the tenth muse - elizabeth wade white, "a tercentary appraisal of anne bradstreet"
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8/10/2019 The Tenth Muse - Elizabeth Wade White, "A tercentary Appraisal of Anne Bradstreet"
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The Tenth Muse -- A Tercentenary Appraisal of Anne Bradstreet
Author(s): Elizabeth Wade WhiteSource: The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Jul., 1951), pp. 355-377Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and CultureStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1917419
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356
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
ment, richness, courage
and devotion,
she died on September i6,
i672, in
the fine
Bradstreethouse in North
Andover
which is still standing.t
To return to the book itself, the
title page
presents a graceful and
almost
complete description
of the contents:
THE TENTH
MUSE, Lately
Sprung up in America,
or, Several
Poems,
compiled
with great
variety of
Wit and Learning,full
of
delight.
Wherein
especially
s contained
a compleatdiscourseand
description
of The Four Ele-
ments, Constitutions,
Ages of
Man, Seasonsof the Year.
Together
with an
Exact
Epitomie of the
Four Monarchies,viz.
The Assyrian,
Persian,
Grecian,
Roman.Also a Dialogue
between
Old Englandand New,
concerning
he late
troubles.With diversother pleasantand seriousPoems.By a Gentlewomann
those
parts.
Printed at
London for Stephen
Bowtell
at
the
signe of
the
Biblein
Popes
Head-Alley.
650.
The "other pleasant
and serious
poems" are: "To her
most Honoured
Father
Thomas Dudley," "The
Prologue,"
elegies upon Sir Philip
Sidney
and
Queen
Elizabeth,
"In honour of Du
Bartas" and
"Of the vanity of
all
worldly
creatures."
There is also prefatory material
written
by various individuals
which
must
not be overlooked,
for
it
casts a revealing light
on the contemporary
attitude
toward female
versifiers.
Following
an
epistle
to the reader in
prose,
there are
eight poems, and two
of
the
anagrams
so laboredly
popular
in
the
seventeenth
century on the name
"Anna Bradstreate,"
one
of which is accompanied by a rhymed
couplet.
Of
the poems,
all are
simply
initialed
except
the
first, signed
"N. Ward." This was contributed
by
the
old
clergyman
Nathaniel
Ward,
who returned from New
England
to the
mother
country
in
i646
to see his own
book,
The
Simple
Cobbler
of Agawam, published in London in
i647;
it merits quoting for its quaint
and
fatherly good-humor
and,
withal, pride
in
a
young
friend and
neigh-
bor
of
Ipswich days.
Mercury
shew'd Apollo,
Bartas
Book,
Minerva
this,
and
wisht
him
well
to
look,
And tell uprightly
which did
which
excell,
He
view'd
and
view'd,
and
vow'd
he
could
not
tel.
They bid him Hemisphear his mouldy nose,
tThe
Bradstreet
ousewas
boughtby
theNorth Andover
Historical
ociety
n
the
autumn
of
I950,
and
is
now
open
to visitors.
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THE
TENTH MUSE
357
With's
crackt eering
glasses,
or it
would pose
The
bestbrains
he had
in'sold
pudding-pan,
Sex
weigh'd,
which
best,the
Woman,or
the Man?
He peer'dandpor'd,andglar'd,and saidfor wore,
I'me
even as wise
now,
as I was
before:
They
both
'gan
laugh,and
said it
was no mar'l
The
Auth'ress
was a right
Du
BartasGirle.
Goodsooth
quoth the old
Don, tell
ye me so,
I
muse whither
at
length these
girls will
go;
It half
revivesmy
chilfrost-bitten
lood,
To see
a
Woman
once,do
ought
that's
good;
And chodeby ChaucersBoots,andHomersFurrs,
Let Men look
to't, least
Women
wear
theSpurrs.
The
authors
of
two
of
the
other
poems
n
the
prefacehavebeen
identified
as the
ReverendJohn
Woodbridge,Anne
Bradstreet's
rother-in-law,
nd
his brother
he Reverend
Benjamin
Woodbridge.
The
remaining
poems
are
signed
"C.B.,"
"R.Q.,"
"N.H."
and
"H.S.";
they
were
presumably
contributed y
English Puritan
poets
whoseidentity
has not so far been
established.All
the verses are alike in
expressing
gentlemanly
astonish-
ment,
as
well
as
genuine
admiration,
t the
ability
of
a womanto
compose
so substantial
body
of
verse.
Nathaniel
Ward
takes
comfort,
o
be
sure,
in
recognizing
the
strong
influence
exerted on
Anne Bradstreet
by
Guillaume de
Saluste
du
Bartas, whose
elaborate
writings,
translated
from
the French
by Joshua
Sylvester
as
Du BartasHis
Divine
Weekes
and
Workes
nd
published
n London n
i605, are also
said
to
have
given
pleasure
nd nourishmento
John
Milton.
An
anonymous
nagramist
dds
the
couplet:
So
Bartas ike
thy
fine
spun
Poems
been,
That
Bartas
name
will
prove
an
epicene.
It is most
interesting
hat
these
prefatory erses,
offered
n an age
when
it
was not unheard-of
or
gentlewomen to be
quite
illiterateand
most
unusual
or
a
woman's
work
to
appear
n
print,
express
none of
the con-
descensionater mmortalizedn Dr.
Johnson's bservation
boutawoman
preacher:
hat
it is not
so much
a
question
as to
whether
a
dog
candance
well as it is surprisinghat it can danceat all In otherwordsthis new
poet, "lately
sprung up
in
America,"
was
apparently
welcomed
with
generosity
and
respect
by
her
peers.
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358
WILLIAM AND
MARY
QUARTERLY
The
story of
how The
Tenth
Muse came
to be
published
is in
itself
a
dramatic and
pleasantly human
one.
It is
told
primarily in
the book's
epistle to
the reader,
by one
who
writes: "I
fear 'twill
be a
shame for a
Man that can speak so little, to be
seen in the
title-page of this
Woman's
Book"; yet
he
must, in case
there
be
incredulity,
assure the
reader:
It is the
Work
of a
Woman,
honoured,and
esteemedwhere
she
lives, for
her gracious
demeanour,her
eminent parts, her
pious
conversation,her
cour-
teous
disposition,her
exact
diligence in
her
place, and
discreet
managing of
her
Family
occasions,
and more then
so,
thesePoems
are the
fruit but of
some
few
houres,
curtailed
rom her
sleepand
other
refreshments....
