In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Anne Bradstreet Who Deceased June 20, 1669, Being Three Years and Seven Months Old

With troubled heart and trembling hand I write,

The heavens have changed to sorrow my delight.
How oft with disappointment have I met,
When I on fading things my hopes have set.
Experience might ‘fore this have made me wise,
To value things according to their price.
Was ever stable joy yet found below?
Or perfect bliss without mixture of woe?
I knew she was but as a withering flower,
That’s here today, perhaps gone in an hour;
Like as a bubble, or the brittle glass,
Or like a shadow turning as it was.
More fool then I to look on that was lent
As if mine own, when thus impermanent.
Farewell dear child, thou ne’er shall come to me,
But yet a little while, and I shall go to thee;
Mean time my throbbing heart’s cheered up with this:
Thou with thy Saviour art in endless bliss.

-- Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), British born American Puritan poet; first woman poet to gain acclaim in the New World and New England. She emigrated to America in 1630 with her father and her husband aboard the Arbella and settled in Ipswich, MA. She bore eight children between 1632-1655. From her book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America.

This elegy, one of several she wrote during the catastrophic year of 1669, was written when her namesake grandchild died, and is remarkable for its bitterness indirectly aimed at God, and is representative of her struggle with accepting the Puritan belief that death was merely the passage to eternal joy in Heaven.

Due to the eventual longer lifespans of Puritans in the new World as compared to Europe once the colonies were established, it was said that "New England invented grandparents."

You can find excellent commentary on this poem by Janice Miller Porter here.

Before the Birth of One of Her Children

All things within this fading world hath end,
Adversity doth still our joyes attend;
No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,
But with death’s parting blow is sure to meet.
The sentence past is most irrevocable,
A common thing, yet oh inevitable.
How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend,
How soon’t may be thy Lot to lose thy friend,
We are both ignorant, yet love bids me
These farewell lines to recommend to thee,
That when that knot’s untied that made us one,
I may seem thine, who in effect am none.
And if I see not half my dayes that’s due,
What nature would, God grant to yours and you;
The many faults that well you know I have
Let be interr’d in my oblivious grave;
If any worth or virtue were in me,
Let that live freshly in thy memory
And when thou feel’st no grief, as I no harms,
Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms.
And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains
Look to my little babes, my dear remains.
And if thou love thyself, or loved’st me,
These o protect from step Dames injury.
And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,
With some sad sighs honour my absent Herse;
And kiss this paper for thy loves dear sake,
Who with salt tears this last Farewel did take.

-- Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), British born American Puritan poet; first woman poet to gain acclaim in the New World and New England. She emigrated to America in 1630 with her father and her husband aboard the Arbella and settled in Ipswich, MA. She bore eight children between 1632-1655. From her book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America.

My Thankful Heart with Glorying Tongue

My thankfull heart with glorying Tongue
Shall celebrate Thy name,
Who hath restor’d, redeem’d, recur’d
From sickness, death, and Pain.

I cry’d thou seem’st to make some stay,
I sought more earnestly;
And in due time thou succour’st me
And sent’st me help from High.

Lord, whilst my fleeting time shall last,
Thy Goodness let me Tell.
And new Experience I have gain’d,
My future Doubts repell.

An humble, faitefull life, O Lord,
For ever let me walk;
Let my obedience testefye,
My Praise lies not in Talk.

Accept, O Lord, my simple mite,
For more I cannot give;
What Thou bestow’st I shall restore,
For of thine Alms I live.

--Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), early colonial Puritan poet, 1661

A rainbow on the floor of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.