Sonnet: They Dub Thee Idler

By Henry Timrod 1828–1867 Henry Timrod

They dub thee idler, smiling sneeringly,

And why? because, forsooth, so many moons,

Here dwelling voiceless by the voiceful sea,

Thou hast not set thy thoughts to paltry tunes

In song or sonnet. Them these golden noons

Oppress not with their beauty; they could prate,

Even while a prophet read the solemn runes

On which is hanging some imperial fate.

How know they, these good gossips, what to thee

The ocean and its wanderers may have brought?

How know they, in their busy vacancy,

With what far aim thy spirit may be fraught?

Or that thou dost not bow thee silently

Before some great unutterable thought?

Source: The Collected Poems of Henry Timrod (1865)

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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