So Bartas like thy fine spun Poems been,
That Bartas name will prove an Epicene.
ANOTHER.
ANNA BRADSTREET. ARTES BRED NEAT AN.
There follows, what can only be defined as a gushing tribute from John Rogers, also metrical, though this was not included until the second edition.
"Twice I have drunk the nectar of your lines," he informs her, adding that, left "thus weltring in delight," he is scarcely capable of doing justice either to his own feelings, or the work which has excited them, and with this we come at last to the dedication in which Anne herself bears witness to her obligations to her father.
To her most Honoured Father, Thomas Dudley, Esq; these humbly presented,
Dear Sir of late delighted with the sight
Of your four Sisters cloth'd in black and white.
Of fairer Dames the Sun n'er Saw the face,
Though made a pedestal for Adams Race;
Their worth so shines in these rich lines you show
Their paralels to finde I scarely know
To climbe their Climes, I have nor strength nor skill
To mount so high requires an Eagle's quill;
Yet view thereof did cause my thoughts to soar,
My lowly pen might wait upon these four
I bring my four times four, now meanly clad
To do their homage, unto yours, full glad;
Who for their Age, their worth and quality
Might seem of yours to claim precedency;
But by my humble hand, thus rudely pen'd
They are, your bounden handmaids to attend
These same are they, from whom we being have
These are of all, the Life, the Muse, the Grave;
These are the hot, the cold, the moist, the dry,
That sink, that swim, that fill, that upwards fly,
Of these consists our bodies, Clothes and Food,
The World, the useful, hurtful, and the good,
Sweet harmony they keep, yet jar oft times
Their discord doth appear, by these harsh rimes
Yours did contest for wealth, for Arts, for Age,
My first do shew their good, and then their rage.
My other foures do intermixed tell
Each others faults, and where themselves excel;
How hot and dry contend with moist and cold,
How Air and Earth no correspondence hold,
And yet in equal tempers, how they 'gree
How divers natures make one Unity
Something of all (though mean) I did intend
But fear'd you'ld judge Du Bartas was my friend.
I honour him, but dare not wear his wealth
My goods are true (though poor) I love no stealth
But if I did I durst not send them you
Who must reward a Thief, but with his due.
I shall not need, mine innocence to clear
These ragged lines will do 't when they appear;
On what they are, your mild aspect I crave
Accept my best, my worst vouchsafe a Grave.
From her that to your self, more duty owes
Then water in the boundess Ocean flows.
Anne Bradstreet.
March 20, 1642.
The reference in the second line, to "your four Sisters, clothed in black and white," is to a poem which the good governor is said to have written in his later days, "on the Four Parts of the World," but which a happy fate has spared us, the manuscript having been lost or destroyed, after his death. His daughter's verse is often as dreary, but both dedication and prologue admit her obligations to du Bartas, and that her verse was modeled upon his was very plain to Nathaniel Ward, who called her a "right du Bartas girl," with the feeling that such imitation was infinitely more creditable to her than any originality which she herself carefully disclaims in the
PROLOGUE.
1