Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/249

Rh 7 Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are Men have precedency and still excel, It is but vain unjustly to wage warre; Men can do best, and women know it well Preheminence in all and each is yours; Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours. 8 And oh ye high flown quills that soar the Skies, And ever with your prey still catch your praise, If e're you daigne these lowly lines your eyes Give Thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no bayes, This mean and unrefined ure of mine Will make you glistening gold, but more to shine.

With the most ambitious of the longer poems—"The Four Monarchies"—and one from which her readers of that day probably derived the most satisfaction, we need not feel compelled to linger. To them its charm lay in its usefulness. There were on sinful fancies; no trifling waste of words, but a good, straightforward narrative of things it was well to know, and Tyler's comment upon it will be echoed by every one who turns the apallingly matter-of-fact pages: "Very likely, they gave to her their choicest praise, and called her, for this work, a painful poet; in which compliment every modern reader will most cordially join."

Of much more attractive order is the comparatively short poem, one of the series of quaternions in which she seems to have delighted. "The Four Elements" is a wordy war, in which four personages, Fire, Earth, Air and Water, contend for the precedence, glorifying their own deeds and position and reproaching the others for their shortcomings and general worthlessness