THROUGH THE GROWING PRESENT WESTWARD THE STARRY PATH OF POESY LIES; HER GLORIOUS SPIRIT, LIKE THE EVENING CRESCENT, COMES ROUNDING UP THE SKIES. T. B. READ. The Ports and Poetry of America. BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. THE literary annals of this country before the revolution present few names entitled to a permanent celebrity. Many of the earlier colonists of New England were men of erudition, profoundly versed in the dogmas and discussions of the schools, and familiar with the best fruits of ancient genius and culture, and they perpetuated their intellectual habits and accomplishments among their immediate descendants; but they possessed neither the high and gentle feeling, the refined appreciation, the creating imagination, nor the illustrating fancy of the poet, and what they produced of real excellence was nearly all in those domains of experimental and metaphysical religion in which acuteness and strength were more important than delicacy or elegance. The "renowned" Mr. THOMAS SHEPHERD, the "pious" Mr. JOHN NORTON, and our own "judicious" Mr. HOOKER, are still justly esteemed in the churches for soundness in the faith and learned wisdoin, as well as for all the practical Christian virtues, and their more earnest "endeavours" they and several of their contemporaries frequently wrote excellent prose, an example of which may be found in the "attestation" to COTTON MATHER'S "Magnalia," by JOHN HIGGINSON, of Salem, which has not been surpassed in stately eloquence by any modern writing on the exodus of the Puritans. In a succeeding age that miracle of dialectical subtlety, EDWARDS, with MAYHEW, CHAUNCEY, BELLAMY, HOPKINS, and others, demonstrated the truth that there was no want of energy and activity in American mind in the direction to which it was most especially determined; but our elaborate metrical compositions, formal, pedantic, and quaint, of the seventeenth century and the earlier part of the eighteenth, are forgotten except by curious antiquaries, who see in them the least valuable relics of the first ages of American civilization. The remark has frequently been quoted from Mr. JEFFERSON, that when we can boast as long a history as that of England, we shall not have cause to shrink from a comparison of our literatures; but there very little reason in such a suggestion, since however unfavourable to the cultivation of any kind of refinement are the neces sarily prosaic duties of the planters of an empire in wilderness countries, in our case, when the planting was accomplished, and our ancestorschose to turn their attention to mental luxuries, they had but to enter at once upon the most advanced condition of taste, and the use of all those resources in literary art acquired or invented by the more happily situated scholars to whom had been confided in a greater degree the charge of the English language. When, however, the works of CHAUCER, SPENSER, SHAKSPEARE, and MILTON were as accessible as now, and the living harmonies of DRYDEN and POPE were borne on every breeze that fanned the cheek of an Englishman, the best praise which could be awarded to American verses was that they were ingeniously grotesque. There were displayed in them none of the graces which result from an aesthetical sensibility, but only such ponderous oddities, laborious conceits, and sardonic humors, as the slaves of metaphysi cal and theological scholasticism might be expected to indulge when yielding to transient and imperfect impulses of human nature. Our fathers were like the labourers of an architect; they planted deeply and strongly in religious virtue and useful science the foundations of an edifice, not dreaming how great and magnificent it was to be. They did well their part; it was not for them to fashion the capitals and adorn the arches of the temple. The first poem composed in this country was a description of New England, in Latin, by the Reverend WILLIAM MORRELL, who came to the Plymouth colony in 1623, and returned to London in the following year. It has been reprinted, with an English translation made by the author, in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Mr. GEORGE SANDYS, while "treasurer for the colony in Virginia," about the year 1625, wrote probably the earliest English verse produced in America. MICHAEL DRAYTON, author of the "Polyolbion," addressed to him an epistle in which he says "My worthy George, by industry and use, Let's see what lines Virginia will produce; Go on with OVID, as you have begun With the first five books: let your numbers run Glib as the former: so, it shall live long And do much honor to the English tongue." SANDYS completed in Virginia his translation of the "Metamorphoses," dating hence his dedication to the king, and probably wrote here ali his "Paraphrase upon the Psalms," and "Songs selected out of the Old and New Testaments." DRYDEN and POPE unite in praising his poems, and his version of the Book of Psalms has been described as incomparably the most poetical in the English language. The oldest rhythmical composition from the hand of a colonist which has come down to us is believed to have been written about the year 1630. The name of the author has been lost: "New England's annoyances, you that would know them, "But when the spring opens, we then take the hoe, "And now do our garments begin to grow thin, Our clothes we brought with us are apt to be torn, We have carrots and pumpkins and turnips and fish: We repair to the clam banks, and there we catch fish. We must be contented and think it no fault; Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips..... was plain translation, than to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrase, and so have attended to conscience rather than elegance, and fidelity rather than poetry, in translating Hebrew words into English language, and DAVID's poetry into English metre." COTTON MATHER laments the inelegance of the version, but declares that the Hebrew was most exactly rendered. After a second edition had been printed, President DUNSTER,* of Harvard College, assisted by Mr. RICHARD LYON, a tutor at Cambridge, attempted to improve it, and in their advertisement to the godly reader they state that they "had special eye both to the gravity of the phrase of sacred writ and sweetness of the verse." DUNSTER'S edition was reprinted twenty-three times in America, and several times in Scotland and England, where it was long used in the dissenting congregations. The following specimen is from the second edition: PSALM CXXXVII. "The rivers on