JAMES BRADLEY JACKSON
(Written beside his grave in Lake City, Fla., where he was buried after a tragic death, February 8, 1868, by railroad accident.
Dr. Lovick Pierce, when in his prime, once facetiously remarked to several opposing preachers: “My brethren, you had better let brother Jackson alone. He has the most metaphysical mind of any man in Georgia, myself only excepted.”
Rev. W. J. Scott, D. D., in “Biographic Etchings” says of contemporary ministers: “Not one of them was his equal as a theologian or logician.”
The late Dr. W. J. Cotter, of Newnan, Ga., wrote: “Your father was a great and good man.”)
Father, O my father!
Attend unto the cry
Of this, thy son,
And, though long silent and invisible,
Speak thou to me.
I stand with uncovered head,
’Neath giant water oaks,
Thy sleepless body-guard,
Supporting emblems of eternal mourning,
The clinging mosses at half mast,
Nature’s weepers;
Now still, now softly chanting, now waving,
While sympathetic zephyrs flow,
And give them kiss of comfort as they pass—
Calling all, like my hungry heart,
For thee!
Victimized thy body,
Thy very bones were mangled,
Long since done to dust,
Exalted dust, once indwelt by Deity,
Assuring foretaste of higher life.
In towering oak a mocking-bird doth sing,
Not doleful dirge,
Nor requiem for the hopeless dead,
But sonatas pure sings he of life and love,
This receiving and out-giving Psyche of every wandering note,
The Sidney Lanier ’mongst birds of the sunny South,
His own “trim Shakespeare on a tree”—
The oak, the moss, the bird and I,
Above all Jehovah, the life of all,
Proclaim thee ever-living,
And glorified.
I cry unto thee, ascended sire;
Hearest thou me?
Conscious of thy child’s communion?
Meetest thou me as son or spirit?
Yea; closer now than as tender offspring of thy loins,
I sat upon thy knee, inquirer and receiver,
In the long ago.
Yet fettered I by frailties of the flesh,
With poor and halting language of mortal men,
Miserable makeshift, the spirit’s aphasia,
This spoken or written word—
I will fight through fetters all and fly!
Mine is the inarticulate cry of love,
Plea of a son’s aspiring heart.
Made more and more apt and musical
By what thou wast and art,
During all thy crowning years.
Again I see thy imaged face, O master man;
Thy penetrating eye, that reads from soul to soul—
Stern, inflexible;
Yet merciful thou, and gentle with men.
I wonder what thou hast become;
What thoughts, what plans, achievements now?
But three short months in a fourth-rate school,
At twenty spelling and struggling on
Through the Book Divine,
Making marvelous mistakes and ludicrous—[14]
What man or angel climbed from less to more?
What god?
Once teacher, tender, patient, firm;
A preacher powerful of the Gospel everlasting;
College president; thinker, deep and rare,
Holding and molding many from thy conquered heights!
Whose soul ever sang oratorios
Sweeter, richer in the hierarchy of
Being and becoming?
Who ever possessed more wondrous will,
Power uppermost in God and man?
Thou didst express God-begotten longing
To return and be guide to some lone, weary one—
It is I—prayer proven.
Oft and again thy fond fatherhood,
One with the eternal Father,
Who sends forth His spirits as ministers,
Has converted my weakness into strength,
My loneliness to fellowship free,
My doubt and darkness to lovely light,
My cup of bitterness to blessing—
What father still, and guardian angel thou!
Thy spirit ineluctable
Lives, and reigns, and rises ever;
Delving deeper, more divinely
Into glories of love and service;
High above the maddening marts of men,
Of dire machines, for murder built,
That sow and reap the woes of war.
O immortal man, high grown saint and prophet,
Beloved father, I come—ere long, I come!
Even now and here, earth-bound as I am, I rise
To meet and greet thee,
In God’s pure heights,
And thine!
This old mansion in Stokes County, N. C., was seven years in being built by its owner, Col. John Martin, who was the great-grandfather of Judge W. P. Bynum of Greensboro, N. C.
Photo by the Author.