CXXI. THE NEW ENGLAND PASTOR. (419)
Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817, was born at Northampton, Massachusetts. His mother was a daughter of the celebrated Jonathan Edwards. It is said that she taught her son the alphabet in one lesson, that he could read the Bible at four years of age, and that he studied Latin by himself at six. He graduated at Yale in 1769, returned as tutor in 1771, and continued six years. He was chaplain in a brigade under General Putnam for a time. In 1778 his father died, and for five years he supported his mother and a family of twelve children by farming, teaching and preaching. From 1783 to 1795 he was pastor at Greenfield, Connecticut. He was then chosen President of Yale College, and remained in office till he died. Dr. Dwight was a man of fine bodily presence, of extended learning, and untiring industry. His presidency of the college was highly successful. His patriotism was no less ardent and true than his piety. In his younger days he wrote considerably in verse. His poetry is not all of a very high order, but some pieces possess merit. ###
The place, with east and western sides,
A wide and verdant street divides:
And here the houses faced the day,
And there the lawns in beauty lay.
There, turret-crowned, and central, stood
A neat and solemn house of God.
Across the way, beneath the shade
Two elms with sober silence spread,
The preacher lived. O'er all the place
His mansion cast a Sunday grace;
Dumb stillness sate the fields around;
His garden seemed a hallowed ground;
Swains ceased to laugh aloud, when near,
And schoolboys never sported there.
In the same mild and temperate zone,
Twice twenty years, his course had run,
His locks of flowing silver spread
A crown of glory o'er his head;
His face, the image of his mind,
With grave and furrowed wisdom shined;
Not cold; but glowing still, and bright;
Yet glowing with October light:
As evening blends, with beauteous ray,
Approaching night with shining day.
His Cure his thoughts engrossed alone:
For them his painful course was run:
To bless, to save, his only care;
To chill the guilty soul with fear;
To point the pathway to the skies,
And teach, and urge, and aid, to rise;
Where strait, and difficult to keep,
It climbs, and climbs, o'er Virtue's steep.