l physical want and lack of
the commonest comforts of life, felt most keenly by his sensitive nature
and delicate constitution. In the midst of this fierce stress, his
darling boy, the crown of his life, died. All his affections, it seemed,
were poured out at once, as water spilled upon the ground. He was dying
of consumption, and earth shadows crowded around him.

Though long in feeble health, his last illness was brief. The best
physicians lovingly gave their skillful ministration, and the State's
most eminent men, in their common need, tenderly cared for him and his.
With death before him, he clung passionately to his art, absorbed in
that alone and in the great Beyond. His latest occupation 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,
The land is hushed from shore to shore,
It brooks no feebler song!

No other voice can charm our ears,
None other soothe our pain;
Better these echoes lingering yet,
Than any ruder strain.

For singing, Fate has given sighs,
For music we make moan;
Oh, who may touch the harp-strings since
That whisper--"_HE IS GONE!_"

See where he lies--his last sad home
Of all memorial bare,
Save for a little heap of leaves
The winds have gathered there!

One fair frail shell from some far sea
Lies lone above his breast,
Sad emblem and sole epitaph
To mark his place of rest.

Th