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acter, and his daughter had the advantages of good tutoring, with access to the Earl's considerable library at Sempringham Castle. She was widely read but not learned, drawn chiefly toward the serious and religious writings of the Puritan world, and very little toward those of that other world, just waning, in which there still lived at her birth Shakespeare and Cervantes, Ben Jonson and Bacon.

In 1628, at the age of sixteen, she married Simon Bradstreet, a grave and brilliant young Puritan who had been trained at Cambridge and afterward by her father. Two years later, Bradstreet gave up his position as steward of the Countess of Warwick, and with his young wife embarked upon the Arabella for America. Dudley and his family also sailed on that ship, which brought the first settlers to the colony at Massachusetts Bay. One of the most active men in the colony, Dudley served four terms as governor. Simon Bradstreet was governor of the colony for ten years; he served also as judge, and represented Massachusetts at the court of Charles II when curtailment of the charter was threatened in 1661.

Meanwhile, in Cambridge, in Ipswich, and at their permanent home near Andover on the Merrimack, Anne Bradstreet's employments were no less taxing. În a whimsical poem she recorded, as domestic history: “I had eight birds hatcht in one nest,/ Four Cocks there were, and Hens the rest." All eight children thrived, and all but one survived her. Among many prominent descendants were the Channings; the R. H. Danas, fa

ther and son; Holmes the poet and Holmes the jurist; and, collaterally, Edwin Arlington Rob

inson.

In spite of the hardships of early colonial life and the duties of her household, Anne Bradstreet seems to have turned resolutely to authorship whenever she had the opportunity. Manuscripts of the poems in her first volume bear dates from 1632 to 1643. Whether she intended publication or not, she wrote a dedicatory poem to her father in 1642. In 1647 her sister's husband, John Woodbridge, pastor of the church of Andover, sailed to England and took her manuscript volume with him. Without her consent he had it published in London, in 1650, with the title, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, By a Gentlewoman of Those Parts.

* *

It is not this bulky first work, but her less pretentious poems, published later, that have won her a place in literary history. The volume of 1650, consisting chiefly of rhymed discourses and chronicles, was agreeable to the taste of the period, but offers very little for the reader of today. In what the author called "Quaternions," or "Quaternions," or groups of four, she discussed "The Four Elements," "The Four Humours," "The Four Ages of Man," "The Four Seasons," and "The Four Monarchies." Nathaniel Ward, "the simple cobbler," in a commendatory poem called her "a right DuBartas Girle," and she herself admitted that she had attempted to emulate La Semaine by the French poet du Bartas, translated by Joshua Sylvester. There are also

traces of Raleigh's History of the World and Bishop Ussher's Annales.

Mrs. Bradstreet's poems in praise of various authors suggest other influences more helpful to her development as a poet. There are traces of Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney, of Donne, Quarles, and Herbert, in her more lyrical poems, and these are given vitality by her observation of the familiar objects of her daily life. Her poems of religious experience and domestic intimacy are genuine, delicate, and charming. Most of them were written after The Tenth Muse appeared, one at least as late as 1669. About 1666 she revised all her poems for an authorized edition, which was not was not published until after her death, and completed the poem "Contemplations," a work of arresting integrity, for which she is best known. Among her surviving prose writings, her "Meditations" deserve to be particularly remembered for their lucid simplicity of style and their wise and generous spirit. The author of the ninth and the eighteenth stanzas of "Contemplations" was a genuine lyrist; there is

good craftsmanship in her handling of the extended last line of the "Contemplations" stanza, and of the difficult stanza form of "The Prologue"; but when all has been said, the principal contribution of Anne Bradstreet to posterity is what she revealed, through herself, of the first generation of New Englanders.

The first edition of Anne Bradstreet's writings was The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America ***, London, 1650, unsigned. The second edition, revised and enlarged by the author, for the first time including the "Contemplations," was posthumously published as Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Boston, 1678. This was reprinted in 1758. The best edition, with biographical and critical comment, is The Works of Anne Bradstreet in Prose and Verse, edited by J. H. Ellis, 1867; reprinted 1932. In this edition the prose "Meditations" first appeared. A collection, The Tenth Muse (1650), Meditations * * and Other Works, ed. by Josephine K. Piercy, appeared in 1966. The texts below are from Ellis' edition, which reproduces those of the 1678 edition. The capital

ization, spelling, and punctuation have been normalized.

Biographies are Helen S. Campbell, Anne Bradstreet and Her Time, 1891;

and L. Caldwell, An Account of Anne

Bradstreets, 1898. Excellent sketches are by Moses C. Tyler, in A History of American Literature During the Colonial Period, 1878, revised 1897, 1949; and

by Lyon N. Richardson, in the Dictionary of American Biography, 1929. Josephine K. Piercy, Anne Bradstreet,

1965, is a critical study.

The Prologue1

1

To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings,
Of cities founded, commonwealths begun,
For my mcan pen are too superior things;
Or how they all, or each, their dates have run;
Let poets and historians set these forth;
My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth.

