A Critical Edition of Henry Timrod’s Poem,

“The Unknown Dead”

edited by Scott Widener

for ENGL 2110 American Literature I

Dr. Kevin O’Donnell, East Tennessee State University

28 February 2005

The Unknown Dead, by Henry Timrod (1828-1867)

The rain is plashing on my sill,

But all the winds of Heaven are still;

And so it falls with that the dull sound

Which thrills us in the church-yard ground,

When the first spadeful drops like lead

Upon the coffin of the dead.

Beyond my streaming window-pane,

I cannot see the neighboring vane,

Yet from its old familiar tower

The bell comes, muffled, through the shower.

What strange and unsuspected link

Of feeling touched, has made me think –

While with a vacant soul and eye

I watch that gray and stony sky –

Of nameless graves on battle-plains

Washed by a single winter’s rains,

Where, some beneath Virginian hills,

And some by green Atlantic rills,

Some by the waters of the West,

A myriad unknown heroes rest.

Ah! not the chiefs, who, dying, see

Their flags in front of victory,

Or, at their life-blood’s noble cost

Pay for a battle nobly lost,

Claim from their monumental beds

The bitterest tears a nation sheds.

Beneath yon lonely mound – the spot

By all save some fond few forgot –

Lie the true martyrs of the fight

Which strikes for freedom and for right.

Of them, their patriot zeal and pride,

The loft faith that with them died,

No grateful page shall farther tell

Than that so many bravely fell;

And we can only dimly guess

What worlds of all this world’s distress,

What utter woe, despair, and dearth,

Their fate has brought to many a hearth.

Just such a sky as this should weep

Above them, always, where they sleep;

Yet, haply, at this very hour,

Their graves are like a lover’s bower;

And Nature’s self, with eyes unwet,

Oblivious of the crimson debt

To which she owes here April grace,

Laughs gaily o’er their burial-place.

(1899)

Henry Timrod:

Henry Timrod was born on December 8, 1828 in Charleston, South Carolina. Timrod was known as the “Laureate of the Confederacy” for his poems during the Civil War. He became editor of the daily South Carolinian in 1865, which was destroyed during the war. Henry Timrod died of tuberculosis in 1867.

Timrod’s Poem:

This poem is written about all the southern soldiers who had died in the Civil War. It gives references to where they had died from the hills of Virginia to the shores of the Atlantic. It also tells how the dead will be forgotten while the Generals in charge of the battles take the credit for the victory. Also that the spot where they died would be forgotten by all except for those who lost loved ones there. Timrod paints a picture that the fallen soldiers are mourned individually in the homes of their families, but are forgotten by the general public over time (Parks, 103).

Annotated Bibliography:

Primary Text:

Timrod, Henry. “The Unknown Dead”. Poems of Henry Timrod. Houghton, Mifflin and Company: Boston and New York, 1899: 157-158.

* This collection of Timrod’s poems was originally published in 1899. It includes Timrod’s first anthology of poems published in 1860 and those published after his death in 1873.

Secondary Text:

Parks, Edd Winfield. Henry Timrod. Twayne Publishers, Inc.: New York, 1964: 103.

*This book provides a background of Timrod’s life and a in-depth analysis for much of his work.