PURITAN POETRY PACKET
Anne Bradstreet
Anne Bradstreet was born Anne Dudley in 1612 in Northamptonshire, England.
She married Simon Bradstreet, a graduate of Cambridge University, at the age of
16. Two years later, Bradstreet, along with her husband and parents, emigrated
to America with the Winthrop Puritan group, and the family settled in Ipswich,
Massachusetts. There Bradstreet and her husband raised eight children, and she
became one of the first poets to write English verse in the American colonies. It
was during this time that Bradstreet penned many of the poems that would be
taken to England by her brother-in-law, purportedly without her knowledge,
and published in 1650 under the title The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in
America.
Tenth Muse was the only collection of Bradstreet's poetry to appear during her
lifetime. In 1644, the family moved to Andover, Massachusetts, where
Bradstreet lived until her death in 1672. In 1678, the first American edition of
Tenth Muse was published posthumously and expanded as Several Poems
Compiled with Great Wit and Learning. Bradstreet's most highly regarded work,
a sequence of religious poems entitled Contemplations, was not published until
the middle of the nineteenth century.
Bradstreet's poetics belong to the Elizabethan literary tradition that includes
Spenser and Sidney; she was also strongly influenced by the sixteenth century
French poet Guillaume du Bartas. Her early work, which is imitative and
conventional in both form and content, is largely unremarkable, and her work
was long considered primarily of historical interest. She has, however, won
critical acceptance in the twentieth century for her later poetry, which is less
derivative and often deeply personal. In 1956 the poet John Berryman paid
tribute to her in Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, a long poem that incorporates
many phrases from her writings.
To My Dear and Loving Husband
BY ANNE BRADSTREET
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.
Verses upon the Burning of our House, July 10th, 1666
BY ANNE BRADSTREET
Here Follows Some Verses Upon the Burning
of Our house, July 10th. 1666. Copied Out of
a Loose Paper.
In silent night when rest I took,
For sorrow near I did not look,
I wakened was with thund’ring noise
And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice.
That fearful sound of “fire” and “fire,”
Let no man know is my Desire.
I, starting up, the light did spy,
And to my God my heart did cry
To straighten me in my Distress
And not to leave me succourless.
Then, coming out, behold a space
The flame consume my dwelling place.
And when I could no longer look,
I blest His name that gave and took,
That laid my goods now in the dust.
Yea, so it was, and so ‘twas just.
It was his own, it was not mine,
Far be it that I should repine;
He might of all justly bereft
But yet sufficient for us left.
When by the ruins oft I past
My sorrowing eyes aside did cast
And here and there the places spy
Where oft I sate and long did lie.
Here stood that trunk, and there that chest,
There lay that store I counted best.
My pleasant things in ashes lie
And them behold no more shall I.
Under thy roof no guest shall sit,
Nor at thy Table eat a bit.
No pleasant talk shall ‘ere be told
Nor things recounted done of old.
No Candle e'er shall shine in Thee,
Nor bridegroom‘s voice e'er heard shall be.
In silence ever shalt thou lie,
Adieu, Adieu, all’s vanity.
Then straight I ‘gin my heart to chide,
And did thy wealth on earth abide?
Didst fix thy hope on mould'ring dust?
The arm of flesh didst make thy trust?
Raise up thy thoughts above the sky
That dunghill mists away may fly.
Thou hast a house on high erect
Frameed by that mighty Architect,
With glory richly furnished,
Stands permanent though this be fled.
It‘s purchased and paid for too
By Him who hath enough to do.
A price so vast as is unknown,
Yet by His gift is made thine own;
There‘s wealth enough, I need no more,
Farewell, my pelf, farewell, my store.
The world no longer let me love,
My hope and treasure lies above.
