Mirror of her Age, Glory of her Sex, whose Heaven-born-Soul its earthly Shrine, chose its native home, and was taken to its Rest upon 16th Sept. 1672.
Ask not why hearts turn Magazines of passions,
And why that grief is clad in several fashions;
Why she on progress goes, and doth not borrow
The small'st respite from the extreams of sorrow,
Her misery is got to such an height,
As makes the earth groan to support its weight,
Such storms of woe, so strongly have beset her,
She hath no place for worse, nor hope for better
Her comfort is, if any for her be,
That none can shew more cause of grief then she.
Ask not why some in mournfull black are clad;
The sun is set, there needs must be a shade.
Ask not why every face a sadness shrowdes;
The setting Sun ore-cast us hath with Clouds.
Ask not why the great glory of the Skye
That gilds the stars with heavenly Alchamy,
Which all the world doth lighten with his Rayes,
The Persian God, the Monarch of the dayes;
Ask not the reason of his extasie,
Paleness of late, in midnoon Majesty,
Why that the pale fac'd Empress of the night
Disrob'd her brother of his glorious light.
Did not the language of the stars foretel
A mournfull Scoene when they with tears did Swell?
Did not the glorious people of the Skye
Seem sensible of future misery?
Did not the low'ring heavens seem to express
The worlds great lose and their unhappiness?
Behold how tears flow from the learned hill,
How the bereaved Nine do daily fill
The bosom of the fleeting Air with groans,
And wofull Accents, which witness their Moanes.
How doe the Goddesses of verse, the learned quire
Lament their rival Quill, which all admire?
Could Maro's Muse but hear her lively strain,
He would condemn his works to fire again,
Methinks I hear the Patron of the Spring,
The unshorn Deity abruptly sing.
Some doe for anguish weep, for anger I
That Ignorance should live, and Art should die.
Black, fatal, dismal, inauspicious day,
Unblest forever by Sol's precious Ray,
Be it the first of Miseries to all;
Or last of Life, defam'd for Funeral.
When this day yearly comes, let every one,
Cast in their urne, the black and dismal stone,
Succeeding years as they their circuit goe,
Leap o'er this day, as a sad time of woe.
Farewell my Muse, since thou hast left thy shrine,
I am unblest in one, but blest in nine.
Fair Thespian Ladyes, light your torches all,
Attend your glory to its Funeral,
To court her ashes with a learned tear,
A briny sacrifice, let not a smile appear.
Grave Matron, whoso seeks to blazon thee,
Needs not make use of witts false Heraldry;
Whoso should give thee all thy worth would swell
So high, as'twould turn the world infidel.
Had he great Maro's Muse, or Tully's tongue,
Or raping numbers like the Thracian Song,
In crowning of her merits he would be
Sumptuously poor, low in Hyperbole.
To write is easy; but to write on thee,
Truth would be thought to forfeit modesty.
He'l seem a Poet that shall speak but true;
Hyperbole's in others, are thy due.
Like a most servile flatterer he will show
Though he write truth, and make the Subject, You.
Virtue ne'er dies, time will a Poet raise
Born under better Stars, shall sing thy praise.
Praise her who list, yet he shall be a debtor
For Art ne're feigned, nor Nature fram'd a better.
Her virtues were so great, that they do raise
A work to trouble fame, astonish praise.
When as her Name doth but salute the ear,
Men think that they perfections abstract hear.
Her breast was a brave Pallace, a Broad-street,
Where all heroick ample thoughts did meet,
Where nature such a Tenement had tane,
That others Souls, to hers, dwelt in a lane.
Beneath her feet, pale envy bites her chain,
And poison Malice, whetts her sting in vain.
Let every Laurel, every Myrtel bough
Be stript for leaves t'adorn and load her brow.
Victorious wreaths, which 'cause they never fade
Wise elder times for Kings and Poets made
Let not her happy Memory e're lack
Its worth in Fame's eternal Almanack,
Which none shall read, but straight their lots deplore,
And blame their Fates they were not born before.
