The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 9: Poetry and Eloquence.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

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‘Where defeated valor lies’: mangolia cemetery at Charleston—here Timrod read his ‘ode’ This photograph reserves the resting-place of the Confederate soldiers over whom in 1867 Timrod read his last and finest production—the ‘Ode’ presented opposite. This spreading tree is a fitting place for the utterance of one of the supreme poems in American literature. Timrod had spent his life in singing of his State and the South. He was fired by no ordinary devotion. But in no other effort did he light upon so lofty a subject, and express his emotions with so much of artistic restraint. The view above shows bow appropriate to the scene were his lines. The gloom of these towering trees, the glint of marble slabs and columns, evokes at once the tender mood to which the genius of the Southern poet has given classic expression.