Henry Timrod (8 December 1828-7 October 1867), poet and essayist, is most quickly identified for many as the author of a single exquisite poem, "The Magnolia Cemetery Ode." Written to be sung at the Confederate Memorial exercises in Charleston, South Carolina, when the graves of the Confederate dead buried there were being decorated with flowers, the poem was first delivered on 16 June 1866 and was printed in the Courier two days later. It is Timrod's best poem.

As in this particular poem, the subject matter of Timrod's best poetry is closely identified with the South and with a period in Southern history when the South was most out of favor with the rest of the nation. All of Timrod's critics have been consistent in their evaluation that his best poems were inspired by events related to the Civil War. In his 1873 edition of The Poems of Henry Timrod his lifelong friend...