Do not old men rejoyce their Fates did last,
And infants too, that theirs did make such hast,
In such a welcome time to bring them forth,
That they might be a witness to her worth.
Who undertakes this subject to commend
Shall nothing find so hard as how to end.
Finis & Non,
JOHN NORTON.
Forty years of wedded life, and a devotion that remained unaltered to the end, inclined Simon Bradstreet to a longer period of mourning than most Puritan husbands seemed to have submitted to, but four years after her death, the husband, at seventy-three, still as hale and well-preserved as many a man of fifty, took to himself another wife.
She was the widow of Captain Joseph Gardner of Salem, killed in the attack on the Narragansett fort in December, 1675, and is described by her step-son Simon, in his diary as "a Gentl. of very good birth and education, and of great piety and prudence." Of her prudence there could hardly be a doubt, for as daughter and sister of Emanuel and George Downing, she had had before her through all her early years, examples of shrewdness and farsightedness for all personal ends, that made the names of both, an offence then and in later days. But no suspicion of the tendencies strong in both father and son, ever rested on Mistress Gardner, who was both proud and fond of her elderly husband, and who found him as tender and thoughtful a friend as he had always been to the wife of his youth. For twenty-one years he passed from honor to honor in the Colony, living in much state, though personally always abstemious and restrained, and growing continually in the mildness and toleration, from which his contemporaries more and more diverged. Clear-sighted, and far in advance of his time, his moderation hindered any chafing or discontent, and his days, even when most absorbed in public interests, held a rare severity and calm. No act of all Bradstreet's life brought him more public honors than his action against Andros, whose tyranny had roused every man in New England to protest and revolt. Almost ninety years old, he met the deputation who came to consult him, and set his hand to a letter, which held the same possibilities and was in many senses, the first Declaration of Independence. From the Town House in Boston went out the handbill, printed in black letter and signed by fifteen names, the old patriarch heading the list. Bancroft, who is seldom enthusiastic, tells the story of the demand upon Andros of immediate surrender of the government and fortifications, and the determination of the passionate and grasping soldier to resist.
"Just then the Governor of the Colony, in office when the charter was abrogated, Simon Bradstreet, glorious with the dignity of four-score years and seven, one of the early emigrants, a magistrate in 1630, whose experience connected the oldest generation with the new, drew near the town-house, and was received with a great shout from the free men. The old magistrates were reinstated, as a council of safety; the whole town rose in arms, with the most unanimous resolution that ever inspired a people; and a declaration read from the balcony, defending the insurrection as a duty to God and the country. 'We commit our enterprise,' it is added, 'to Him who hears the cry of the oppressed, and advise all our neighbors, for whom we have thus ventured ourselves, to joyn with us in prayers and all just actions for the defence of the land.' On Charlestown side, a thousand soldiers crowded together; and the multitude would have been longer if needed. The governor vainly attempting to escape to the frigate was, with his creatures, compelled to seek protection by submission; through the streets where he had first displayed his scarlet coat and arbitrary commission, he and his fellows were marched to the town-house and thence to prison. All the cry was against Andros and Randolph. The castle was taken; the frigate was mastered; the fortifications occupied."
Once more Massachusetts assembled in general court, and the old man, whose blood could still tingle at wrong, was called again to the chair of state, filling it till the end of all work came suddenly, and he passed on, leaving a memory almost as tenderly preserved as that of "the beloved governor," John Winthrop.
In the ancient burial place at Salem may still be seen the tomb of the old man who had known over sixty years of public service.
SIMON BRADSTREET.
Armiger, exordine Senatoris, in colonia Massachusettensi ab anno 1630, usque ad anum 1673. Deinde ad anum 1679, Vice-Gubernator. Denique ad anum 1686, ejusdem coloniae, communi et constanti populi suffragio, Gubernator. Vis, judicio Lynceario preditus; guem nec numma, nec honos allexit. Regis authoritatem, et populi libertatem, aequa lance libravit. Religione cerdatus, vita innocuus, mundum et vicit, et deseriut, 27 die, Martii, A. D. 1697. Annog, Guliel, 3t ix, et Aet, 94.