Anne Bradstreet (1612–72,) née Dudley, was an American Puritan poet. She is acknowledged as the first English poet in the American colonies. Her poetry was collected initially in The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650.)
Born in Northampton, England, Bradstreet married the Nonconformist minister Simon Bradstreet (1603–97.) She immigrated with her husband to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. The family ultimately settled in Andover, Massachusetts, and raised eight children. Her husband later became Massachusetts’s governor.
Bradstreet’s first volume of poems, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, written in Phineas Fletcher’s style, was published by her brother-in-law in London in 1650 without her knowledge. A series of divine poems written for her family, “Contemplations,” was not published until the mid-19th century.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Anne Bradstreet
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
—Anne Bradstreet
Topics: Change, Winter, Difficulty, Spring, Wealth, Adversity
When by the Ruins oft I past
My sorrowing eyes aside did cast
And here and there the places spy
Where oft I sate and long did lie.
Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest,
There lay that store I counted best,
My pleasant things in ashes lie
And them behold no more shall I.
Under the roof no guest shall sit,
Nor at thy Table eat a bit.
No pleasant talk shall ‘ere be told
Nor things recounted done of old.
No Candle ‘ere shall shine in Thee,
Nor bridegroom’s voice ere heard shall bee.
In silence ever shalt thou lie.
—Anne Bradstreet
Topics: Loss
If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
—Anne Bradstreet
Topics: Wives, Marriage
Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.
—Anne Bradstreet
Topics: Leadership
Iron till it be thoroughly heated is incapable to be wrought; so God sees good to cast some men into the furnace of affliction, and then beats them on his anvil into what frame he pleases.
—Anne Bradstreet
Topics: Justice, Trials
Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending.
—Anne Bradstreet
Topics: Youth
By art he gladly found what he did seek,
A full requital of his striving pain.
Art can do much, but this maxim’s most sure:
A weak or wounded brain admits no cure.
—Anne Bradstreet
Topics: Art
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