2. Poetry The Puritans cared little for poetry; life was too serious a business to be wasted in courting the muses; besides, men were giving all their energy to conquering the wilderness and regulating their communities. Even in Old England Puritanism had produced little literature; leave out Milton and Bunyan, and you hunt in vain for poets and almost in vain for prose writers of distinction. The Bible, the one book that the Puritans knew intimately, contains much poetry of the highest order, but the New England fathers were too much interested in the letter of Scripture to catch its poetic spirit; they did not conceive of the Bible as great literature as well as a great spiritual guidebook; indeed, the literary value of the Bible is essentially a modern discovery. Such scattered verse as we find in early colonial literature very largely consists of epitaphs, elegies, memorials, and crude attempts to put the Psalms into singable meter, resulting in performances both lugubrious and wooden and not without an element of the grotesque. The most noteworthy collection of verse is the Bay Psalm Book, a metrical version of the Psalms by several Massachusetts ministers whose expressed purpose was to make a literal rendering. They seemed to feel that verse was a sort of necessary evil as a vehicle of religious truth, and they made the translation as literal as possible so as not to offend the consciences of those that wished to "sing in Sion the Lord's songs of prayse according to his own wille." It required considerable argument, indeed, from one of their leading ministers to convince some of the more conscientious members of the churches that there was Scriptural authority for singing Psalms in meeting. The Bay Psalm Book, aside from the fact that it is a literary curiosity, is worth remembering as the first book printed in America; it was issued in 1640 from the Cambridge press set up the year before. The following verses from this collection prove how faithful the translators were to their assertion in the preface that "God's altar needs not our polishings": Blessed man, that in th' advice nor stånd in sinners way, nor sit is his longing delight: -From Psalm I. Through all the earth their line A Tabernacle hee in them pitched for the Sun, Who Bridegroom like from's chamber goes glad Giants-race to run. From heavens utmost end, his course and compassing; to ends of it, and from the heat thereof is hid nothing. --From Psalm XIX. A comparison of these lines with the sonorous music of the King James version will make it clear that the worthy divines of Massachusetts had little sense for "harmonious numbers." The casual reader of to-day finds far more entertainment, however, in some of the memorial verses of that time than in the Bay Psalm Book. In England it was the day of "fantastic" verse, whether grave or gay, and several of the New England clergy tried their hands at epitaphs and elegies, with results which were no doubt serious enough to the Puritan fathers but which, in a few cases at least, strike the modern reader as little short of ridiculous. Here, for instance, are ten lines from an elegy on the Reverend John Cotton; A living, breathing Bible; tables where Gospel and law in's heart had each its column; The epitaph of Reverend Jonathan Mitchell of Cambridge, reads thus: Here lies the darling of his time, Mitchell expired in his prime; Was four years short of forty-seven, Was found full ripe and plucked for heaven. Another clergyman, Samuel Stone, had his name played upon after death in the following tribute by a brother minister: A stone more than the Ebenezer famed; But in this time of fantastic rhyming and conceit-making, when "mortuary verses," as Lowell calls them, flourished like the leaves of the funeral cypress, there were two writers of verse who merit a special consideration, Anne Bradstreet and Michael Wigglesworth. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672). The first writer in American literature to deserve in any true sense the name of poet was 1Secret treasures. Anne Bradstreet, daughter of one governor of Massachusetts and wife of another. She was born in England; later, her father, Thomas Dudley, became the head of the Puritan commonwealth; at the age of sixteen she married Simon Bradstreet, afterwards governor. Mrs. Bradstreet spent most of her life near Andover; she was the mother of eight children; her household and general social duties were heavy and she suffered from ill-health; still, she found time to read far more than most women of the time and, what is still more remarkable, to compose a large amount of verse. She was familiar with the works of the French poet Du Bartas, the verses of the English poet Quarles, the writings of Sir Philip Sidney, and apparently with those of Edmund Spenser. Though born four years before Shakespeare died, it cannot be proved, as some critics have sought to do, that she read the plays of the great dramatist. Mrs. Bradstreet was a refined and intelligent woman whose devout Puritanism did not prevent her attainment of a generous literary culture. The works of this early New England poetess were published in 1650 in London, whither the manuscript had been taken by her brother-in-law, the Reverend John Woodbridge, without the consent of the author. She was therefore in no wise responsible for the exalted title on this first edition of her poems-The Tenth Muse lately Sprung up in America. Her own countrymen evidently liked the title, and among her admirers Mrs. Bradstreet was proudly hailed as "The Tenth Muse." Fulsome words of praise were spoken by such leading men of the colony as Cotton Mather, who called her verses "a monument to her memory beyond the stateliest marbles"; and by President Rogers, of Harvard, who declared himself "sunk in a sea of bliss" and "weltering in delight" while reading them. Posterity has failed to share the enthusiasm of these loyal gentlemen, and the verses of the "Tenth Muse" long ago fell into neglect; the labored figurative speech, the straining after "conceits," and the moralizings of Mrs. Bradstreet's more ambitious efforts, which greatly edified the Puritan conscience, have no charm for us moderns. The main body of her verse consists of five poems: "The Four Elements," "The Four Humours in Man's Constitution," "The Four Ages of Man," "The Four Seasons of the Year," and "The Four Monarchies." The last of these "quaternions," as they have been mathematically designated, is a metrical paraphrase of Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World. When we leave this dreary didactic verse and turn to Mrs. Bradstreet's later poems of a more personal and local nature, we are rewarded. The best of these is "Contemplations,' certain stanzas of which show real feeling and a fresh appreciation of country sights and sounds. Here we may discover the faint beginnings of American nature poetry, wherein are reflected the glories of the wildwoods, the gayety of flowers, and the music of birds' songs. One heartily wishes that Anne Bradstreet, talented as she undoubtedly was, had left her moralizing and "grave dignity" to the less gifted and had contented herself with making more stanzas like these: Under the cooling shadow of a stately Elm I once that loved the shady woods so well, Now thought the rivers did the trees excel, And if the sun would ever shine, there would I dwell. While musing thus with contemplation fed, And thousand fancies buzzing in my brain, The sweet-tongued Philomel1 percht o'er my head, Which rapt me so with wonder and delight, I judged my hearing better than my sight, And wished me wings with her a while to take my flight. The dawning morn with songs thou dost prevent,' |