GRANDCHILD SIMON BRADSTREET, WHO DIED ON 16TH NOVEMBER, 1669, BEING BUT A MONTH AND ONE DAY OLD.
No sooner come but gone, and fallen asleep;
Acquaintance short, yet parting caused us weep.
Three flowers-two scarcely blown, the last in bud
Cropped by the Almighty's hand! Yet is he good.
With dreadful awe before him let's be mute.
Such was his will, but why let's not dispute.
With humble hearts and mouths put in the dust
Let's say he's merciful as well as just.
He will return, and make up all our losses,
And smile again, after our bitter crosses.
Go, pretty babe; go rest with sisters twain;
Among the blest in endless joys remain.
TO THE MEMORY OF MY DEAR DAUGH-
TER-IN-LAW MRS. MERCY BRAD-
STREET, WHO DECEASED SEPTEMBER
6, 1670, IN THE 28TH YEAR OF HER AGE.
And live I still to see relations gone?
And yet survive to sound this wailing tone?
Ah, woe is me, to write thy funeral song
Who might in reason yet have lived long.
I saw the branches lopped, the tree now fall,
I stood so nigh it crushed me down withal;
My bruiséd heart lies sobbing at the root
That thou, dear son, hath lost both tree and fruit.
Thou then, on seas sailing to foreign coast,
Wast ignorant what riches thou hadst lost;
But, ah! too soon those heavy tidings fly
To strike thee with amazing misery.
Oh, how I sympathize with thy sad heart,
And in thy griefs still bear a second part.
I lost a daughter dear, but thou a wife
Who loved thee more, it seemed, than her own life-
Thou being gone, she longer could not be
Because her soul she 'd sent along with thee.
One week she only passed in pain and woe,
And then her sorrows all at once did go.
A babe she left before she soared above,
The fifth and last pledge of her dying love.
Ere nature would it hither did arrive;
No wonder it no longer did survive.
So with her children four she's now at rest,
All freed from grief, I trust, among the blest.
She one hath left, a joy to thee and me;
The heavens vouchsafe she may so ever be.
Cheer up, dear son, thy fainting bleeding heart
In Him alone that causéd all this smart.
What though thy strokes full sad and grievous be?
He knows it is the best for thee and me.
A FUNERAL ELEGY UPON THAT PATTERN AND PATRON OF VIRTUE, THE TRULY PIOUS, PEERLESS, AND MATCHLESS GENTLEWOMAN MRS. ANNE BRADSTREET, RIGHT PANARETES, MIRROR OF HER AGE, GLORY OF HER SEX, WHOSE HEAVEN-BORN SOUL, LEAVING ITS EARTHLY SHRINE, CHOSE ITS NATIVE HOME AND WAS TAKEN TO ITS REST UPON 16TH SEPTEMBER, 1672.
Ask not why hearts turn magazines of passions,
And why that grief is clad in several fashions;
Why she on progress goes, and doth not borrow
The smallest respite from the extremes of sorrow.
Her misery is got to such an height
As makes the earth groan to support its weight;
Such storms of woe so strongly have beset her
She hath no place for worse nor hope for better.
Her comfort is, if any for her be,
That none can show more cause of grief than she.
Ask not why some in mournful black are clad:
The sun is set; there needs must be a shade.
Ask not why every face a sadness shrouds:
The setting sun o'ercast us hath with clouds.
Ask not why the great glory of the sky,
That gilds the stars with heavenly alchemy,
Which all the world doth lighten with his rays,
The Persian god, the monarch of the days—
Ask not the reason of his ecstasy,
Paleness of late, in midnoon majesty;
Why that the palefaced empress of the night
Disrobed her brother of his glorious light.
Did not the language of the stars foretell
A mournful scene when they with tears did swell?
Did not the glorious people of the sky
Seem sensible of future misery?
Did not the lowering heavens seem to express
The world's great loss, and their unhappiness?
Behold how tears flow from the learned hill,
How the bereavéd Nine do daily fill
The bosom of the fleeting air with groans
And woeful accents, which witness their moans;
How do the goddesses of verse, the learned choir,
Lament their rival quill, which all admire.
Could Maro's muse but hear her lively strain
He would condemn his works to fire again.
Methinks I hear the patron of the spring,
The unshorn deity, abruptly sing:
"Some do for anguish weep; for anger I
That ignorance should live and art should die.
Black, fatal, dismal, inauspicious day,
Unblest for ever by Sol's precious ray,
Be it the first of miseries to all,
Or last of life, defamed for funeral.
When this day yearly comes let every one
Cast in their urn the black and dismal stone;
Succeeding years as they their circuit go
Leap o'er this day, as a sad time of woe.
Farewell, my muse; since thou hast left thy shrine
I am unblest in One, but blest in Nine.
Fair Thespian ladies, light your torches all;
Attend your glory to its funeral.
To court her ashes with a learned tear,
A briny sacrifice, let not a smile appear."
Grave matron, whoso seeks to blazon thee
Needs not make use of wit's false heraldry;
Whoso should give thee all thy worth would swell
So high as it would turn the world infidel.
Had he great Maro's muse, or Tully's tongue,
Or raping numbers like the Thracian song,
In crowning of her merits he would be
Sumptuously poor, low in hyperbole.
To write is easy; but to write on thee
Truth would be thought to forfeit modesty.
He'll seem a poet that shall speak but true;
Hyperboles in others are thy due.
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