I
fearthe dis-
pleasureof no person n the publishingof thesePoemsbut the Author,without
whose
knowledg,
and contrary
o
her
expectation,
havepresumed
o
bring
to
publick
view, what she
resolved in
such a manner
should
never
see
the
Sun;
but I
found
that
diverse
had gottensome
scattered
Papers,
affected hem
well,
were
likely to have
sent
forth broken
pieces,
to the Author's
prejudice,
which
I
thought
to
prevent,as
well as
to pleasure
hose
that
earnestly
desiredthe
view
of the
whole.
The same courage of affection and conviction shown in this statement
is echoed
in
the
longest
of the
prefatory
verses,
"To
my
dear
Sister,
the
Author
of
these
Poems,"
where
the writer's admiration
is
gracefully
expressed:
There needs
no
painting
to that
comely
face,
That
in
its
native
beauty
hath
such
grace;
If
women,
I
with women
may
compare,
Your works aresolid, othersweak as Air;
What
you have
done,
the Sun
shall
witness bear,
That for
a womans Work
'tis
very
rare;
And if the
Nine, vouchsafe the
Tenth a
place,
I
think
they
rightly
may yield you
that
grace.
This
poem,
initialled
"I.
W.,"
and the
epistle
are
undoubtedly by
the
same hand, that of the Reverend John Woodbridge, husband of Anne
Bradstreet's sister
Mercy
and the first
minister
of
Andover in
Massa-
chusetts. He sailed
for
England
in
i647
and
remained there
until
i663;
it
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THE TENTH MUSE 359
is most probable that when
he went he took with him
the fairest existing
manuscript copy of Anne
Bradstreet's poems, the one prepared by
her
for presentation to her father, and that this was what
appeared
in
print
under his auspices as The Tenth Muse. A family conspiracy may here
be
seen
at
work,
with
the
austere father, the
devoted sister
and the
admir-
ing brother-in-law taking upon themselves the responsibility
for an act
of great significance in the
life of their relative.
This was
in
no sense a frivolous deed,
for
these, and the many
other
admirers of Anne Bradstreet'sverse whose interest seemed
to justify the
step
of
publication,
were serious, thrifty, self-disciplined
people, who
weighed every impulse primarily
for its value
in
the
sight of God. They,
must all have believed that their world would be better for the appearance
in print, and consequent availability to more readers,
of the work of one
whose gracious piety and industrious intelligence they
honored
not
only
in herself but also in the
poems which she had composed
in the midst of
a
busy
and often
perilous
life
in
the
New
England
wilderness.
Let us cast a twentieth-century
eye
over
these
poems that brought
pleasure
and
inspiration
to Puritan minds of
the seventeenth
century.
As our basic
medium
of
intelligence
and
behavior is the newspaper, so
that of the Puritans was the sermon. Professor Perry Miller says, in The
New
England
Mind: ". .
.
all their
writings
were
simply
other
ways of
achieving
the
same
ends
they
were
seeking
in
their
sermons; histories,
poems
or tracts
were
treatises
on
the
will
of God
as
revealed in nature,
experience, history
or
individual
lives." He
goes
on
to
conclude that for
the Puritan "verse
was
simply
a
heightened
form
of eloquence . . . poetry
existed
primarily
for its
utility,
it
was
foredoomed to
didacticism, and be-
cause
it
was the
most
highly
ornate
of
the
arts,
it
was
always
in
grave
danger of overstepping proper limits and becoming pleasing for its own
sake....
Poetry
in Puritan
eyes, therefore,
was a
species
of
rhetoric, a dress
for
great truths,
a
sugar
for the
pill. Only
some two
persons
in
seventeenth-
century
New
England
have left
any
evidence
that
they
were
deeply
imbued
with
a
true
poetic insight
. . . the Reverend Edward
Taylor ...
and
Anne
Bradstreet."
The author
of The Tenth Muse was
not
niggardly
in her
choice
of
"great
truths"
to
wear the
garment
of her
poetry.
Her
upbringing
in
England gave her opportunity for as wide reading as was permitted by
Puritan
standards.
The Bible of coursewas the cornerstoneand
measuring-
rod,
and her own lines tell us that she read
Spenser
and
Sidney, Sylvester's
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360
WILLIAM AND
MARY
QUARTERLY
du Bartas,
Speed's,
Camden's,
Raleigh's
and
Archbishop
Usher's
histories,
and Dr.
Crooke's
Description
of the
Body
of
Man.
She probably
also
read
North's
Plutarch's
Lives,
Florio's
Montaigne,
Chapman's
Homer,
Burton's
Anatomy
of
Melancholy, the poems of Drayton, Browne, Wither and
possibly
Donne,
other
contemporaries
who
were
not
too anti-Puritan
to
be acceptable,
and
some
Shakespeare,
although
plays
in
general
were
frowned
upon
by her
people
and
the
other
dramatists
were no
doubt
excluded.
She
must
have
been
still
absorbing
her education,
as
it
were,
when
she left
England
at the
age
of
eighteen
in
i630.
"I
changed
my
con-
dition
and was
marryed,"
she
says in
her
"Religious
Experiences,"
"and
came
into
this Country,
where
I found
a new
world
and new manners,
at
which my heart rose. But after I was convinced it was the way of God, I
submitted
to
it
and joined
to
the church
at
Boston."
Finding
herself
in
a strange
wild land,
where
intellectual
recreation
was
minimized
by
the
demands of
hard labor
for survival's
sake,
she
must have
felt
a
mental
vacuum
replacing
the
reservoir
of stimulating
ideas
and
impressions
that
her life
in England
had
kept filled.
So instead
of looking
outward
and
writing
her
observations
on
this
unfamiliar
scene
with
its
rough
and
fearsome
aspects,
she
let her homesick
imagination
turn
inward,
mar-
shalled the images from her store of learning and dressed them in careful
homespun
garments,
of somewhat
archaic
meter, to
the
glory
of
God
and
for
the expression
of an
inquiring
mind
and sensitive,
philosophical
spirit.
