Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH COLONIAL LITERATURE
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 our,
That’s here to day 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.
Farewel dear child, thou ne re shall come to me,
But yet a while and I shall go to thee.
Mean time my throbbing heart’s chear’d up with this
Thou with thy Saviour art in endless bliss.
2.7.8 “On My Dear Grandchild Simon Bradstreet”
No sooner come, but gone, and fal’n asleep,
Acquaintance short, yet parting caus’d us weep.
Three ours, two scarcely blown, the last i’th’ bud,
Cropt by th’ Almighties 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 joyes remain.
2.7.9 Reading and Review Questions
1. In “The Prologue,” what are her “inherent defects” to which Bradstreet
brings attention? Why does she do so? Does the poem as a whole bear
out these “defects” as actual defects? To what degree, if any, do these
defects reect Bradstreet’s sense of her gender and her religion?
2. Why do you think Bradstreet essentially records her knowledge of
literature and the classics in “The Prologue?”
3. In “The Author to Her Book,” what conventional maternal behaviors
does Bradstreet apply to her book? Why? Why does she make an especial
note of her “ospring” not having a father?
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