Classic Poem

Those from whom we boast descent,
In whose name we found societies,
Raise the massive monument,
Praise the prim and primitive pieties,
Whom we fain would emulate
In their grand granitic qualities,
Whom we patronize as great
(We, whose lives are half frivolities) —
Should those ancestors austere
Gabriel's trump anticipate,
And before our gates appear,
Where we feast and dissipate,
Might we not discount our pride,
Feel some shame at such " race-filaments, "
Drest in homespun, oil-nut dyed,
Most unfashionable habiliments?

They were coopers, cobblers, tanners,
Coarse adepts in arts mechanical,
Farmers lacking gracious manners,
Zealots fearing craft satanical.
History's glass upon them turned
Shows the women weaving, spinning,
With their household tasks concerned;
Sometimes too obstreperous-dinning
Judgment for their husband's rule,
So condemned by that community
To the useful ducking-stool.

Nor could husbands with impunity
Demonstrate their deep affection
To their wives by fist or rope's end —
Stocks were raised for their correction!
Quakers saw their drab-winged hopes end
When, tied fast to lumbering carts,
Stript by pious beadles who beat them,
They were driven to distant parts
Where gaunt wolves and bears might eat them!

Worldly lusts, in Faith's disguises,
Ravened in the congregation:
Envy haled before the assizes
Dames of spotless reputation,
Charging them with being witches,
And scale-blinded superstition
Saw in one of brain and riches
Dangerous sorcerer and magician.
Ghastly fruit the gallows-tree
Bore if guilty they confessed they were;
If Nolo contendere
Any pleaded, to death pressed they were!

This was ancient British law,
And unjuster never yet was codified.
Its harsh working Burroughs saw
Ere 't was done away or modified.

Yet not all unlovely they.
Dame Anne Bradstreet was a cynosure
In that unpoetic day.
Had she lived in our time I know sure
She had been the President
Of a Woman's Club. So womanly,
Cultured, wise, intelligent,
Witty, modern; writing humanly,
Unaffected; recognized
By the great men of Old England
As their equal; poet prized
By two continents, not a single land!

Then that stern and solemn seer,
Michael Wigglesworth — Dante's follower —
Picturing in terms of fear
(Never was theology hollower!)
Punishment for earthly sins,
Sinners grilling in Hell's flames of fire,
Devils plucking off their skins,
God reproaching them with names of ire.
Yet because he could not place
Souls of infants to be martyred there,
He was almost forced to face
Church-tribunals solemn-chartered there.