Her
intentions reveal
themselves
in these
lines
of
dedication
to her
father,
who
had
himself
written
a
poem,
now lost,
on
the four
parts
of
the
world:
I
bring
my four;
and four,
now
meanly
clad
To
do their homage,
unto
yours,
most
glad:
These
same
are they,
from
whom we being
have
These are
of
all,
the
Life,
the Nurse, the
Grave,
These
arethe
hot,
the cold,
the
moist,
the dry,
That
sink,
that swim,
that fill,
that upwards
fly,
Of
these
consists
our bodies,
Cloathesand
Food,
The World,
the
useful,
hurtful
and the
good,
Sweet
harmonythey
keep,
yet jar
oft times
Their discordmay appear,by these harshrimes.
My
other
four do intermixed
tell
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THE TENTH
MUSE
36i
Each
others faults, and where themselves excell;
How
hot
and dry contendwith moist and cold,
How Air
and Earth no
correspondencehold,
And
yet
in equal tempers,how they 'gree,
How
divers natures make one Unity.
Something of all (though
mean) I did intend
But fear'dyou'ld judge one
Bartas was my
friend;
I
honour
him, but dare not wear his wealth,
My goods are true (though
poor) I love no
stealth;
I
shall not need, mine
innocence to clear,
These ragged lines, will do't,when they appear:
On
what
they
are,
your
mild
aspect I crave,
Accept my
best, my worst vouchsafe a
Grave.
The
device
of the
four-times-four allegorical personages
used
in the
first
part of The
Tenth Muse, representing
the
elements,
humors, ages
and
seasons
in
a stilted and highly argumentative
manner,
is such
as
to
make
any
free
poetic
expression
almost
impossible.
Yet one
small
passage
in this first selection "The Four Ages of Man" does contain a beautiful,
grave
and compassionate poetic image, a
promise
of what is
to
be
found
more often in
Anne
Bradstreet's ater
poems,
written when
maturity
and
a
more personal
approach
had freed her from
the ornate
du Bartian
shackles.
Childhood
was
cloth'd in white &
green
to
show
His
spring
was
intermixed
with some
snow:
Upon his head nature a Garland set
Of
Primrose, Daizy
&
the
Violet;
Such
cold
mean flowrs
(as
these) blossome
betime
Before
the sun hath
throughly
warm'd the
clime.
"The
Four
Monarchies,"
next
among
the
contents,
is a
painful
work
in
every
sense.
Though
unfinished,
it takes
up
one hundred
and fourteen
pages
of The Tenth
Muse,
and
is
simply
a
paraphrase
n
rhymed couplets
of the history of the ancient world as told by Raleigh and other contem-
porary
writers.
Tyrants
welter
in blood on
almost
every
page; kingdoms
topple
and armies
are
destroyed,
all
to
prove
that
in
a
world
where
all
is
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362
WILLIAM
AND MARY
QUARTERLY
vanity
these pagan spectacles
of
greed and violence
were the
most
vain
of
all.
Comparing
the four monarchies
to
four ravening beasts,
the
author
says:
But yet this
Lion, Bear, this
Leopard,
Ram,
All trembling
stand
before the powerful
Lamb.
Her
conscious purpose
in doggedly
composing this
long
work, in which
hardly
a line
of anything even
resembling
poetry appears,
is clear;
she
wished to produce
a serious moral
poem,
modelled on her
father's
work
and demonstrating
forcefully the
degradation
of the dark ages
of antiquity
as comparedto
the enlightenment,
even in
struggle,
of the Christian
world.
But it is tempting
to
wonder why, during
a period
of about seventeen
years in which
she bore
seven children,
changed
her dwelling
twice,
each
time
venturing
deeper into unsettled
country, suffered
from
recurring
attacks
of illness yet
consistently
managed the
household
of
her
distin-
guished
husband, she chose
so huge and
ungentle
a subject
for creative
interpretation
in her leisure hours.
An examination
of Anne
Bradstreet's
entire body
of work,
however,
including the
"Religious
Experiences"
and
"Meditations Divine
and
Moral"
written as
spiritual
legacies
for
her children and
not published
until
i867, reveals
an undeniable
trace of
intellectual intransigence,
creating
conflicting thoughts
which bred in turn
an occasional
outburst of
violent
expression.
For example,
in the "Religious
Experiences,"
after admitting
that
"many
times hath Satan troubled
me concerning
the verity
of the
scriptures,
many times
by
Atheisme how I could
know
whether there
was a God,"
and explaining
her process
of reasoning
in resolving
these
doubts,
she
goes
on to
say:
"When
I have
gott over
this Block, then
have
I another putt in my way, That admitt this bee the true God whom wee
worship,
and
that bee his word,
yet why
may not the Popish
Religion
be
the right?
They
have the
same God, the
same Christ,
the same
word: they
only
interprett
it
one
way, wee
another."From
these
troubling specula-
tions
she
reacted
with
a
sort of
self-chastising
fury,
as shown in these
lines
from "A
Dialogue
between
Old
England
and New," where
the Puritan
New
England abjures
her "Dear Mother":
These are the dayes the Churchesfoes to crush,
To root our
Prelates
head,
tail,
branch
and rush;
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THE
TENTH
MUSE
363
Let's
bring
Baals
vestments
out to make
a
fire,
Their
Mytires,
Surplices,
and
all their
Tire,
Copes,
Rotchets,
Crossiers,
and
such
trash,
And
let their
Names
consume,
but
let the
flash
Light Christendome,
and
all the
world
to see
We
hate
Romes
whore,
with
all
her trumpery.
*1
*
Bring
forth the
Beast that rul'd
the World
with's
beck,
And tearhis
flesh,
and set
your
feet on's
neck;
And make
his filthy
Den
so desolate,
To
th'stonishment
of all
that
knew his
state:
This
done with
brandish'd
Swords
to Turky
goe,
For
then
what
is't, but
English
blades
dare do,
And lay
her
waste for
so's
the sacred
Doom,
And do to
Gog
as thou
hast
done to
Rome.
Then fulness
of the
Nations in
shall
flow,
And
Jew
and
Gentile
to one
worship
go;
Then follows
dayes
of
happiness
and
rest;
Whose
lot
doth
fall, to live
therein-
s
blest.