1. Anne Bradstreet apparently intended
this poem as a prologue for her lengthy
"Quaternions" on the history of man-
kind and the "four monarchies." In the

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1650 edition it stood at the beginning of that work, preceded only by her poem dedicating her poems to her father.

2

But when my wond'ring eyes and envious heart
Great Bartas' sugared lines do but read o'er,
Fool, I do grudge the muses did not part
"Twixt him and me that overfluent store.

A Bartas can do what a Bartas will;

But simple I according to my skill.

3

From schoolboy's tongue no rhet'ric we expect,
Nor yet a sweet consort from broken strings,
Nor perfect beauty where's a main defect.

My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings;
And this to mend, alas, no art is able,
'Cause nature made it so irreparable.

4

Nor can I, like that fluent, sweet-tongued Greek
Who lisped at first, in future times speak plain.
By art he gladly found what he did seek;
A full requital of his striving pain.

Art can do much, but this maxim's most sure:
A weak or wounded brain admits no cure.

5

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits;

A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong,
For such despite they cast on female wits.
If what I do prove well, it won't advance;
They'll say it's stol'n, or else it was by chance.

6

But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild;
Else of our sex why feigned they those nine,3
And Poesy made Calliope's own child?
So 'mongst the rest they placed the arts divine,
But this weak knot they will full soon untie:
The Greeks did nought but play the fools and lie.

7

Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are;
Men have precedency and still excel.

It is but vain unjustly to wage war;

Men can do best, and women know it well.
Pre-eminence in all and each is yours;

Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.

2. Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas (1544-1590), French writer of religious epics, by whom she was inspired.

3. All nine of the Greek Muses were female deities, each patronizing a different

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art. That of Calliope, mentioned in the following line, was the epic, which Mrs. Bradstreet was attempting in her "Quaternions."

1643?

8

And O ye high-flown quills that soar the skies,
And ever with your prey still catch your praise,
If e'er you deign these lowly lines your eyes,
Give thyme or parsley wreath; I ask no bays.
This mean and unrefinèd ore of mine

Will make your glistering gold but more to shine.

The Flesh and the Spirit

In secret place where once I stood
Close by the banks of lacrim" flood,
I heard two sisters reason on

Things that are past and things to come.
One Flesh was called, who had her eye
On worldly wealth and vanity;

The other Spirit, who did rear

Her thoughts unto a higher sphere.

"Sister," quoth Flesh, "what liv'st thou on-
Nothing but meditation?

Doth Contemplation feed thee, so

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That all in th' world thou count'st but poor?
Art fancy sick, or turned a sot,

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1650

5

10

15

To catch at shadows which are not?
Come, come, I'll show unto thy sense
Industry hath its recompense.
What canst desire but thou mayst see
True substance in variety?
Dost honor like? Acquire the same,
As some to their immortal fame;
And trophies to thy name erect
Which wearing time shall ne'er deject.

4. The quill pen, then in general use.
5. This poem seems to be an expan-
sion of St. Paul's conception of the
strife between the Flesh and the Spirit
(noted in The Works of Anne Brad-
street***edited by J. H. Ellis, p.
381). See especially Romans viii, pas-
sim. In medieval poetry, the "debate,"

20

25

especially between body and soul, was
an established convention. Various forms
of the debate poem reappeared among
the Jacobean writers of Mrs. Brad-
street's epoch.

6. Cf. the Latin lacrima, "a tear."
7. I.e., knowledge; cf. the Latin notio.

For riches dost thou long full sore?
Behold enough of precious store.
Earth hath more silver, pearls, and gold
Than eyes can see or hands can hold.
Affect'st thou pleasure? Take thy fill,
Earth hath enough of what you will.
Then let not go, what thou mayst find,
For things unknown, only in mind.”
Spirit: "Be still, thou unregenerate part;
Disturb no more my settled heart,
For I have vowed (and so will do)
Thee as a foe, still to pursue,
And combat with thee will and must
Until I see thee laid in th' dust.
Sisters we are, yea, twins we be,
Yet deadly feud 'twixt thee and me;
For from one father are we not:
Thou by old Adam wast begot,
But my arise is from above,

Whence my dear Father I do love.

Thou speak'st me fair but hat'st me sore;
Thy flattering shows I'll trust no more.
How oft thy slave hast thou me made
When I believed what thou hast said,
And never had more cause of woe

Than when I did what thou bad'st do.
I'll stop mine ears at these thy charms
And count them for my deadly harms.
Thy sinful pleasures I do hate,
Thy riches are to me no bait,
Thine honors do nor will I love;
For my ambition lies above.
My greatest honor it shall be
When I am victor over thee

And triumph shall, with laurel head,
When thou my captive shalt be led.
How I do live thou need'st not scoff,
For I have meat thou know'st not of;8
The hidden manna9 I do eat,
The word of life it is my meat.
My thoughts do yield me more content
Than can thy hours in pleasure spent.
Nor are they shadows which I catch,

8. See John iv: 32.

9. Manna, or food from heaven, was miraculously sent to sustain the Is

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raelites in the wilderness (Exodus xvi: 15); but the mystical "hidden manna" is promised in Revelation ii: 17.

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