and Lanier and to make himself the threnodist of the old South: Forgotten! Tho' a thousand years should pass, Methinks our air will throb with memory's thrills, A common grief weigh down the faltering grass, A pathos shroud the hills; Waves roll lamenting; autumn sunsets yearn For the old time's return. A more sensitively imaginative poet was Timrod, yet even he was not strong enough to lead his time and become more than a minor singer. He was of the old South and would have been wholly out of place in the new even had he lived. More fire and Hebraic rage there were in him than in Hayne, indeed than in any other American poet save Whittier. Once or twice when his life was shaken to the center by the brutalities of war he burst into cries that still quiver with passion: Oh! standing on this desecrated mold, Methinks that I behold, Lifting her bloody daisies up to God, Spring kneeling on the sod, And calling with the voice of all her rills, Upon the ancient hills To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves That turn her meads to graves. And again at the climax of "The Cotton Boll": Oh, help us, Lord! to roll the crimson flood Back on its course, and, while our banners wing Northward, strike with us! till the Goth shall cling To his own blasted altar-stones, and crave Mercy; and we shall grant it, and dictate The lenient future of his fate There, where some rotting ships and crumbling quays Shall one day mark the port which ruled the Western seas. And what other poet save Whittier could after victory burst into Hebraic ecstasy of joy like this? Our foes are fallen! Flash, ye wires! The mighty tidings far and nigh! Ye cities! write them on the sky In purple and in emerald fires! They came with many a haughty boast; Their threats were heard on every breeze; They darkened half the neighboring seas; And swooped like vultures on the coast. False recreants in all knightly strife, Their way was wet with woman's tears; Behind them flamed the toil of years, And bloodshed stained the sheaves of life.