It seems
at
least
possible
that
Anne Bradstreet,recognizing
in
herself
the
sometimes
rebellious
independence
of mind
that
was
thought
so
dangerous
in
a
woman,
and having
before
her as example
the
fate
of
the
courageously
opinionated
Anne
Hutchinson,
either consciously
or
uncon-
sciously
took a
skillful way
out
of
her
psychological
dilemma.
While
conducting
herself
as
an
exemplary
wife
and mother,
and fulfilling
the
duties of her social position in a manner to gain the respectof all around
her,
she
yet
devoted
a
considerable
number
of her
hours
of
literary
work
to what
amounted
to identification
of her
personality
with
the tumult
of
the
cruel,
licentious
and
ungodly
lives
of the
monarchs
of
antiquity.
No
commentator
on her
work
has
had a
kind word
to
say
for "The
Four
Monarchies,"
nor
is their
criticism unjustified
if this be
considered
solely
as
a work
of
poetry.
But I shall
venture
to
go
a
little
further,
and suggest
that this
barren
exercise
in
rhetorical
ingenuity
be
approached
as
an
oppor-
tune outlet for the author's impulses of resentment against the Puritan
narrowness
of thinking
and
harshness of
living,
as well as a stern practice
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364
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
in the use of words and meter. Thus viewed, it would logically deserve
credit for both the wider tranquility of spirit and the greater technical
ease that manifest themselves in Anne Bradstreet's ater poems.
Following the major groups of "fours" are shorter poems, three of
which illustrate the author's loyalty to what she felt was best in the mother
country. "A Dialogue between Old England and New," written in
i642
as the Civil War in England was beginning, points up a fact of great
historical interest:
Go on brave Essex, shew whose son thou art,
Not
false to King, nor Countrey in thy heart,
But those that hurt his people and his Crown,
By force expell, destroy,
and tread them
down;
And ye brave Nobles chase away all fear,
And to this blessed Cause closely adhere;
IV
These, these are they I trust, with Charles our King,
Out of all mists such glorious dayes will bring;
That dazled eyes beholding much shall wonder
At that thy setled peace, thy wealth and splendor.
Before Anne
Bradstreet
left England King Charles I had
made
prisoners
of
the Earl of Lincoln and his father-in-law, Lord Saye and Sele, and had
set
spies upon
the actions of her own father
Thomas Dudley because
of
their
resistance
to
the enforced
loans to
the
crown. Yet
the traditional
allegiance
of the
British
subject
to his
monarch
was
strong enough
to
make her believe-and she must surely have reflectedthe feeling of many
of
her companions
in New
England-that
the
King himself was not so
much
to
blame
as those
ardent
Catholics
among
his
advisers
who
sought
to
usurp
all
the
powers
of
Parliament,
in
the
King's name,
for
their
own
ends.
Being
a
faithful
subject
as well as a
Puritan,
she
took the
attitude-
shown
in lines from this
poem already quoted-that Popery
was
the root
of
all
of
England's trouble,
and once
that
was eradicated
by
fire and
sword
peace
and
prosperity
would
prevail.
The
elegies
on Sir
Philip Sidney
and
Queen
Elizabeth reveal
Anne
Bradstreet's
generous
strain of
hero-worship.
She loved
Sidney
because
he
was a brave
and
romantic
nobleman, possibly
her relation
through
the
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THE
TENTH MUSE
365
Dudley
family,
and
a writer
whose Arcadia,
which must have
been
anathema to
the
Puritan
divines
because
of its
pastoral
sensuality,
she
has
the courage
to
praise.
Yet, he's
a
beetle head,
that
cann't discry
A
world
of
treasure,
n that
rubbish
lye;
And
doth
thy selfe,
thy
worke, and
honour wrong,
(O
brave
Refiner of our
Brittish
Tongue;)
That
sees
not
learning,
valour,
and
morality,
Justice,
friendship, and kind
hospitality;
Yea,
and
Divinity
within
thy
Book.
And
she
honors
Elizabeth for her
great
qualities and
achievements
as
a
monarch,
but most of
all for her
emancipation
of her
sex.
Now
say,
have
women
worth?
or
have
they
none?
Or had
they
some,
but
with our
Queen
is't
gone?
Nay
Masculines, you
have thus
taxt
us
long,
But
she,
though
dead,
will
vindicate
our
wrong.
Let such
as say our Sex is void
of
Reason,
Know
tis a
Slander
now,
but
once was
Treason.
The
epitaph
that ends
the
poem
has a
graceful
image:
Here
sleeps
The
Queen,
this is
the
Royal
Bed,
Of
th'
Damask
Rose, sprung from
the white
and
red,
Whose sweet
perfume
fills the
all-filling
Air:
This Rose is
wither'd, once
so
lovely fair.
On neithertree did grow suchRose before,
The
greater
was
our
gain,
our
loss
the
more.
"In
Honour
of Du
Bartas"
s
an
humble hymn of
praise to one
whom
she
unreservedly admired as her
master and
model in
knowledge, wit
and
style.
"David's
Lamentation for Saul
and
Jonathan"
is a
paraphrase
of
Samuel,
Chapter 2,
showing
real
poetic
feeling,
and
"Of the
vanity
of all
wordly
creatures,"
the last
poem
in
the
book, echoes
Ecclesiastes
yet has an originality of imagery and a flowing vigor in the use of the
rhymed
couplets
that
is
more
noticeable than
in
the
other
poems
in
The
Tenth
Muse:
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THE
TENTH MUSE
367
All the
Instruction
and
Education in
the
World, all the
pains,
time and
patience
maginable, an
neverinfuse
that
sublime
Fancy,that
strong
Memory,
and
excellent
Judgment
required n
one that
shall
wear the Bayes.If Women
have been good Poets, Men injurethem Exceedingly, o account hem
giddy-
headed
Gossips, it
only to
discourse
of their
Hens,
Ducks, and
Geese,
and
not
by
any means
to be suffered
o
meddle with Arts and
Tongues,
lest
by
intoller-
able
pridethey
should
run mad.
If
I
do make
this
appear,that
Women
have been
good
Poets, it will con-
firm
all
I
have said
before:for,
besidesnatural
endowments, here is
required
a
generaland
universal
mprovement n
all kinds of
learning.
A
good
Poet
must
know things
Divine, things
Natural,
hingsMoral,
hings
Historical,
and
things
Artificial;togetherwith the severaltermsbelonging to all Faculties,to which
they must
allude.