of Babilon There when wee did sit downe, "Our harp wee did hang it amid, Upon the willow tree, Because there they that us away Led in captivitee "Requir'd of us a song, and thus Unto us then they said. "The LORD's Song sing can wee, being "Let cleave my tongue my pallate on If chiefe joyes o're I prize not more "Remember, LORD, Edom's sons' word, It rase, it rase, when as it was "Blest shall he be that payeth thee, Daughter of Babilon, Who must be waste, that which thou hast "O happie hee shall surely bee The little ones against the stones Mrs. ANNE BRADSTREET, "the mirror of her age and glory of her sex," as she is styled by a husband, Governor SIMON BRADSTREET, in 1630, contemporary admirer, came to America with her * THOMAS DUNSTER was the first president of Harvard College, and was inaugurated on the twenty-seventh of August, 1640. In 1654 he became unpopular on account of his public advocacy of anti-predobaptism, and was com pelled to resign. When he died, in 1659, he bequeathed legacies to the persons who were most active in causing his separation from the College. In the life of DUNSTER, The first book published in British America "The Psalms, in Metre, faithfully Translated, for the Use, Edification and Comfort of the Saints, in Public and Private, especially in New England," printed at Cambridge, in 1640. The version was made by THOMAS WELDE, of Roxbury, RICHARD MATHER, of Dorchester, and JOHN ELIOT, the famous apostle to the Indians. The translators seem to have been aware that it possessed but little poetical merit. "If," say they, in the Magnalia, is the following admonition, by Mr. in their preface, "the verses are not always so smooth and elegant as some may desire and expect, let them consider that God's altar needs not our polishings; for we have respected rather a SHEPHERD, to the authors of the New Psalm Book: "You Rorb'ry poets keep clear of the crime 11. and ten years afterward published her celebrated volume of "Several Poems, compiled with great variety of wit and learning, full of delight; wherein especially is contained a compleat Discourse and Description of the four Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Man, and Seasons of the Year, together with an exact Epitome of the Three First Monarchies, viz.: the Assyrian, Persian, and Grecian; and the Roman Commonwealth, from the beginning, to the end of the last King; with divers other Pleasant and Serious Poems." NORTON declares her poetry so fine that were MARO to hear it he would condemn his own works to the fire; the author of the "Magnalia" speaks of her poems as a "monument for her memory beyond the stateliest marble;" and JOHN Rogers, one of the presidents of Harvard College, in some verses addressed to her, says - "Your only hand those poesies did compose: Your head the source, whence all those springs did flow: Your voice, whence change's sweetest notes arose: Your feet that kept the dance alone, I trow: Then veil your bonnets, poetasters all, Strike, lower amain, and at these humbly fall, And deem yourselves advanced to be her pedestal. "Should all with lowly congees laurels bring, Waste Flora's magazine to find a wreath, Or Pineus' banks, 't were too mean offering; Your muse a fairer garland doth bequeath To guard your fairer front; here 't is your name Shall stand immarbled; this your little frame Shall great Colossus be, to your eternal fame.” She died in September, 1672. Of her history and writings a more ample account may be found in my "Female Poets of America." WILLIAM BRADFORD, the second governor of Plymouth, who wrote a " History of the People and Colony from 1602 to 1647," composed also "A Descriptive and Historical Account of New England, in Verse," which is preserved in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. When JOHN COTTON, an eminent minister of Boston, died, in 1652, BENJAMIN WOODBRIDGE, the first graduate of Harvard College, and afterward one of the chaplains of CHARLES the Second, wrote an elegiac poem, from a passage in which it is supposed FRANKLIN borrowed the idea of his celebrated epitaph on himself. COTTON, says WOODBRIDGE, was "A living, breathing Bible; tables where Both covenants at large engraven were; 0, what a monument of glorious worth, The lines of the Reverend JOSEPH CAPEN, on the death of Mr. JOHN FOSTER, an ingenious mathematician and printer, are yet more like the epitaph of FRANKLIN : "Thy body which no activeness did lack, Now's laid aside like an old almanack; But for the present only 's out of date, Twill have at length a far more active state: Yea, though with dust thy body soiled be, A fair edition, and of matchless worth, The excellent President URIAN OAKES, styled "the LACTANTIUS of New England," was one of following verses are from his elegy on the death the most distinguished poets of his time. The of THOMAS SHEPARD, minister of Charlestown: "Art, nature, grace, in him were all combined To show the world a matchless paragon; In whom of radiant virtues no less shined, Than a whole constellation; but hee's gone! Hee's gone, alas! down in the dust must ly As much of this rare person, as could die. "To be descended well, doth that commend? Can sons their fathers' glory call their own? Our SHEPARD justly might to this pretend, (His blessed father was of high renown, Both Englands speak him great, admire his name,) "He breathed love, and pursued peace in his day, Sure Father WILSON's genuine son was he, At that period the memory of every eminent person was preserved in an ingenious elegy, epitaph, or anagram. SHEPARD, mourned in the above verses by OAKES, on the death of JOHN WILSON, "the Paul of New England," and "the greatest anagrammatizer since the days of LyCOPHRON," wrote "John Wilson, anagr. John Wilson. "O, change it not! No sweeter name or thing, Throughout the world, within our ears shall ring." THOMAS WELDE, a poet of some reputation in his day, wrote the following epitaph on SAMUEL DANFORTH, a minister of Roxbury, who died soon after the completion of a new meeting-house: "Our new-built church now suffers too by this, Larger its windows, but its lights are less." PETER FOULGER, a schoolmaster of Nantucket, and the maternal grandfather of Doctor FRANKLIN, in 1676 published a poem entitled A Looking-glass for the times," addressed to men in authority, in which he advocates religious liberty, and implores the government to repeal the uncharitable laws against the Quakers and other sects. He says "The rulers in the country I do owne them in the LORD: And such as are for government, with them I do accord. |