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Show Years of Fulfillment 247 Learning, full of delight." Madelyn arranged with class member Bernice Frost to come dressed as Anne and to memorize speech provide a living presence. Anne Dudley, Bradstreet's maid born in England; and at the age of sixteen, hav ing survived smallpox, she married Simon Bradstreet. Two years later, in 1630, she left her comfortable English home to accom es to en name, was pany her husband and father on the voyage of the Arabella, set at North tling first in Cambridge, then at Ipswich, and finally Andover, Massachusetts. Her family were part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony of Puritans. "I found in this new world," Anne wrote, "new manners, and my heart rose. I was convinced that it was the way of God and I was joined to the church in Boston." "Although I had occasional sorrows," she wrote, "I knew that our tribulations were evidence of the hand of God in making us better persons. I belonged to a profoundly spiritual community and through God's gift we became His Chosen People." Anne and her husband, she wrote, would one day be reunited in Heaven: "Where we with joy each other's face shall see, And parted more by death shall never be." In the intervals of household tasks and the care of her eight children, and despite a progressive tubercular illness, Anne found time to write, both poetry and prose. She wrote long poems about the four elements, the four humors, the four ages of man, the four seasons, and" A Dialogue Between Old England and New." Her delightful shorter poems include "The Flesh and the Spirit," "Contemplations," "To My Dear and Loving Husband," "On My son's Return Out of England," "Upon the Burning of Our House," and, in prose, "Meditations Divine and Moral." These demonstrate Anne's attempt to harmonize the divine, the secular, the personal, with a focus on the unique Puritan spiritual community of which she was a part. Anne's spiritual autobiography, written for her children, begins with this charming original verse: |
