from The Conquest of Canaan (1785)
Excerpt from Book IX.
by Timothy Dwight
Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) was 13 years old in 1765 when he came from his home in Northampton, Massachusetts to New Haven, Connecticut to attend Yale. His father, Major Timothy Dwight (1726-1777), who had graduated from Yale in 1744, was a merchant and farmer who served in the Massachusetts legislature. His mother, Mary Edwards, was the daughter of the formidable preacher Jonathan Edwards, a central figure in the First Great Awakening. Timothy Dwight was first cousins with the politician Aaron Burr.
While living in Fairfield, Dwight wrote Greenfield Hill (1794), an epic pastoral poem written in seven distinct parts that celebrates the New England way of life. In 1795, Dwight moved to New Haven to serve as Yale College’s eighth president. Under his leadership, which continued until his death in 1817, Yale was transformed into a major center for intellectual and religious thought. He promoted Locke’s Essay Concerning the Human Understanding as a keystone for all students and began to move away from ancient languages to the modern arts and sciences. As President of Yale, Dwight turned more and more to prose and wrote mostly sermons.
It is believed that Timothy Dwight began work on The Conquest of Canaan, widely considered America’s first epic poem, during the American Revolution, though its publication did not happen until after the war. Written in heroic couplets and divided into eleven books, the poem relays the Biblical story of Joshua and the Israelites’ conquest of Canaan. Although seemingly Biblical in nature, the poem is an allegory of the United States’ quest for liberty during the Revolutionary War: Joshua represents General George Washington, the Israelites the Colonists, and Canaan America. In fact, Timothy Dwight dedicated the work to George Washington, “the Saviour of his Country, the Supporter of Freedom, and the Benefactor of Mankind.”
The Conquest of Canaan, Book IX (excerpt)
The storm retir’d ; the ensigns gave command,
And round their Leader throng’d the conquering band.
Here sparkling eyes with joy and triumph burn’d;
Here pity silent from the slaughter turn’d;
Here for fallen friends the tear was seen to flow,
And sighs oft spoke unutterable woe
While Joshua’s thoughts mount upward to the skies,
And fear, and wonder, in his bosom rise
The stream, the walls they pass’d serenely flow,
Climb’d the tall hills, and sought the plain below
There crown’d with flowers, their wives and children came
And songs rose grateful to th’ Eternal Name—
Blessed be the Power divine— rejoic’d they sung,—
The green vales echoed, and the forest rung—
Bless’d be the hand, that clave the conscious sea,
And, rob’d in thunder, swept our foes away !
Let endless blessings round our nation rise,
Cheer all our lives, and waft us to the skies!
Thus strains of rapture charm’d the listening gales,
While the low sun-beam glimmer’d on the vales
To rest the camp retir’d : ten-thousand fires
Thro’ the calm silence rais’d their bending spires:
The bright moon rose ; winds cool’d the chearful even,
And wide magnificence enkindled heaven.
Public domain. Source: https://archive.org/details/cocana00dwig/page/304/mode/2up