JONATHAN HENDERSON BROOKS
Reading edition
I was born on a farm twelve miles southwest of Lexington, Mississippi, in 1904. When I was eleven years old our family was disunited by divorce. My three sisters and only brother went with father while I chose to become my mother’s “little ploughman.” We worked around on “half shares” in the community of my birth until I was fourteen, and then my mother, who had managed somehow to save enough money to keep me in school for four months, sent me to Jackson College. It was here that I received my first material recognition for writing when I was awarded the first prize in a local contest for my first story, entitled “The Bible In The Cotton Field.” Mother’s plan was to send me back to Jackson College again the following year, but the white landlord took her entire crop of four bales to cover the land rent of my uncle with whom we had gone to live in Humphreys County that year.
My formal education has been interrupted more than once by periods of farming and teaching. I moved up my years and taught two five-months sessions in Humphreys County before I finished my high school work. In the fall of 1923 I matriculated at Lincoln University, Missouri, and graduated from its high school department in June 1925 with salutatory honors. Lincoln was very kind to me during those two years—the happiest I have known in all my life. It gave me work enough to cover my expenses while attending there, twice chose me the president of my class, and bestowed upon me each of the three first prizes it offers in the high school department, besides electing me class poet and giving me a host of staunch friends.
I am now pursuing my college work at Tougaloo College and am part time pastor of the second Baptist Church of Kosciusko, Mississippi.
THE RESURRECTION
His friends went off and left Him dead In Joseph’s subterranean bed, Embalmed with myrrh and sweet aloes, And wrapped in snow-white burial clothes. Then shrewd men came and set a seal Upon His grave, lest thieves should steal His lifeless form away, and claim For Him an undeserving fame. “There is no use,” the soldiers said, “Of standing sentries by the dead.” Wherefore, they drew their cloaks around Themselves, and fell upon the ground, And slept like dead men, all night through, In the pale moonlight and chilling dew. A muffled whiff of sudden breath Ruffled the passive air of death. He woke, and raised Himself in bed; Recalled how He was crucified; Touched both hands’ fingers to His head, And lightly felt His fresh-healed side. Then with a deep, triumphant sigh, He coolly put His grave-clothes by— Folded the sweet, white winding sheet, The toweling, the linen bands, The napkin, all with careful hands— And left the borrowed chamber neat. His steps were like the breaking day: So soft across the watch He stole, He did not wake a single soul, Nor spill one dewdrop by the way. Now Calvary was loveliness: Lilies that flowered thereupon Pulled off the white moon’s pallid dress, And put the morning’s vesture on. “Why seek the living among the dead? He is not here,” the angel said. The early winds took up the words, And bore them to the lilting birds, The leafing trees, and everything That breathed the living breath of spring.
THE LAST QUARTER MOON OF THE DYING YEAR
The last quarter moon of the dying year, Pendant behind a naked cottonwood tree On a frosty, dawning morning With the back of her silver head Turned to the waking sun. Quiet like the waters Of Galilee After the Lord had bid them “Peace, be still.” O silent beauty, indescribable! Dead, do they say? Would God that I shall seem So beautiful in death.
PAEAN
Across the dewy lawn she treads Before the sun awakes While lush, green grasses bow their heads To kiss the tracks she makes. The violets, in clusters, stand And stare her beauty through, And seem so happy in her hand, They know not what to do. She must have come whence zephyrs blow, From sprites’ or angels’ lands; Her heart is meet for God to know— Oh, heaven is where she stands!