Introduction
Born: June 20, 1813, Salem, Massachusetts.
Died: June 14, 1883, Newport, Rhode Island.
Buried: Island Cemetery, Newport, Rhode Island.
Born: June 20, 1813, Salem, Massachusetts.
Died: June 14, 1883, Newport, Rhode Island.
Buried: Island Cemetery, Newport, Rhode Island.
Charles was the son of Timothy Brooks and Mary King Mason, and husband of Harriet Lyman Hazard.
He graduated from Harvard in 1832, and Cambridge Divinity School in 1835.
That year he began his ministry in Nahant, Massachusetts, subsequently preaching in Bangor and Augusta, Maine; Windsor, Vermont; and Newport, Rhode Island (1837–71).
In 1853, he visited India in the hope of improving his health. He retired in 1871 due to failing eyesight.
Truly the light is sweet,
the Preacher says.
Truly the light is sweet,
my heart replies.
Sweet is the very memory of the days
When morn and evening light once blessed my eyes.
Pleasant it is, and goodly, to behold
The flower of day unfold from bud to bloom;
Or noontide bathe the world in molten gold;
Or eve’s lost fire, ere yet it sinks in gloom.
And oh! how sweet to see the stars arise,
As, one by one, each faint and twinkling spark,
From its far home in the unfathomed skies,
Swells the vast host that lightens all the dark.
Truly the light is sweet,
for God is light:
Each ray a beam from His eternal eye;
And in the sweet, mysterious power of sight,
My soul a kindred feels with worlds on high.
But sweetest is Thy light, O Truth Divine!
Thy light, O Sun of Righteousness and Grace!
That shows God’s writing on this heart of mine,
And lifts on woe’s dark seas the Father’s face.
Charles Timothy Brooks
Poems, Original and Translated, 1885