His scouts were out in all directions, and at all hours.  They did the double duty of patrol and spies.  They hovered about the posts of the enemy, crouching in the thicket, or darting along the plain, picking up prisoners, and information, and spoils together.  They cut off stragglers, encountered patrols of the foe, and arrested his supplies on the way to the garrison.  Sometimes the single scout, buried in the thick tops of the tree, looked down upon the march of his legions, or hung, perched over the hostile encampment, till it slept; then slipping down, stole through the silent host, carrying off a drowsy sentinel, or a favorite charger, upon which the daring spy flourished conspicuous among his less fortunate companions.

Notes.—­The outlaw of Sherwood Forest was Robin Hood.

Roderick Dhu is a character in Sir Walter Scott’s poem, “The Lady of the
Lake,” from which the quotation is taken.

CXXXVI.  A COMMON THOUGHT. (456)

Henry Timrod, 1829-1867, was born at Charleston, South Carolina.  He inherited his father’s literary taste and ability, and had the advantages of a liberal education.  He entered the University of Georgia before he was seventeen years of age, and while there commenced his career as a poet.  Poverty and ill health compelled him to leave the university without taking a degree; he then commenced the study of law, and for ten years taught in various private families.  At the outbreak of the war, in 1860, he warmly espoused the Southern cause, and wrote many stirring war lyrics.  In 1863 he joined the Army of the West, as correspondent of the Charleston “Mercury,” and in 1864 he became editor of the “South Carolinian,” published first at Columbia and later at Charleston.  He also served for a time as assistant secretary to Governor Orr.  The advance of Sherman’s army reduced him to poverty, and he was compelled to the greatest drudgery in order to earn a bare living.  His health soon broke down, and he died of hemorrhage of the lungs.  The following little poem seems, almost, to have been written under a presentiment, so accurately does it describe the closing incidents of the poet’s life.

The first volume of Timrod’s poems appeared in 1860.  A later edition, with a memoir of the author, was published in New York in 1873. ###

Somewhere on this earthly planet
  In the dust of flowers that be,
In the dewdrop, in the sunshine,
  Sleeps a solemn day for me.

At this wakeful hour of midnight
  I behold it dawn in mist,
And I hear a sound of sobbing
  Through the darkness,—­Hist! oh, hist!

In a dim and musky chamber,
  I am breathing life away;
Some one draws a curtain softly,
  And I watch the broadening day.

As it purples in the zenith,
  As it brightens on the lawn,
There’s a hush of death about me,
  And a whisper, “He is gone!”