Nathan Covington Brooks, A.M., LL.D.
Reading edition
The following sketch is principally from the Third Volume of Biographical Sketches of Eminent Americans.
“Nathan Covington Brooks, the youngest son of John and Mary Brooks, was born in West Nottingham, Cecil county, Maryland, on the 12th of August, 1809. His education was commenced at the West Nottingham Academy, then under the charge of Rev. James Magraw, D.D., and subsequently he graduated as Master of Arts, at St. John’s College, Annapolis, Md. His thesis was a poem on the World’s Changes. Diligent and persevering in his studies, his rapid progress and high attainments won the regard of his teachers, while his amiable manners endeared him to his classmates. While his principal delight was in the study of the Classics, he devoted much attention to mathematics and other studies. Like many other writers, some of his earliest efforts were in verse. Indeed it may be said of him, as of Pope, that he ‘lisped in rhyme.’
Though we have no Shakespeares, or Miltons, or Byrons, there is no scarcity of literary amateurs who, in their hours of recreation and dalliance with letters, betake themselves to poetry as an amusement for their leisure hours or a solace amid the rude trials of life. High in the rank of these writers of occasional poetry stands Dr. Brooks. Nature, in all her forms, he has made the subject of close observation and profound reflection, and in looking at Nature, he has used his own eyes and not the spectacles of other writers. He has a keen relish for the beautiful, and a deep sympathy with the truthful and the good. His taste, formed on the finest models, has been ripened and chastened by a patient study of the great monuments of antiquity. His thoughts seem to be the natural development of his mind; and his words the unstudied expression of his thoughts. The music of his verse reminds us sometimes of the soft cadences of Hemans, and not unfrequently of the mournful harp of Byron.”
In his eighteenth year he was a contributor of prose and poetry to the Minerva and Emerald, and Saturday Post, of Baltimore; subsequently contributed to The Wreath, Monument, Athenæum, and Protestant, of the same city. In 1830 he edited The Amethyst, an annual and soon after became a contributor of prose and poetry to Atkinson’s Casket, and The Lady’s Book, of which latter he was the first paid contributor; wrote for Burton’s Magazine, and Graham’s, The New York Mirror, The Ladies’ Companion, and the Home Journal; and the following annuals, The Gift, The Christian Keepsake, and The Religious Souvenir. He contributed also prose and poetry to The Southern Literary Messenger, The Southern Quarterly of New Orleans, The London Literary Gazette, and The London Court Journal.
In 1837 Marshall, of Philadelphia, published a volume of his religious poems, entitled “Scriptural Anthology.” In 1840, Kay Brothers, of Philadelphia, published a volume of his prose and poetry, under the name of “The Literary Amaranth.” Besides these Dr. Brooks has edited a series of Greek and Latin classics, has written four volumes on religious subjects, one on “Holy Week,” just issued from the press, “The History of the Mexican War,” which was translated into German, “Battles of the Revolution,” etc.
In his literary career he has won three prizes that will be cherished as heirlooms in the family, a silver pitcher, for the best prose tale, entitled “The Power of Truth,” and two silver goblets, one a prize for the poem entitled “The Fall of Superstition,” the other a prize for a poem, “The South-sea Islander,” for which fifteen of our leading poets were competitors.
Though in his leisure moments Dr. Brooks has achieved so much in literature, his profession has been that of an educator, in which he has had the mental training of males and females to the number of five or six thousand. In 1824, he was appointed to the village school in Charlestown, Cecil county, in 1826, established a private school in Baltimore city; in 1831 was elected principal of the Franklin Academy, Reistertown, and in 1834 principal of the Brookesville Academy, Montgomery county, both endowed by the State; in 1839, he was unanimously elected over forty-five applicants as principal of the Baltimore City High School which position he held for nine years, until asked by the Trustees of the Baltimore Female College, in 1848, to accept the organization of the institution. The College is chartered and endowed by the State of Maryland, has graduated over three hundred young ladies, and trained and sent forth two hundred teachers. Emory College, Oxford, Georgia, conferred the degree of LL.D., on Professor Brooks in 1859, and in 1863 his name was presented, with others, for the presidency of Girard College. Though Major Smith, a Philadelphian of an influential family, was elected president, Professor Brooks received more votes than any of the other competitors. In 1827, he married Mary Elizabeth, eldest daughter of William Gobright, a lady of great beauty and excellence, and in 1867, married Christiana Octavia, youngest daughter of Dr. William Crump, of Virginia. Of the former union four sons and two daughters are living; of the latter union a son. The following poems are selected as specimens of his style.
The Mother to Her Dead Boy.
