Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/350

334 with the utmost elegance of the time, Simon Bradstreet's prosperity admitting the free expenditure he always loved, could by no means fill the place of the old. She looked about each room with a half-expectation that the familiar articles with which so much of her outward life had been associated, must be in the old places, and patiently as she bore the loss, their absence fretted and saddened her. One of her latest poems holds her sorrow and the resignation she came at last to feel:

In silent night when rest I took, For sorrow neer I did not look, I waken'd was with thundring nois And Piteous shreiks of dreadfull voice; That fearfull sound of fire and fire, Let no man know is my desire.

I, starting up the light did spye, And to my God my heart did cry To strengthen me in my Distress And not to leave me succourlesse, When coming out, beheld a space, The flame consume my dwelling place.

And, when I could no longer look, I blest his name that gave and took, That layd my goods now in the dust; Yea so it was, and so 'twas just. It was his own; it was not mine Far be it that I should repine.

He might of All justly bereft But yet sufficient for us left. When by the Ruines oft I past, My sorrowing eyes aside did cast, And here and there the places spye Where oft I sate, and long did lye.