Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/314

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 Small tributes! but your shades will smile More proudly on these wreaths to-day, Than when some cannon-molded pile Shall overlook this bay.

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies! There is no holier spot of ground Than where defeated valor lies, By mourning beauty crowned!

 

[Francis Orray Ticknor was born in Fortville, Georgia, in 1822. After studying medicine in New York and Philadelphia, he settled first at Shell Creek, Lumpkin County, Georgia, and later on a farm called "Torch Hill" near Columbus, Georgia, and there for the rest of his life led the life of a country physician. His special passions were the cultivating of fruits and flowers, music, and the writing of poetry. His poems secured for him some local reputation, but as he wrote verse only for the pleasure of his friends, he made no collection of them for publication. Five years after his death in 1874, an incomplete edition was published, which has been supplanted by a later edition prepared by the poet's granddaughter, Michelle Cunliffe Ticknor.]

