Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/87

Rh from us. The governor's son (being one of the assistants) was to undertake this, and to take no more out of the bay than twelve men; the rest to be supplied, at the coming of the next ships."

That they were not essential to Cambridge, but absolutely so at this weak point was plain to both Dudley and Bradstreet, who forthwith made ready for the change accomplished in 1634, when at least one other child, Dorothy, had come to Anne Bradstreet. Health, always delicate and always fluctuating, was affected more seriously than usual at this time, no date being given, but the period extending over several years. "After some time, I fell into a lingering sickness like a consumption, together with a lameness, which correction I saw the Lord sent to humble and try me and do me Good: and it was not altogether ineffectual."

Patient soul! There were better days coming, but, self-distrust was, after her affections, her strongest point, and there is small hint of inward poise or calmness till years had passed, though she faced each change with the quiet dauntlessness that was part of her birthright. But the tragedy of their early days in the colony still shadowed her. Evidently no natural voice was allowed to speak in her, and the first poem of which we have record is as destitude of any poetic flavor, as if designed for the Bay Psalm-book. As the first, however, it demands place, if only to show from what she afterward escaped. That she preserved it simply as a record of a mental state, is evident from the fact, that it was never included in any edition of her poems, it having been found among her papers after her death.