I wist not what to wish, yet sure thought I, Sure he is goodness, wisdome, glory, light, Then on a stately Oak I cast mine Eye, 15 Whose ruffling top the Clouds seem'd to aspire; How long since thou wast in thine Infancy? Thy strength, and stature, more thy years admire, Hath hundred winters past since thou wast born? Or thousand since thou brakest thy shell of horn, 20 If so, all these as nought, Eternity doth scorn. 70 MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH (1631-1705) The laureate of Puritanism was Michael Wigglesworth whose religious classic poem, The Day of Doom, first published in 1662, was more widely read in America in proportion to the population than any book that has been published since, save only the Bible itself. Within a few years it went through no less than nine editions in New England and two in Great Britain. Its author had come to America with his parents when he was seven years old, had been graduated from Harvard College at the age of twenty, and had written his poetry as recreation from his duties as pastor of the church at Malden which he was destined to serve for fifty years. Always frail,-"a little feeble shadow of a man" as the introductory note to his Day of Doom described him, he lived a remarkably active life, varying his pastoral duties not only with poetry but with the practice of medicine, till Cotton Mather, who preached his funeral sermon, could say, "Once his rare skill did all diseases heal." Undoubtedly he impressed himself upon his century more than any other man of his generation, not excepting even Mather. Children were compelled to learn his stanzas along with their catechism, ministers quoted him in their sermons to enforce their doctrines, and, according to Lowell, his book was the solace of every fireside, the flicker of the pine knots by which it was conned perhaps adding a livelier relish to its premonitions of eternal combustion." 66 One other small poetical work Wigglesworth published, Meat out of the Eater, or meditations concerning the Necessity, End, and Usefulness of Afflictions unto God's Children; all tending to prepare them for, and comfort them under the Cross, 1669. Vital as these books were in their own day, they are now mere curiosities of American literature. Their abundance of jigging rhymes reveal to us the poetical requirements of readers in Colonial days, and their fiery theological conceptions throw a flood of light upon the grim Puritan founders, of whom Hawthorne once said, "Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors, and let each generation thank him not less earnestly for being one step further from them in the march of ages." 1 |