Our literary historians commonly begin their story of
Colonial verse with the Bay Psalm Book (1640),
The Sp:ritual Ladder , by St John Climacus,
in 1535.") ?>
and after
critically examining its jolting lines they conclude that our
ancestors had no soul for poetry.
This is a sad and also an erroneous beginning;
for the simple fact is that the Bay Psalm Book was
never intended as poetry, as the translators
tell us plainly in their preface.
The book is a mere curiosity, and we would ignore it
here were it not for the fact that it has been so often quoted
"as a pitiful indication of the literary poverty of the days
and the land in which it was popular." 2
American Literature ,
II,
To understand this old relic, we must remember that the Colonists were a singing people, who used music in all their social gatherings. In their religious services they considered the wonderful poetry of the psalms most suitable for musical expression; and the first limitation placed on Richard Mather and his associates was that the Book of Psalms must be paraphrased in the meter of a few familiar tunes. The second limitation was even stricter. They were dealing with what they believed to be the Word of God, and their translation must give faithful account of every letter and accent, as a cashier is answerable for every penny that passes through his hands. Here is an average specimen of the result:
It needs no greater critic than Touchstone to tell us
that this is not poetry; but it can be smoothly sung
to some grand old short-meter tunes, and it is a
marvelously literal rendering of
the Hebrew
The first thing to
strike the sympathetic reader is that these stern,
practical settlers had a great hunger for poetry, a
longing for ideal expression which suggests the man who
cannot sing but whose feelings are deeply stirred when
listening to a hymn by many voices. Practically all our
Colonial writers felt the lyric impulse, and brightened
their dull pages with poetry. That their verse is of
poor quality may possibly arise from the fact that
their thought was too high, their feeling too deep for
poetic expression. God, freedom, duty, justice,
A second
Less important, but still significant, is the classic tendency of our early poetry, suggesting that high regard for scholarship which is such a striking feature of the crude American settlements. The first poems written here (1621) were some excellent metrical translations of the poet Ovid, by George Sandys of Virginia. The first verses of our native scholars were in Greek or Latin; and judging their work by the specimens preserved in Mather's Magnalia , it was of excellent quality, comparing favorably with that of foreign universities of the same period. We may deplore this tendency of our first scholars; but it proceeded from a noble ideal of the early church, that literature, like religion, is of universal interest and must be preserved in a universal language.
In 1650, when the Colonies were still in their infancy, there appeared in London an American book of poems with the following title:
"The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America: or Several Poems, Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and learning, full of Delight, Wherein Especially is Contained a Complete Discourse and Description of the Four Elements, Constitutions and Ages of Man, Seasons of the Year; Together with an Exact Epitome of the Four Monarchies, viz., the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, Roman; also a Dialogue between Old England and New Concerning the Late Troubles; with Divers Other Pleasant and Serious Poems. By a Gentlewoman in those parts."
The Tenth Muse thus blazoned was Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, who is remarkable in three ways: as the author of our first book of poems, as the most extravagantly praised writer of Colonial times, and as the first literary woman to win a reputation among her American and English contemporaries.
The author was a cultivated Puritan girl, daughter of Thomas Dudley, Governor of the Bay Colony. At sixteen she had married Simon Bradstreet, joined the company of wealthy Puritans who settled Boston, and from the refinement and comfort of her English home was suddenly transplanted to a cabin in the wilderness. Instead of the quiet English fields, she looked upon a rude clearing where corn sprouted amid the smoking stumps. Instead of the peaceful sounds that soothe all the senses in an English twilight, she heard the uncanny hooting of owls, the wail of the whippoorwill, the terrifying clamor of the wolf pack in the darkening woods. No wonder her sensitive nature rebelled at the change. Like Spenser in Ireland, she regarded herself as an exile, and like him she rose triumphant over her surroundings. "After I was convinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it," she tells us in one of her prose sketches.
In 1644 this frail exile held loyally at her husband's side as he pushed deeper into the wilderness. In the northern part of Andover, near the Merrimac, they made their pitch on a picturesque hillside, which is still known as the Bradstreet farm. Here she wrote her poems; but though she was the first American to win a literary reputation, we can hardly think of her as a literary woman. She had eight children to care for, and her writing was done in brief intervals of rest from the day's labor. So we are reminded of another woman who, in the same town, amid the same ceaseless household cares, finished Uncle Tom's Cabin , a book which moved the whole civilized world, some two centuries later.
