Sonnet: I Thank You

By Henry Timrod 1828–1867 Henry Timrod

I thank you, kind and best beloved friend,

With the same thanks one murmurs to a sister,

When, for some gentle favor, he hath kissed her,

Less for the gifts than for the love you send,

Less for the flowers, than what the flowers convey;

If I, indeed, divine their meaning truly,

And not unto myself ascribe, unduly,

Things which you neither meant nor wished to say,

Oh! tell me, is the hope then all misplaced?

And am I flattered by my own affection?

But in your beauteous gift, methought I traced

Something above a short-lived predilection,

And which, for that I know no dearer name,

I designate as love, without love’s flame.

Source: The Collected Poems of Henry Timrod (1965)

Biography

Since Henry Timrod's output before the Civil War was limited to verse sufficient only for a single volume—published in December 1859—his literary reputation at the time was modest. The political activities surrounding the formation of a new nation and the impact of the war itself aroused Timrod's poetic imagination, however, and he quickly became widely known as the literary spokesman and eventually as the so-called poet . . .

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