Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/243

Rh Poems are the fruit but of some few houres, curtailed from her sleep and other refreshments. I dare adde but little lest I keep thee too long; if thou wilt not believe the worth of these things (in their kind) when a man sayes it, yet believe it from a woman when thou seest it. This only I shall annex, I fear the displeasure of no person in the publishing of these Poems but the Author, without whose knowledg, and contrary to her expectation, I have presumed to bring to publick view, what she resolved in such a manner should never see the Sun; but I found that diverse had gotten some Scattered Papers, and affected them well, were likely to have sent forth broken pieces, to the Authors predjudice, which I thought to prevent, as well as to pleasure those that earnestly desired the view of the whole.

Nathaniel Ward speaks next and with his usual conviction that his word is all that is necessary to stamp a thing as precisely what he considers it to be.

N. Ward.

John Woodbridge takes up the strain in lines of much easier verse, in which he pays her brotherly tribute, and is followed by his brother, Benjamin, who had been her neighbor in Andover.