Good Poets
must
be
universal
Scholars,
able
to
use
a pleas-
ing
Phrase,
and to express
hemselveswith
moving
Eloquence.
She then
speaks
of
the
gifted
women
of
antiquity and
of
foreign
coun-
tries, and
comes home
to
say:
"How
excellent a
Poet
Mrs.
Broadstreet
is
(now in
America) her
works do
testifie."
Mrs.
Makin also
praises
Mrs.
Katherine
Philips
and the
accomplished
ladies of
the nobility,
but two
points are significant in her mention of Anne Bradstreet.One is that the
educator
considered the
poet an
Englishwoman and
therefore an
English
poet;
"now in
America"
is
parenthesized as
incidental.
Actually by the
time this
statement appeared
in
print Anne
Bradstreet was in
America
forever, so
to
speak, having
been
laid to rest
in
New England
earth
in
the
early autumn
of i672.
The
other
point is
that interest
in
and admira-
tion
for
Anne
Bradstreet's
writing had
remained alive
for
over twenty
years after
The
Tenth
Muse was
printed,
although in that
time
no
further publication of her works had appeared.This survival of recogni-
tion is
also pointed
out
by
Edward
Phillips, the
nephew
of Milton,
who
noted in
his
Theatrum
Poetarum,
published
in i675,
under the
heading
"Women
among
the
Moderns
Eminent for
Poetry":
Anne
Bradstreet,
New
England
Poetess,
no less
in title,
viz.
before
herPoems,
printed n
Old
England
anno
i650;
then the tenth
Muse
Sprungup in
America,
the
memoryof which
Poems,
consisting
chieflyof
Descriptions
f the
Four
Ele-
ments, the four Humours,the four Ages, the four Seasons,and the four Mon-
archies,
s
not
yetwholly
extinct.
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THE
TENTH
MUSE
369
Tenth
Muse and
its
position in
literary
history,
mention of Anne Brad-
street's later
poems must be
limited to
their
inclusion
in
the
other editions
of her
earliest
work. She
was
assiduous
in
her preparationfor the further
public
appearanceof
The
Tenth
Muse,
adding
only five
poems,
but
two
of
them
her best,
to
the
contemplated second
edition and
making
as
has
been noted
careful
corrections of
those
already published. One
of
these
poems,
"The
Author
to
her Book,"
really
demands
to
be quoted
entire,
for the
fascinating
light
it
sheds
on
the
workings
of
the
writer's mind.
At
first
dismayed
to
see her "brat"
n print,
yet
at
the same time
experi-
encing the
extraordinary
sense of
fulfillment
of
literary
parenthood,
she
became
reconciled.
The
Author to
her Book
Thou
ill-form'd
offspring of my
feeble
brain,
Who
after
birth did'st
by my
side
remain,
Till
snatcht
from
thence by
friends,
less wise then true
Who
thee
abroad,
expos'd to
publick
view,
Made thee
in
raggs,
halting
to th'
press to
trudg,
Where
errorswere
not
lessened
(all
may judg)
At thy returnmy blushing was not small,
My
rambling
brat (in
print)
should
mother call,
I
cast
thee
by as
one
unfit for
light,
Thy
Visage
was so
irksome
in my
sight;
Yet
being
mine
own, at
length
affection
would
Thy
blemishes
amend, if
so
I
could:
I
wash'd
thy
face,
but more
defects I saw,
And
rubbing off a
spot, still
made a flaw.
I stretchtthy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still
thou
run'st
more
hobling
then is
meet;
In
better
dressto
trim
thee was
my
mind,
But
none
save
home-spun
Cloth, i'
th' house I
find
In
this
array,
'mongst
Vulgars
mayst thou
roam
In
Critickshands, beware thou
dost
not
come;
And
take
thy
way
where
yet
thou
art
not
known,
If
for
thy
Father
askt,
say,
thou
hadst none:
And for thy Mother,she alas is poor,
Which
caus'd her
thus
to send thee
out
of
door.
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370
WILLIAM
AND
MARY
QUARTERLY
The other
four
new
poems
added by the
author to
her second
edition
are:
elegies to
her
father and
mother;
"Contemplations,"
a
long and
beau-
tiful
poem in
Spenserian
stanza
describing
an
afternoon
walk
through
the autumn countryside and along the Merrimack River and presenting
the
thoughts of
wonder
and faith
that
the
majesty of
these
surroundings
brought to
her
mind; "The
Flesh and the
Spirit," which
Samuel Eliot
Morison calls
"one of the
best
expressions
in
English
literature
of the
conflict
described
by St.
Paul in
the
eighth
chapter of
his
Epistle to the
Romans."
Added
to
these at the
end of
the book
are
thirteen
poems
con-
cerning
herself
and her
family,
"found
among her
Papersafter
her
Death,
which she
never
meant
should
come to
publick
view,"
but
which
were
well chosen for publication since they include five deeply moving lyrics
addressed to
her
husband and the
charming poem
beginning "I
had
eight
birds
hatcht
in
one
nest," written
probably when her
youngest child was
six
yearsold
and her
eldest
twenty-five.
In
this second
edition
also
appear
an
ornate poem in
praise
of
her work
by
John
Rogers,
her
nephew by
marriage
and later
President of
Harvard
College, and
"A
Funeral
Elogy, upon that
Pattern and
Patron of
Virtue,
the
truly
pious, peerless
and
matchless
Gentlewoman,
Mrs.
Anne
Brad-
street,right Panaretes,Mirror of her Age, Glory of her Sex,"by her young
admirer
the
Reverend John Norton.
Thus,
six
years after her
death,
New
England
produced its
own
print-
ing
of
its
first recognized
poet.
In
I702,
Cotton
Mather's formidable
Magnalia
Christi Americana
paid
tribute to:
Madam Ann
Bradstreet
.
. whose
Poems,
divers
times
Printed,
have af-
forded a
grateful
Entertainment
unto
the
Ingenious,
and a
Monument
or
her
Memorybeyond heStateliestMarbles.
A
third edition
of her
poems, reprinted
with
only
slight
changes
from
the
second,
appeared
in
Boston in
i758.
