The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-12-04

ordination or election some 260 years ago.
This glory of that Israel is departed, but
vision of it should be recalled to UNDER
stand the literature of its day and gem
GRAFTON.
AS companion piece to this body of
polemic or eulogistic prose should be read
the efforts at verSe-making by some of
the same writer's They began cautiously
in version of the psalms and with the
determination to be faithful to the origi-
nal Hebrew, if not to poetic graces. Their
success IS shown by the following ex-
tracts from the Bay psalm book, the
first volume of any consequence printed
in America, at Cambridge, In 1910:
Remember, Lord Edom's sons words;
Unto the ground say they:
''It raze. it raze,' when it was
Jerusalem her day.
Blessed shall he be that payeth thee
Daughter of Babylon
Which must be waste, that which thou
Rewarded us upon.
How good and sweet o see
For brethren tbs to dwell
AS one in unityi
It's like a choice oyl that fell
The head upon;
That down the beard unto
Beard of Aaron.
MY soul gave ME a sudden witch
That made me nimbly slide,
Like unto the chariots in which
Abinidb did ride.
To get the full effect of these harmonious
measures the reader should imagine
them "deaconed'' off two lines at time
and followed by the command "Sing,"
AMI sung with the nasal drone which
Scott has caricatured in ''Peveril of the
Peak" Still without this accompani-
ment, the standard of poetic art in 1910
will be apparent. 1t is surpassed only
by the frigid or vengeful prose of the
time. This in turn is matched by the
threats of the warrior psalmist against
the enemies of Israel, made more dire
by the frightful translation of Eliot.
Welde and Mather, with an eye now and
then to certain disturbers of their peace.
A woman, Anne Bradstreet was the
first person in Massachusetts to make
poetry business. Men had considered
it a sly pastme, and like the father OF
this poetess, Gov. Dudley, carried
rhymed epitaphs in their pockets as con-
ran:
My shuttle's shot, my race is run,
My sun is set, my deed is done, etc.
But the daughter of one governor and
the wife of another did not need to hide
her candle after publishing the first vol
ume of American poetry. entitled tho
Tenth Muse" London 1850. Her sub
jects are nature and man, the seasons
and temperaments, the flesh and the spir-
it, four ancient monarcies and contempla-
tons. One specimen must answer for all.
Let it be from Winter
December Is my first. and now the sun
To the southwark tropick swift his race
doth run;
This month he's housed in horned Capri
corn.
From hence he gins TO length the short
ened morn.
Cold frozen January next comes in.
Chilling the blood and shrinking up the
skin:
The day much longer than 1t was before:
The cold rot lessened, but augmented
more.
Her rEnvoi is best, because truest:
My subject is bare, my brain IS bad,
Or better lines you would have had.
The first fell in so naturally,
knew not how to pass it by.
The last, though bad, could not mend;
Accept therefore of what is penned,
And all the faults that you shall spy
Shall at your feet for pardon cry.
Michael Wiggiesworth was the male to
be responsible for prolonged verse. He
desired to rescue poetry from the
heather associations of the classical
school With Juno a Mars eEe and ne
posed lines on the last judgment under
the title of 1.-THE Day of DOOM suited
to the religious temper of his generation.
more people in proportion to the inhabi-
tants than any other book since Its day.
But what could be the literary taste or
the standard of belief and the brightness
of outlook for a community that READ
and reread and repeated by rote sucn
stanZaS as these:
Then to the bar all drew near
Who died in infancy,
And never had or good or bad
Effected personally
Who began to plead in forty-eight lines
and are answered in 1913, as the case eyt-
IDENTIFY presented some difficulty to the
poet father of eight infants by three
wives. This is the conclusion OF the ar
gument
You sinners are and such a share as
sinners may expect;
Such you shall have, for do save mono
but mine own elect.
Yet to compare your sin with their who
lived a longer time.
I do confess, yours Is much less tncesn
every sins crime.
A crime it is, therefore In bliss you may
not hope to dwell, a,,.
But unto you / shall allow the easiest
room in hell.
And then to satisfy the logical and the
illogical spirit of his age he ADDS:
The glorious king thus answering. they
cease and plead no longer;
Their consciences must needs confess, his
reasons are the stronger.
Poor children. Poor parents. Poorest
poet! And, worse than all, the age that
made possible and loved this doggerei OF
Once more let the words OF Hawthorne
be quoted: Let US thank God for nav
ing given US such ancestors. and let eacn
successive generation thank Him not less
ferrenty for being one step further from
them In The march OF ages:
Copyright, 1907