The flowers you reared repose in sleep With folded bells where the night-dews weep, And the passing wind, like a spirit, grieves In a gentle dirge through the sighing leaves. The sun will kiss the dew from the rose, Its crimson petals again unclose, And the violet ope the soft blue ray Of its modest eye to the gaze of day; But when will the dews and shades that lie So cold and damp on thy shrouded eye, Be chased from the folded lids, my child, And thy glance break forth so sweetly wild?
The fawn, thy partner in sportive play, Has ceased his gambols at close of day, And his weary limbs are relaxed and free In gentle sleep by his favorite tree. He will wake ere long, and the rosy dawn Will call him forth to the dewy lawn, And his sprightly gambols be seen again, Through the parted boughs and upon the plain; But oh! when will slumber cease to hold The limbs that lie so still and cold? When wilt thou come with thy tiny feet That bounded my glad embrace to meet?
The birds you tended have ceased to sing, And shaded their eyes with the velvet wing, And, nestled among the leaves of the trees, They are rocked to rest by the cool night breeze. The morn will the chains of sleep unbind, And spread their plumes to the freshening wind; And music from many a warbler’s mouth Will honey the grove, like the breath of the south; But when shall the lips, whose lightest word Was sweeter far than the warbling bird, Their rich wild strain of melody pour? They are mute! they are cold! they will ope no more!
When heaven’s great bell in a tone sublime Shall sound the knell of departed Time, And its echoes pierce with a voice profound Through the liquid sea and the solid ground, Thou wilt wake, my child, from the dreamless sleep Whose oblivious dews thy senses steep, And then will the eye, now dim, grow bright In the glorious rays of Heaven’s own light, The limbs, that an angel’s semblance bore, Bloom ’neath living trees on the golden shore, And the voice that’s hushed, God’s praises hymn ’Mid the bands of the harping seraphim.
To a Dove.
Mourning amid the Ruins of an Ancient Church.
The fields have faded, the groves look dead, The summer is gone, its beauty has fled, And there breathes a low and plaintive sound From each stream and solemn wood around. In unison with their tone, my breast With a spirit of kindred gloom is opprest, And the sighs burst forth as I gaze, the while, On the crumbling stone of the reverend pile, And list to the sounds of the moaning wind As it stirs the old ivy-boughs entwined,— Sighs mournful along through chancel and nave, And shakes the loose panel and architrave, While the mouldering branches and withered leaves Are rustling around the moss-grown eaves.
But sadder than these, thou emblem of love, Thy moanings fall, disconsolate dove, In the solemn eve on my pensive ear, As the wailing sounds of a requiem drear, As coming from crumbling altar stone They are borne on the winds in a dirge-like tone, Like the plaintive voice of the broken-hearted O’er hopes betrayed and joys departed.
Why dost thou pour thy sad complaint On the evening winds from a bosom faint? As if thou hadst come from the shoreless main Of a world submerged to the ark again, With a weary heart to lament and brood O’er the wide and voiceless solitude. Dost thou mourn that the gray and mouldering door Swings back to the reverent crowd no more? That the tall and waving grass defiles The well-worn flags of the crowdless aisles? That the wild fox barks, and the owlet screams Where the organ and choir pealed out their themes?
Dost thou mourn, that from sacred desk the word Of life and truth is no longer heard? That the gentle shepherd, who to pasture bore His flock, has gone, to return no more? Dost thou mourn for the hoary-headed sage Who has sunk to the grave ’neath the weight of age? For the vanquished pride of manhood’s bloom? For the light of youth quenched in the tomb? For the bridegroom’s fall? For the bride’s decay? That pastor and people have passed away, And the tears of night their graves bedew By the funeral cypress and solemn yew?
Or dost thou mourn that the house of God Has ceased to be a divine abode? That the Holy Spirit, which erst did brood O’er the Son of Man by Jordan’s flood, In thine own pure form to the eye of sense, From its resting place has departed hence, And twitters the swallow, and wheels the bat O’er the mercy-seat where its presence sat? I have marked thy trembling breast, and heard With a heart responsive thy tones, sweet bird, And have mourned, like thee, of earth’s fairest things The blight and the loss—Oh! had I thy wings, From a world of woe to the realms of the blest I would flee away, and would be at rest.
Fall of Superstition.
A Prize Poem.