More than
one hundred
years
later,
in
i867,
John
Harvard
Ellis
published
his
edition
of "all
the
extant
works
of
Anne
Bradstreet."To
her
writings
which
had
already appeared
in
print
he
added
a
painstaking
and
thorough
biographical
introduction
and some
important
unpublished
material-the
complete
contents of the
little
manuscript
volume
prepared
for her
children, containing "Religious
Experiences
and
Occasional Pieces"
and
"Meditations
Divine
and
Moral."
Among
the
interesting
and
touching
autobiographical prose
entries of
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THE TENTH
MUSE
371
the "Religious
Experiences"
are scattered short
personal
and devotional
lyrics
which
include two
of her finest:
"Some
verses upon the burning
of
our house,
July
ioth, i666" and the
valedictory
"As weary pilgrim,
now
at
rest."
The seventy-seven "Meditations,"addressed to her son Simon,
are short prose statements
of moral
fact, written with vigorous
forthright-
ness and an appealing
use
of homely and familiar
images,
as for example:
Corne,till it
have past throughthe
Mill and
been groundto powder,
s not
fit for bread.God
so deales
with his Servants:
he grindes them
with greif and
pain till
they
turn to dust, and then are
they fit
manchetfor
his Mansion.
Charles Eliot Norton contributed a rather condescending introduction
to an edition
of
Anne
Bradstreet's
works published in
i897, in attractive
format
but with an admission
by the
editor that "instances
of unnecessarily
bad
grammar"
had been
corrected
As
is
recognized now,
the
latter
half
of the
nineteenth century found
more to criticise than
admire
in
the
writings, particularly
the poetry,
of
the seventeenth
century,
the brooding
introspection
and
intricate
imagery
of
which it remained
for our own
time
to acclaim
once more. The
venerable historian of American
literature
Moses Coit Tyler, writing in the
i870's,
deals kindly enough with Anne
Bradstreet's
more
personal
and spontaneous
poems,
but thunders at her
earlier
works
in a
way
that
will
delight,
rather than terrify, the
modern
student
of English poetry.
The
worst lines
of Anne
Bradstreet
.
can
be readily
matched
for fan-
tastic
perversion,
and for
the
total
absence
of beauty, by
passages
from the
poems
of JohnDonne,
George
Herbert,Crashaw,Cleveland,
Wither,
Quarles,
Thomas Coryat,John Taylor,and even of Herrick, Cowleyand Dryden.
Indeed
the
sins
of The
Tenth Muse
are
modelled on those of a
distin-
guished company
The
twentieth
century
has remembered
Anne
Bradstreet
not only
with
the
scholarly recognition,
already
mentioned, given
her
by Perry
Miller,
Samuel
Eliot
Morison
and
George
Frisbie
Wicher, but with
a
reprint
of the
Ellis edition
of her
works, published
in
I932,
and the
in-
clusion of four of her poems, "The Flesh and the Spirit," "Contempla-
tions,"
"A Letter to Her Husband" and "As
weary pilgrim,
now
at
rest,"
in
Conrad
Aiken's
excellent
anthology,
American
Poetry,
i67i-1928.
And
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372
WILLIAM
AND MARY
QUARTERLY
the
late
F.
0.
Matthieson
placed
six
of her
poems
at the beginning
of
the
Oxford
Book
of
American
Verse, published
in
i950.
Where
does
The
Tenth
Muse
belong
in
the history
of English
litera-
ture?
I wish
to put forward the suggestion that it was the work of the
first
Englishwoman
who
seriously
and
successfully
chose for
her
occupa-
tion
the
writing
of poetry.
For
approximately
four
hundred
years
before
Anne Bradstreet's
poems
were
published,
"the
iron
of English,"
as
Archi-
bald MacLeish
calls it,
had rung
in
meter
from
tongue
and
pen,
yet
the
voices
and the
hands
that
made
English
poetry
were
almost entirely
those
of men.
Only
a handful
of
women,
some
of them
shadowy
figures
now,
are recorded
as having
written
original
verse
up
to
the
middle
of
the
seventeenth century. To the legendary Dame Juliana Berners (sometimes
confused
with
the
anchoress
Juliana
of Norwich,
whose
beautiful
Revela-
tions
of
Divine
Love,
written
about
I390,
are in
prose),
has
been
attributed
The
Book
of
St. Albans, printed
in
I486,
which
contains
a treatise
in
verse
on hunting.
But
it
has been established
that
this
is
not an
original
work, but
a translation
of
an
earlier
French book
on
hunting.
Writings
by
the Countess
of Richmond,
Lady
Margaret
Roper
(the daughter
of
Sir Thomas
More),
Henry
VIII's
last
queen
the Protestant
Catherine
Parr, and the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, appeared in print between
I522
and I575,
but
these
all seem to
have
been translations
or religious
pieces
in
prose.
One
of
Queen
Catherine's
ladies-in-waiting,
the
accomplished
Anne
Askew,
Lady
Kyme,
who
was
mercilessly
tortured
and
burned
as
a heretic
in
I546,
wrote
an
account
of her
own trial,
published
on
the
continent
soon
after
her
death,
which
includes
a
moving
poem
of
faith.
Mary
Herbert,
Countess
of
Pembroke,
the famed
"Sidney's
sister,
Pem-
broke's
mother,"
wrote
a
poem
in memory
of her
brother
and
a
poetic
"Dialogue between Two Shepherds," published in
i586
and
i602,
a
scholarly
blank
verse translation
of Garnier's
Tragedy
of
Antonie,
printed
in
I592,
and,
with
Sidney,
The Psalmes
of
David
translated into
Divers
and Sundry
Kindes
of
Verse.
This was probably
written
in
i587
but
was
not
published
until
i823.
The
great
Elizabeth
was
a
scholar
before she
was a queen.
Two
reli-
gious
works
from
her
pen,
one
a
translation
from Margaret
of
Angouleme,
were
published
in
I548,
and during
her long and
brilliant
reign
she
con-
tinued to write and translate.Most of her work was in prose, but one
of
her
poems,
the
vigorous
"Daughter
of
Debate,"
appeared
in The
Arte
of
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THE
TENTH MUSE
373
English
Poesie in
I589, and
this
and
another
from a
manuscriptcopy are
reprinted
in The
Oxford
Book
of
Sixteenth-Century
Verse.