It is a curiosity of Mrs. Bradstreet's first book that it contains hardly a suggestion of that early American life which now seems so romantic. In her pioneer experiences there was abundant material for epic and lyric poetry; but she never wrote them. The first touch of her pen sent her mind back to England on a holiday, and she simply copied what she had read there. So fully is she occupied with her English models that she does not see the wonderful nature about her, and writes of larks and nightingales instead of our familiar thrushes and bobolinks. Even in "A Love Letter" she speaks not by the heart but by the book:
Strange lines these from a woman who has just milked the cow and dropped the oaken door bar to protect the stock from wolves and Indians; but they are found by hundreds in Mrs. Bradstreet's poems. Curiously enough, the only reflection of real life in our first volume of poetry touches the question of woman's rights. After describing the glories of Queen Elizabeth, she takes this sly shot at man's superior wisdom:
In her later work our poet is plainly an American woman rather than an English exile. The Andover farm is now a home. Nature, at first wild and stern, grows intimate and kind; and our poet is less dependent on a library for inspiration. Her verse in consequence becomes more simple, more true; and though we may not call it excellent, we are interested in it as an early attempt to reflect life and human emotion in poetry. In the following lines from "Contemplation" the reader may note three significant things: that the thought and feeling are natural; that the flow of the verse suggests the melody of Spenser; and that we look not upon a foreign but upon the dear, familiar landscape of our own country:
The first and probably the greatest "sensation" in American literature appeared, not yesterday in a popular novel, but two and a half centuries ago, when, Wigglesworth published his Day of Doom (1662), a gloomy and terrible picture of the Last Judgment. Unlike the modern sensation, it had real power; it first startled attention and then held it firmly, and for nearly a century was the most widely read secular book in America. This in itself is warrant for us to examine it a little more closely than is commonly done.
The author of the poem, Michael
Wigglesworth, was minister of the church in Malden,
Massachusetts. In a funeral sermon, Cotton Mather calls
him "a feeble little shadow of a man"; but this is
one of Mather's queer compliments. It minimizes the
weak body to magnify the soul, which was mighty, and
the imagination, which was tremendous. Wigglesworth was
a lifelong sufferer from disease, and his own pain led
him to study medicine, that he might relieve the pains
of others. For years he was minister and physician to
the frontier town; and in the mortal sins and
sufferings of humanity his imagination saw only a
forecast of eternal
In short, Wigglesworth was a man doubly acquainted with suffering. He saw no good in this life, no hope save for a chosen few in the future; and he let a powerful but morbid imagination play about one of the most powerful and morbid theological systems that have influenced humanity. Here is the secret of the man and his book.
Wigglesworth's chief work is generally regarded as a mere literary curiosity; but there is, perhaps, a deeper meaning to be read in it. Our first criticism is reflected in a smile, for this terrible poem, dealing with stupendous themes, is set to a measure that suggests jigging or whistling:
It is obviously impossible to be impressed by anything
that runs to the tune of "Yankee Doodle," and our
first experience of the Day of Doom is like that of our
first
Our next impression is that, under the jigging lines and merciless theology of the Day of Doom, the soul of a poet is struggling blindly for expression. We have not quoted the most familiar and ferocious stanzas, because our repugnance at the ideas expressed prevents a just appreciation of the power of their expression; but one who can lay aside his prejudice finds many a fine line to suggest that, had Wigglesworth lived in a different environment, he might well have created a noble and enduring work. For he had the genius of an epic poet. His power is evident from the fact that he revived an old theme and made it live for a full century. Since the Miracle plays, which invariably ended with Domesday , many poets have written of the Last Judgment, and none of them compares in vigor or imaginative power with this "little feeble shadow of a man" in Malden.
Another characteristic of this poem is that it reflects the sternly logical trait which once dominated our politics as well as our theology, and which is reflected as strongly in Adams or Calhoun as in Wigglesworth or Edwards. All these men disregard emotions, start with an accepted premise, and drive straight to a conclusion. In the Day of Doom , God is simply a judge who must interpret a law without pity or favor. He is not Father, or Creator, but simply Logic. All classes of men appear before him, and each makes argument based upon the proposition that
which was the first sentence of the Primer in which Colonial children learned to read. The Judge refutes their claims by more logical arguments, and away they go to torment. Here is the nub of the whole poem. It confuses the true and the merely logical, forgetting that, if there be an error in the premise, every logical step leads farther away from the truth. The Day of Doom is, therefore, an epitome of the apparent strength and essential weakness of that mighty theological system which dominated a large part of our country in the early days. It shows the effect of such a system on a poet's imagination, just as The Freedom of the Will illustrates its influence on the human intellect.