The star of Bethlehem rose, and truth and light Burst on the nations that reposed in night, And chased the Stygian shades with rosy smile That spread from Error’s home, the land of Nile. No more with harp and sistrum Music calls To wanton rites within Astarte’s halls, The priests forget to mourn their Apis slain, And bear Osiris’ ark with pompous train; Gone is Serapis, and Anubis fled, And Neitha’s unraised vail shrouds Isis’ prostrate head. Where Jove shook heaven when the red bolt was hurled, Neptune the sea—and Phoebus lit the world; Where fair-haired naiads held each silver flood, A fawn each field—a dryad every wood— The myriad gods have fled, and God alone Above their ruined fanes has reared his throne.[A] No more the augur stands in snowy shroud To watch each flitting wing and rolling cloud, Nor Superstition in dim twilight weaves Her wizard song among Dodona’s leaves; Phoebus is dumb, and votaries crowd no more The Delphian mountain and the Delian shore, And lone and still the Lybian Ammon stands, His utterance stifled by the desert sands. No more in Cnydian bower, or Cyprian grove The golden censers flame with gifts to Love; The pale-eyed Vestal bends no more and prays Where the eternal fire sends up its blaze; Cybele hears no more the cymbal’s sound, The Lares shiver the fireless hearthstone round; And shatter’d shrine and altar lie o’erthrown, Inscriptionless, save where Oblivion lone Has dimly traced his name upon the mouldering stone. Medina’s sceptre is despoiled of might— Once stretched o’er realms that bowed in pale affright; The Moon that rose, as waved the scimetar Where sunk the Cross amid the storm of war, Now pale and dim, is hastening to its wane, The sword is broke that spread the Koran’s reign, And soon will minaret and swelling dome Fall, like the fanes of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. On other lands has dawned immortal day, And Superstition’s clouds have rolled away; O’er Gallia’s mounts and on Iona’s shore The Runic altars roll their smoke no more; Fled is the Druid from his ancient oak, His harp is mute—his magic circle broke; And Desolation mopes in Odin’s cells Where spirit-voices called to join the feast of shells. O’er Indian plains and ocean-girdled isles With brow of beauty Truth serenely smiles; The nations bow, as light is shed abroad, And break their idols for the living God. Where purple streams from human victims run And votive flesh hangs quivering in the sun, Quenched are the pyres, as shines salvation’s star— Grim Juggernaut is trembling on his car And cries less frequent come from Ganges’ waves Where infant forms sink into watery graves. Where heathen prayers flamed by the cocoa tree They supplicate the Christians’ Deity And chant in living aisles the vesper hymn Where giant god-trees rear their temples dim. Still speed thy truth!—still wave thy spirit sword, Till every land acknowledge Thee the Lord, And the broad banner of the Cross, unfurled In triumph, wave above a subject world. And here O God! where feuds thy church divide— The sectary’s rancor, and the bigot’s pride— Melt every heart, till all our breasts enshrine One faith, one hope, one love, one zeal divine, And, with one voice, adoring nations call Upon the Father and the God of all.
The Infant St. John, the Baptist.
O sweeter than the breath of southern wind With all its perfumes is the whisper’d prayer From infant lips, and gentler than the hind, The feet that bear The heaven-directed youth in wisdom’s pathway fair.
And thou, the early consecrate, like flowers Didst shed thy incense breath to heaven abroad; And prayer and praise the measure of thy hours, The desert trod Companionless, alone, save of the mighty God.
As Phosphor leads the kindling glory on, And fades, lost in the day-god’s bright excess, So didst thou in Redemption’s coming dawn, Grow lustreless, The fading herald of the Sun of Righteousness.
But when the book of life shall be unsealed, And stars of glory round the throne divine In all their light and beauty be revealed, The brightest thine Of all the hosts of earth with heavenly light shall shine.
Shelley’s Obsequies.
Ibi tu calentem Debita sparges lacryma favillam Vatis amici.
—Horace.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, an eminent English poet, while sailing in the Mediterranean sea, in 1822, was drowned off the coast of Tuscany in a squall which wrecked the boat in which he had embarked. Two weeks afterwards his body was washed ashore. The Tuscan quarantine regulations at that time required that whatever came ashore from the sea should be burned. Shelley’s body was accordingly placed on a pyre and reduced to ashes, in the presence of Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, who are the “brother bards” referred to in the last stanza of the poem.
Beneath the axle of departing day The weary waters on the horizon’s verge Blush’d like the cheek of children tired in play, As bore the surge The poet’s wasted form with slow and mournful dirge.
On Via Reggio’s surf-beaten strand The late-relenting sea, with hollow moan Gave back the storm-tossed body to the land, As if in tone Of sorrow it bewailed the deed itself had done.
There laid upon his bed of shells—around The moon and stars their lonely vigils kept; While in their pall-like shades the mountains bound And night bewept The bard of nature as in death’s cold arms he slept.
The tuneful morn arose with locks of light— The ear that drank her music’s call was chill; The eye that shone was sealed in endless night, And cold and still The pulses stood that ’neath her gaze were wont to thrill.