The
first
published
volume
of verse
by
an
Englishwoman
appears
to
exist in only one copy, and not to have been reprinted. This is Isabella
Whitney's
A
Sweet
Nosgay, or
pleasant
Posye:
containing
a hundred
and
ten
Phylosophicall
Flowers. The
Short
Title
Catalogue
dates this
London,
I573,
and lists
only
the
example in
the
British
Museum,
which may
well
be the one
mentioned
by
W. T.
Lowndes in
i834
as
"Probably
unique.
Unknown to
bibliographers."
Certainly
no
copy
seems to
have found
its
way
to this
country.To the
same author,
sister of the
minor poet
Geoffrey
Whitney,
is
attributed
also
The
Copie of a
Letter,
lately written
in
Meeter
by a younge gentilwoman to her unconstant lover. This was printed
about
I567,
and
has
been
reprinted
in
two
collections of
early
English
writing.
The
first
original
poetic drama
in
English by
a
woman
was
probably
The
Tragedie of
Mariam, the
Faire
Queene
of
Jewry,
by
Elizabeth Cary,
Viscountess
Falkland.
Printed
in
i6I3,
this
sombre
"tragedy
of
blood"
contains
one
fine
poem,
a
chorus of six
stanzas on
the
nobility
of
forgiving
injuries, which
Chambers'
Cyclopaedia
of
English
Literature
reprints.
Sir Philip Sidney's niece, Lady Mary Wroath, published in
i62i
The
Countess
of
Montgomerie's
Urania,
a
fantasy in
prose
and
verse
which is
simply an
imitation of
her
uncle's
Arcadia.
Rachel
Speght,
who
may have
been
the
daughter
of the
scholarly
Thomas
Speght, wrote two
long poems
which
were
published
in
i62I
in a
little
book of
about
forty
pages
with
the
title:
Mortalitie's
Memorandum, with
a
Dreame
Prefixed,
imaginarie
in
manner,
reall
in matter.
From
this
forgotten
work
comes a
stanza which
reveals
the
intelligent
early
seventeenth-century
woman's
quarrel
with
her time:
Both
man
and woman
of three
parts
consist,
Which
Paul doth
bodie,
soule
and spirit
call:
And
from
the
soule
three
faculties
arise,
The
mind,
the
will,
the
power;
then
wherefore
shall
A
woman have her
intellect
in
vain,
Or
not
endevour
knowledge
to
attain?
In
i630
"the noble lady Diana Primrose"offered A Chaine of Pearle:
or,
a
Memnoriall
of
the
peerless
Graces
and
heroick
Virtues
of Queene
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374 WILLIAM
AND
MARY QUARTERLY
Elizabeth, of glorious Memory. This elegiac poem was reprinted in the
Harleian Miscellany and in Nichols' Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.
Twenty years later came a voice from the wilderness, that of "the
Tenth Muse, lately sprung up in America," and with this half-turn of the
century and the far-reaching changes brought by the Civil War the gates
of the English Parnassus seemed to open at last to women. The eccentric
Duchess of Newcastle, exiled from her country by the Commonwealth
but
a very citizen of Utopia in the love and intellectual companionship
of
her husband, published her Poems and Fancies in
i653,
and after that,
with the Duke's encouragement and collaboration, produced many vol-
umes of poems, plays and philosophical essays. Anne Collins' Divine
Songs was also published in
i653.
Katharine Philips, "the matchless
Orinda," friend of Vaughan, Cowley and Jeremy Taylor, whom Professor
Douglas
Bush.
in English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century
calls "the first real English poetess," began to be much admired soon after
i65o
as the center of a literary circle where elegant and artificialPlatonism
was
cultivated.
Her
poems, often reprinted
in
collections and anthologies,
appeared in an unauthorized edition in i664, the year of her untimely
death,
and in a corrected
and more
complete
edition
in
i667. Anne Finch,
Countess of Winchilsea, wrote graceful and melancholy poems which were
admired
by
her
friends, among whom was Pope, but did not publish
until
I7I3,
a few
yearsbeforeher death.
Finally, the roaring days of the Restoration produced the
first woman
in
England who actually made her living by her pen. She was the
redoubt-
able Mrs. Aphra Behn, who spent her childhood
in
Surinam, Guiana,
being
the
daughter
of
the English Governor,
returned
to England
in
i658,
served as a
spy
for Charles II
in Antwerp, and
married
a
London
mer-
chant. Her husband's death and her own financial difficultiesforced her
to
become self-supporting,and this she accomplished by writing between
i67i and I689 fifteen plays, coarse and swashbuckling comedies and
dramas
of
contemporary ife,
several
novels,
and a
body
of verse
containing
such
poems
of
power
and
beauty
as
the celebrated
"Love
in fantastic
triumph
sat." She
was,
unlike all
of those
mentioned before
her,
not
in
any sense
a
"lady,"
and
it
was
by
sheer uninhibited
strength
of
character
that she forged
her
vigorous creative
talent
into a
weapon that
won her
an undisputed place in the man's world of literature.
The fact
that it took so
many
centuries for
women to
gain
the
right
to
compete
with
men
in
the field
of
letters is
examined with
insight
and
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THE
TENTH
MUSE
375
energy
by
Virginia
Woolf
in
her
essay
A
Room
of
One's
Own.
She
emphasizes
the
loneliness
and
frustrationof
women
who
wanted
to
write
and
cites
the
eccentric
Duchess
of
Newcastle
and
the
melancholy
Countess
of Winchilsea as examples of talented writers whose
productions
were
"disfigured
and
deformed"
by
the
weight
of
public
opinion
against
them.
She
quotes
a
revealing
contemporary
comment
by
Dorothy
Osborne,
who
wrote
mentioning
a
book
by the
Duchess
of
Newcastle
in a
letter
to
Sir
William
Temple:
Sure
the
poore
womanis a
little
distracted,
hee
could
never
bee
soe
redicu-
lous
else
as
to
ventureat
writeing
book's
and in
verse
too,
if I
should
not
sleep
this fortnightI shouldnotcometo that.
Mrs.
Woolf
makes
a.
point
which
provides
me
with a
stepping-stone
toward
my
own
goal,
that
of
demonstrating
that
Anne
Bradstreet
was
the
first
unhampered
and
integrated
English
woman
poet.
