Anne Bradstreet and Her Time

by Helen Campbell

Though this is little more than rhymed chronology, there are curious reminders here and there of the spirit of the time. Gentle as was Anne Bradstreet's nature, it seemed to her quite natural to write of the "bloody, Popish, hellish miscreants"—

"Oh may you live, and so you will I trust,
To see them swill in blood untill they burst."

There was reason it was true; the same reason that brings the same thought to-day to women on the far Western frontiers, for the Irish butcheries had been as atrocious as any Indian massacre our own story holds. The numbers butchered were something appaling, and Hume writes: "By some computations, those who perished by all these cruelties are supposed to be a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand; by the most moderate, and probably the most reasonable account, they are made to amount to forty thousand—-if this estimation itself be not, as is usual in such cases, somewhat exaggerated."

Irish ferocity was more than matched by English brutality. Puritanism softened many features of the Saxon character, but even in the lives of the most devoted, there is a keen relish for battle whether spiritual or actual, and a stern rejoicing in any depth of evil that may have overtaken a foe. In spite of the tremendous value set upon souls, indifference to human life still ruled, and there was even a certain relish, if that life were an enemy's, in turning it over heartily and speedily to its proper owner, Satan. Anne Bradstreet is no exception to the rule, and her verses hold various fierce and unexpected outbursts against enemies of her faith or country. The constant discussion of mooted points by the ministers as well as people, made each man the judge of questions that agitated every mind, and problems of all natures from national down to town meeting debates, were pondered over in every Puritan home. Cotton's interest in detail never flagged, and his influence was felt at every point in the Colony, and though Ipswich, both in time and facilities for reaching it, was more widely separated from Boston than Boston now is from the remotest hamlet on Cape Cod, there is no doubt that Nathaniel Ward and Mr. Cotton occasionally met and exchanged views if not pulpits, and that the Bradstreet family were not entirely cut off from intercourse. When Nathaniel Ward became law-maker instead of settled minister, it was with John Cotton that he took counsel, and Anne undoubtedly thought of the latter what his grandson Cotton Mather at a later day wrote. "He was indeed a most universal scholar, and a living system of the liberal arts and a walking library."

Walking libraries were needed, for stationary ones were very limited. Governer Dudley's, one of the largest in the Colony, contained between fifty and sixty books, chiefly on divinity and history, and from the latter source Anne obtained the minute historical knowledge shown in her rhymed account of "The Four Monarchies." It was to her father that she owed her love of books. She calls him in one poem, "a magazine of history," and at other points, her "guide," and "instructor," writing:

"Most truly honored and as truly dear,
If worth in me, or ought I do appear,
Who can of right better demand the same?
Then may your worthy self from whom it came?"

As at Cambridge, and in far greater degree, she was cut off from much that had held resources there. At the worst, only a few miles had separated them from what was fast becoming the center and soul of the Colony. But Ipswich shut them in, and life for both Mistress Dudley and her daughter was an anxious one. The General Court called for the presence of both Dudley and Bradstreet, the latter spending much of his time away, and some of the tenderest and most natural of Anne Bradstreet's poems, was written at this time, though regarded as too purely personal to find place in any edition of her poems. The quiet but fervent love between them had deepened with every year, and though no letters remain, as with Winthrop, to evidence the steady and intense affection of both, the "Letter to her Husband, absent upon some Publick employment," holds all the proof one can desire.

"My head, my heart, mine Eyes, my life, my more,
My joy, my Magazine of earthly store.
If two be one as surely thou and I,
How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lie?
So many steps, head from the heart to sever,
If but a neck, soon would we be together;
I like the earth this season mourn in black
My Sun is gone so far in 's Zodiack,
Whom whilst I joyed, nor storms nor frosts I felt,
His warmth such frigid colds did cause to melt.
My chilled limbs now nummed lye forlorn,
Return, return sweet Sol, from Capricorn;
In this dead time, alas, what can I more
Than view those fruits which through thy heat I bore?
Which sweet contentment yield me for a space,
True, living Pictures of their Father's face.
O strange effect! now thou art Southward gone,
I weary grow, the tedious day so long;
But when thou Northward to me shalt return,
I wish my Sun may never set but burn
Within the Cancer of my glowing breast.
The welcome house of him my dearest guest.
Where ever, ever stay, and go not thence
Till nature's sad decree shall call thee hence;
Flesh of thy flesh, bone of thy bone,
I here, thou there, yet both are one."

A second one is less natural in expression, but still holds the same longing.

Phoebus, make haste, the day's too long, be gone,
The silent nights, the fittest time for moan;
But stay this once, unto my suit give ear,
And tell my griefs in either Hemisphere.
(And if the whirling of thy wheels don't drown'd)
The woeful accents of my doleful sound,
If in thy swift Carrier thou canst make stay,
I crave this boon, this Errand by the way,
Commend me to the man more lov'd than life,
Shew him the sorrows of his widowed wife;
My dumpish thoughts, my groans, my brakish tears,
My sobs, my longing hopes, my doubting fears,
And if he love, how can he there abide?
My Interest's more than all the world beside.
He that can tell the Starrs or Ocean sand,
Or all the grass that in the Meads do stand,
The leaves in th' woods, the hail or drops of rain,
Or in a corn field number every grain,
Or every mote that in the sunshine hops,
May count my sighs, and number all my drops:
Tell him, the countless steps that thou dost trace,
That once a day, thy Spouse thou mayst embrace;
And when thou canst not treat by loving mouth,
Thy rays afar salute her from the south.
But for one month I see no day (poor soul)
Like those far scituate under the pole,
Which day by day long wait for thy arise,
O, how they joy, when thou dost light the skyes.
O Phoebus, hadst thou but thus long from thine,
Restrained the beams of thy beloved shine,
At thy return, if so thou could'st or durst
Behold a Chaos blacker than the first.
Tell him here's worse than a confused matter,
His little world's a fathom under water,
Nought but the fervor of his ardent beams
Hath power to dry the torrent of these streams
Tell him I would say more but cannot well,
Oppressed minds, abruptest tales do tell.
Now post with double speed, mark what I says
By all our loves, conjure him not to stay."