If one's sympathy is touched at the sight of Wigglesworth, shackled by a terrible theology, one's whole heart must go out to Thomas Godfrey, a poet by instinct, whose youth was compassed with difficulties, and who died, like Keats, just as his powers reached maturity. He is one of the poets whom we measure not by his achievement but by his unfulfilled promise.
Godfrey was the son of a poor Philadelphia glazier and mathematician, whom we meet occasionally in Franklin's Autobiography . His early education was of the most primitive kind; and at thirteen, being left an orphan, he was "bound out" as an apprentice to learn the watchmaker's trade. For eight years he endured and hated this slavery, not because it made him work, but because it prevented him from following his poetic genius. At twenty-one he enlisted as a soldier in the French and Indian War, and served as a lieutenant under Washington. A few years later we find him, still wandering and unsatisfied, in North Carolina. Here, in intervals of hard labor, he wrote his Prince of Parthia , probably the first dramatic work printed on American soil; and here he died, with all his soul's ambition unfulfilled, in 1763. He had contributed many verses to the American Magazine , General Magazine , published by Franklin (1741), and the American Magazine , published by John Webbe, a few years later.") ?> and these were collected and published by his friend and fellow poet, Nathaniel Evans.
The slender volume called Juvenille Poems, with
The Prince of Parthia, a Tragedy (1765), contains all
of Godfrey's work. Judged simply as poetry, in
comparison with the works of English masters, these
verses are crude and immature; but the student has
other reasons for being interested in them. The very
titles suggest that a new spirit has entered American
literature. Here are odes, love songs,
The Prince of Parthia is Godfrey's last work, and in reading it the student will feel most regret at the author's untimely death. For, considering all the circumstances, it is a remarkable dramatic poem. The plot is admirably constructed; the action is vigorous; the characters are well drawn and consistent; the interest advances steadily to the climax; and throughout the drama there are many suggestions of genuine poetry. It is written in blank verse, "Marlowe's mighty line," and is thoroughly Elizabethan in spirit. Note, in the first act, these men who plot treason in a setting of storm and darkness:
Vardanes. Heavens! what a night is this! Lysias. 'T is filled with terror, Some dred event beneath this horror lurks, Ordained by fate's irrevocable doom,— Perhaps Arsaces' fall; and angry heaven Speaks it in thunder to the trembling world. Vardanes. Terror indeed! It seems as sickening Nature Had given her order up to general ruin: The heavens appear as one continued flame; Earth with her terror shakes; dim night retires, And the red lightning gives a dreadful day, While in the thunder's voice each sound is lost. Fear sinks the panting heart in every bosom; E'en the pale dead, affrighted at the horror, As though unsafe, start from their marble jails, And howling through the streets are seeking shelter. • • • • • • • • • Why rage the elements? They are not cursed Like me! Evanthe frowns not angry on them; The wind may play upon her beauteous bosom, Nor fear her chiding; light can bless her sense, And in the floating mirror she beholds Those beauties which can fetter all mankind. Lysias. My lord, forget her; tear her from your breast. Who, like the Phcenix, gazes on the sun, And strives to soar up to the glorious blaze, Should never leave ambition's brightest object, To turn and view the beauties of a flower. Vardanes. 0 Lysias, chide no more, for I have done. Yes, I'll forget the proud disdainful beauty; Hence with vain love. Ambition, now, alone Shall guide my actions. Since mankind delights To give me pain, I '11 study mischief too, And shake the earth, e'en like this raging tempest. • • Lysias. Then, haste to raise the tempest. My soul disdains this one eternal round, Where each succeeding day is like the former. Trust me, my noble prince, here is a heart Steady and firm to all your purposes; And here 's a hand that knows to execute Whate'er designs thy daring breast can form, Nor ever shake with fear.1
1 fn. The bombast of some of these lines suggests the influence of Marlowe; a few others are plainly copied from Shakespeare.
The publication of
Godfrey's poems (1765) at the end of the Colonial
period marks an epoch in the history of American
letters. Our earliest writers were all men of affairs;
they used literature as a means to an