Another

An Electronic Edition · Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

Original Source: The Works of Anne Bradstreet in Prose and Verse. Edited by John Harvard Ellis. (Charlestown: A. E. Cutter, 1867)

Copyright 2003. This text is freely available provided the text is distributed with the header information provided.

Full Colophon Information


Another.

Phœbus make haste, the day’s too
long, be gone,  
The silent night’s the fittest time for moan;  
But stay this once, unto my suit give ear,  
And tell my griefs in either Hemisphere.  
(And if the whirling of thy wheels don’t drown’d) 5.
The woful accents of my doleful sound,  
If in thy swift Carrier thou canst make stay,  
I crave this boon, this Errand by the way,  
Commend me to the man more loved than life,  
Shew him the sorrows of his widdowed wife; 10.
My dumpish thoughts, my groans, my brakish tears  
My sobs, my longing hopes, my doubting fears,  
And if he love, how can he there abide?  
My Interest’s more then all the world beside.  
He that can tell the stars or Ocean sand, 15.
Or all the grass that in the Meads do stand,  
The leaves in th’ woods, the hail or drops of rain,  
Or in a corn-field number every grain,  
Or every mote that in the sun-shine hops,  
May count my sighs, and number all my drops: 20.
Tell him the countless steps that thou dost trace,  
That once a day, thy Spouse thou may’st imbrace;  
And when thou canst not treat by loving mouth,  
Thy rayes afar, salute her from the south.  
But for one moneth I see no day (poor soul) 25.
Like those far situate under the pole,  
Which day by day long wait for thy arise,  
O how they joy when thou dost light the skyes.  
O Phœbus, hadst thou but thus
long from thine  
Restrain’d the beams of thy beloved shine, 30.
At thy return, if so thou could’st or durst  
Behold a Chaos blacker than the first.  
Tell him here’s worse than a confused matter,  
His little world’s a fathom under water.  
Nought but the fervor of his ardent beams 35.
Hath power to dry the torrent of these streams.  
Tell him I would say more, but cannot well,  
Oppressed minds, abruptest tales do tell.  
Now post with double speed, mark what I say,  
By all our loves conjure him not to stay.40.

Full Colophon Information

Genre: Poetry
Subjects: Love
Period: 1650-1700
Location: New England
Format: verse

This text was first published in 1678 in Several Poems.

This electronic text was prepared from and proofed against The Works of Anne Bradstreet in Prose and Verse. Edited by John Harvard Ellis. (Charlestown: A. E. Cutter, 1867). All preliminaries and notes have been omitted except those for which the author is responsible and those in which editorial notes indicate significant textual variations. All editorial notes have been omitted except for those which indicate significant textual variations. Line and paragraph numbers contained in the source text have been retained. In cases where the source text displays no numbers, numbers are automatically generated. In the header, personal names have been regularized according to the Library of Congress authority files as "Last Name, First Name" for the REG attribute and "First Name Last Name" for the element value. Names have not been regularized in the body of the text.