With trees e’en like the sleeper’s honors sered And prows of galleys, like his bosom riven, The melancholy pile of death was reared Aloft to heaven, And on its pillared height the corpse to torches given.
From his meridian throne the eye of day Beheld the kindlings of the funeral fire, Where, like a war-worn Roman chieftain, lay Upon his pyre The poet of the broken heart and broken lyre.
On scented wings the sorrowing breezes came And fanned the blaze, until the smoke that rushed In dusky volumes upward, lit with flame All redly blushed Like Melancholy’s sombre cheek by weeping flushed.
And brother bards upon that lonely shore Were standing by, and wept as brightly burned The pyre, till all the form they loved before, To ashes turned, With incense, wine, and tears was sprinkled and inurned.
The Fountain Revisited.
Let the classic pilgrim rove, By Egeria’s fount to stand, Or sit in Vancluse’s grot of love, Afar from his native land; Let him drink of the crystal tides Of the far-famed Hippocrene, Or list to the waves where Peneus glides His storied mounts between: But dearer than aught ’neath a foreign sky Is the fount of my native dell, It has fairer charms for my musing eye For my heart a deeper spell.
Dear fount! what memories rush Through the heart and wildered brain, As beneath the old beech I list to the gush Of thy sparkling waves again; For here in a fairy dream With friends, my childhood’s hours Glided on like the flow of thy beautiful stream, And like it were wreathed with flowers: Here we saw on thy waves, from the shade, The dance of the sunbeams at noon; Or heard, half-afraid, the deep murmurings made In thy cavernous depths, ’neath the moon.
I have heard thy waves away From thy scenes, dear fount, apart; And have felt the play, in life’s fevered day, Of thy waters through my heart; But oh! thou art not the same: Youth’s friends are gone—I am lone— Thy beeches are carved with many a name Now graved on the funeral stone. As I stand and muse, my tears Are troubling the stream whose waves The lullaby sang to their infantile years, And now murmur around their graves.
Death of Samson.
Within Philistia’s princely hall Is held a glorious festival, And on the fluctuant ether floats The music of the timbrel’s notes, While living waves of voices gush, Echoing among the distant hills, Like an impetuous torrent’s rush When swollen by a thousand rills.
The stripling and the man of years, Warriors with twice ten thousand spears, Peasants and slaves and husbandmen,— The shepherd from his mountain glen, Vassal, and chief arrayed in gold And purple robes—Philistines all Are drawn together to behold Their mighty foeman held in thrall.
Loud pealed the accents of the horn Upon the air of the clear morn, And deafening rose the mingled shout, Cleaving the air from that wild rout, As, guarded by a cavalcade The illustrious prisoner appeared And, ’mid the grove the dense spears made, His forehead like a tall oak reared.
He stood with brawny shoulders bare, And tossed his nervous arms in air— Chains, leathern thongs, and brazen bands Parted like wool within his hands; And giant trunks of gnarled oak, Splintered and into ribbons rent, Or by his iron sinews broke, Increased the people’s wonderment.
The amphitheatre, where stood Spell-bound the mighty multitude, Rested its long and gilded walls Upon two pillars’ capitals: His brawny arms, with labor spent, He threw around the pillars there, And to the deep blue firmament Lifted his sightless orbs in prayer.
Anon the columns move—they shake, Totter, and vacillate, and shake, And wrenched by giant force, come down Like a disrupted mountain’s crown, With cornice, frieze, and chapiter, Girder, and spangled dome, and wall, Ceiling of gold, and roof of fir, Crumbled in mighty ruin all.
Down came the structure—on the air Uprose in wildest shrieks despair, Rolling in echoes loud and long Ascending from the myriad throng: And Samson, with the heaps of dead Priest, vassal, chief, in ruin blent, Piled over his victorious head His sepulchre and monument.
An Infant’s Prayer.
The day is spent, on the calm evening hours, Like whispered prayer, come nature’s sounds abroad, And with bowed heads the pure and gentle flowers Shake from their censers perfume to their God; Thus would I bow the head and bend the knee, And pour my soul’s pure incense, Lord, to Thee.
Creator of my body, I adore, Redeemer of my soul, I worship Thee, Preserver of my being, I implore Thy light and power to guide and shelter me; Be Thou my sun, as life’s dark vale I tread, Be thou my shield to guard my infant head.
And when these eyes in dewy sleep shall close, Uplifted now in love to Thy great throne, In the defenceless hours of my repose, Father and God, oh! leave me not alone, But send thy angel minister’s to keep With hovering wings their vigils while I sleep.