The Bay Psalm Book

If poetry be rare among our forefathers, it is nevertheless true that the first English book printed in America passed for poetry with them, and for poetry of an edifying and noble type. “The Whole Booke of Psalmes”, commonly known as the “Bay Psalm Book”, was printed on the new press at Cambridge in 1640. This work, designed to provide a metrical version of the Psalms of David, to be used in the churches, contains the joint efforts of three New England ministers -- Richard Mather of Dorchester, Thomas Welde, and John Eliot of Roxbury. “Bay Psalm Book” served its sacred purpose in the New England churches for more than a century.

Anne Bradstreet, 1613-72.

From the midst of the crude and sombre compositions of Puritan verse-makers, there arose one writer for whom in some measure the poetical gift may be claimed. This was Anne Bradstreet. In 1650 the first volume of her poems was published in London. The quality of her mind is shown in her prose, but it was as a poet that she found fame. In her verse, she is influenced by the devotional poems of John Donne; of the Puritan poet, George Wither; and the deeply spiritual poetry of the saintly George Herbert. The verse of these minor English poets who flourished in the time of James and Charles I -- the period of Anne Bradstreet's girlhood and early womanhood -- was characterized by an unusual and fantastic style of thought and diction. These men are sometimes called the "metaphysical poets," because of this artificial quality and on account of their grotesque conceits. The work of the "Tenth Muse" shows the influence of this taste for a strained and laborious ingenuity of expression. Her longer works are didactic; so filled with the eager purpose to instruct and edify that the natural Puritan scruples regarding a woman's practice of the literary art were in large degree forgotten. “The Four Elements” and “The Four Seasons” are in the form of dialogue, wherein the speakers individually maintain their claims to preeminence; these poems are mechanical and heavy compositions, but show a facility of phrase and rhythm quite new to the readers of colonial verse. “The Four Monarchies”, her most ambitious poem, is a rhyming chronicle based upon Sir Walter Raleigh's “History of the World”. When Anne Bradstreet's poems were published, in 1650, they were received with extravagant praise in America; and following her death, not a few of her admirers essayed to express their appreciation in flattering verse.

Her best known and most attractive poem is “Contemplations”. It was written late in her life and is properly described as "a genuine expression of poetic feeling in the presence of nature."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16