Considering
the
obscurity
of
women
in
the
sixteenth
century, as
its
recordshave
come
to
us,
she
says:
Occasionallyan individualwoman is mentioned,an Elizabethor a Mary,
a
queen or
a
great
lady.
But
by
no
possible
means
could
middle-classwomen
with
nothing
but
brainsand
character
t
their
command
have
taken
part n
any
one
of
the
great
movements
which,
brought
together,
constitute
he
historian's
view
of
the
past.
But that
is
exactly
what
Anne
Bradstreet
did,
only
about a
quarter-century
after
the
death of
Queen
Elizabeth. As
a
middle-class
woman
certainly
equipped with brains and character, she was privileged to take part in
a
great
movement,
the
opening
up
of
the
new
world of
North
America.
And in
so
doing she
liberated
herself
not
only
as a woman
and a
Puritan,
but also
as
a
poet.
If
Anne
Bradstreet
had
remained
in
England
she
might,
indeed,
have
written
verse
and
had
it
published.
But it
seems
logical
to
suppose
that
much
of
the
passion
and
determination
that
went
into
what
she wrote
in
New
England
would
have
been
lacking,
or
largely
watered
down
by
the
traditional
confinements and artificial multiplicity of the kind of life
she
would
have led in
the
mother
country.
She
appears
to
have
had
no
counterpart,
at
any
rate,
among
the
educated
Puritan
women
of
her
time
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376
WILLIAM AND
MARY QUARTERLY
who remained in England,
and the
work of her
nearest, though younger,
contemporary,Katharine
Philips,
was marred by a super-imposed
classical
formalism which makes
it all but
unreadable today.
It would seem that a subtle but profound change took place in the
attitude
of the pioneering
men toward the
women who
accompanied
them into
the forests
of New England.
During the first
cruel winters
when famine, disease, the lurking
Indians and
the inescapable
cold were
ever-present
enemies, the men and
women fought
shoulder to shoulder,
and when the worst battles
were over
the survivorslooked at
one
another
as tested
human beings rather than
as members
of a superior and
an
inferior
sex. The New
England men were severe
with their
wives, as
with
themselves, in spiritual and moral discipline, as witness the banishment
of Anne
Hutchinson and the treatment
of the
Quakers regardlessof sex.
But
through.
their very masculine
dependence
on their women
for
devo-
tion,
encouragement and shared
planning and
maintenance
of their
homes and
communities, they gained
a new respect
for the courage
and
faithful endurance
of the supposedly delicate
creatures who
had left
the
amenities of civilization to consecrate
their talents
and abilities
to
the
making of another
and better England
and the building of a
new genera-
tion of pioneers. It is not therefore strange that Anne Bradstreet,while
discharging
her
obligations
to her
family and community
without short-
coming or
complaint,
should have been permitted,
even encouraged,
by
her "Dear
and loving
Husband" and their friends
to express
her creative
impulse
without any
serious opposition. That
the sound
of "carping
tongues" was not altogether
absent
from her ears Anne Bradstreet
tells
us
herself,
but after all was it not
natural that
somebody
should carp,
from sheer
jealousy perhaps, at a
capable wife
and mother who was also
clever and fortunate enough to be a successful writer?
It
seems
to
me
not
accidental but
logical that
the first serious English
poetess
brought
her
talent
to fruition in the sharp
fresh air
of Massachu-
setts rather than
in the man-made atmosphere
of England. Intense
ex-
perience
is the raw material
of
poetry;
it
was
also the daily companion
of the
seventeenth-century
New
Englander.
Sudden
death
was a common-
place;
new
life
a
necessity.
Anne Bradstreet's
family of eight children
was unusual
only
in
that
all of them
lived
to
grow
to maturity;
most
parents in those days buried more infants than their counterpartsof today
consider
a reasonable
hatching
of
hostages
to
fortune. Even in
such
frail
bodies
as
Anne
Bradstreet's,
f
they
survived at
all,
the
physical
rigors
of
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THE
TENTH
MUSE
377
daily
life bred a
sort of
tough
resilience, and the
ever-present
unpredictables
of this
new
existence kept
the
wits sharp
and
the senses
constantlyon the
alert. And
the
unfailing,
dauntless trust
in the
wisdom and
goodness of
God was a rock on which poetry and empire could alike be built. Samuel
Eliot
Morison
makes this
summation, in
Builders
of the
Bay
Colony:
This
was the
strengthof the
pioneer
woman,
that
she
couldemploy
every
adversity o some
spiritual
advantage,
and make
good
tome
out of
evil.
Anne
Bradstreet
was a
true
daughter
of the
Puritan
breed,
whose soul
was
made
strongby
faith.
From the
day her
heartfell
at
beholdingNew
England,to her
last
wastingillness,
she
hadmany,
very
manydays
of
pain;but
utteredno
com-
plaint. She was unusual, and so far as we know unique, amongthe men and
women of
the first
generation, n that
her
character,her
thoughts
and
her
re-
ligion
were
expressed n
poetrythat
has
endured,
and
will endure.
Certainly
no
Englishwoman
writing before Anne
Bradstreet created
a
body
of verse
which
has been
remembered
with
so
much
respect,
or has
given so much
quiet
and
moving pleasure
to the
generations that
came
after
her.
And,
if
it
be
granted
that
historically
she
deserves
the earliest
place among the women poets of England, surely no man, however
jealous
of
his sex's
poetic
prerogative,
could
begrudge
a
niche
in
his honor-
able
company
to
the
woman
who wrote these
lines
to
her
husband:
How
soon, my
Dear,
death
may my
steps
attend,
How soon't
may
be
thy
lot
to
lose
thy
friend
We
both are
ignorant, yet
love
bids
me
These farewell lines
to recommend
to
thee,
That when that knot's unty'd thatmade us one,
I
may
seem
thine,
who in
effect am
none.
And
if
I
see
not
half
my
dayes
that's
due,
What
nature
would,
God
grant
to
yours
and you;
The
many
faults that
well
you
know I
have,
Let
be
interr'd
in
my
oblivion's
grave;
If
any
worth or virtuewere
in
me,
Let that live
freshly
in
thy
memory
And when thou feel'st no
grief,
as
I
no
harms,
Yet
love
thy dead,
who
long lay
in
thine
arms.