Ode: Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867

The presentation at Magnolia Cemetery coincided with the four-year anniversary of the Battle of Secessionville. The cemetery included some 600 dead Confederate soldiers and its dedication was an important enough occasion that shops closed before noon and several thousand attended in spite of heavy rain. After its presentation on June 16, 1866, it was published two days later on June 18 in the Charleston Courier. Its editors called it "beautiful and soul-stirring". A slightly altered version was published in the Daily South Carolinian on June 19 and a more substantially revised version was published in the Courier on July 23. Timrod's painstaking rewriting of this poem shows in the differences between the early version, which is standard in anthologies, and revisions published in The Daily South Carolinian and the Charleston Mercury in June and July 1866. ==Analysis==

This poem, composed within two years of Timrod's death, shows enormous restraint in a venue that could hardly have been more highly charged with emotion. Many critics have considered it one of his finest works, going so far as to call it his swan song. ==References==