EDWARD TAYLOR
Edward Taylor was born in Leicestershire, England in 1642. He originally
worked as a school teacher, but later left England for the United States. He
studied divinity at Harvard and then became a minister in Massachusetts He
chronicled his Atlantic crossing and early years in America (from April 26, 1668,
to July 5, 1671) in his now-published Diary. He was admitted to Harvard College
as a second year student soon after arriving in America and upon graduation in
1671 became pastor and physician at Westfield, on the remote western frontier
of Massachusetts, where he remained until his death. Taylor, a New England Puritan, worked as a minister for sixty years. During that
time wrote a great deal of poetry and has become known as one of the best
writers of the Puritan times. His poetry has a pious quality and emphasis is
given to self examination, particularly in an individual's relations to God. His
works were not published until 1939 - over two years after his death.
Taylor's poems, in leather bindings of his own manufacture, survived him, but
he had left instructions that his heirs should "never publish any of his writings,"
and the poems remained all but forgotten for more than 200 years. In 1937
Thomas H. Johnson discovered a 7000-page quarto manuscript of Taylor's
poetry in the library of Yale University and published a selection from it in The
New England Quarterly. The appearance of these poems, wrote Taylor's
biographer Norman S. Grabo, "established [Taylor] almost at once and without
quibble as not only America's finest colonial poet, but as one of the most
striking writers in the whole range of American literature.". His complete
poems, however, were not published until 1960. He is the only major American
poet to have written in the metaphysical style. He was twice married, first to Elizabeth Fitch, by whom he had eight children,
five of whom died in childhood, and at her death to Ruth Wyllys, who bore six
more children. Taylor himself died on June 29, 1729.
Huswifery
BY EDWARD TAYLOR
Make me, O Lord, thy Spining Wheele compleate.
Thy Holy Worde my Distaff make for mee.
Make mine Affections thy Swift Flyers neate
And make my Soule thy holy Spoole to bee.
My Conversation make to be thy Reele
And reele the yarn thereon spun of thy Wheele.
Make me thy Loome then, knit therein this Twine:
And make thy Holy Spirit, Lord, winde quills:
Then weave the Web thyselfe. The yarn is fine.
Thine Ordinances make my Fulling Mills.
Then dy the same in Heavenly Colours Choice,
All pinkt with Varnisht Flowers of Paradise.
Then cloath therewith mine Understanding, Will,
Affections, Judgment, Conscience, Memory
My Words, and Actions, that their shine may fill
My wayes with glory and thee glorify.
Then mine apparell shall display before yee
That I am Cloathd in Holy robes for glory.
• Conceit --extended metaphor comparing two radically different things in an
unusual way
• Conceits used for 2 things – (1) Surprise, attention getter (2) Emphasis on
the underlying unity of all things in God’s creation
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Distaff – stick on which raw wool is placed before spinning
Flyers – contraptions that twist and carry raw wool
Web – meshing of the threads into cloth
Fulling Mills - mills for cleansing and dying cloth
Pinked – decorated/cut/dyed
Upon a Spider Catching a Fly
BY EDWARD TAYLOR
Thou sorrow, venom Elfe:
Is this thy play,
To spin a web out of thyselfe
To Catch a Fly?
For Why?
I saw a pettish wasp
Fall foule therein:
Whom yet thy Whorle pins did not clasp
Lest he should fling
His sting.
But as affraid, remote
Didst stand hereat,
And with thy little fingers stroke
And gently tap
His back.
Thus gently him didst treate
Lest he should pet,
And in a froppish, aspish heate
Should greatly fret
Thy net.
Whereas the silly Fly,
Caught by its leg
Thou by the throate tookst hastily
And 'hinde the head
Bite Dead.
This goes to pot, that not
Nature doth call.
Strive not above what strength hath got,
Lest in the brawle
Thou fall.
This Frey seems thus to us.
Hells Spider gets
His intrails spun to whip Cords thus
And wove to nets
And sets.
To tangle Adams race
In's stratigems
To their Destructions, spoil'd, made base
By venom things,
Damn'd Sins.
But mighty, Gracious Lord
Communicate
Thy Grace to breake the Cord, afford
Us Glorys Gate
And State.
We'l Nightingaile sing like
When pearcht on high
In Glories Cage, thy glory, bright,
And thankfully,
For joy.