[In the following essay, Saltman examines Bradstreet's "Contemplations" in the context of Puritan theology and Biblical inspiration.]

Anne Bradstreet's poem "Contemplations," is no ordinary Puritan spiritual autobiography in which the convert emphasizes his human weakness, particularly pride, in his struggle for faith. Rather, it is an account in which the poet dwells on the theological concepts (masked in metaphor and Biblical allusion) that support the Puritan doctrine of rebirth and salvation. By dwelling on these concepts, the poet approaches the ideal conversion William Perkins outlines in A Golden Chain, or the Description of Theology. In this work Perkins explicates the "four degrees of God's love" (the steps toward salvation): "Effectual Calling, Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification." In similar stages, Mistress Bradstreet's "Contemplations" dramatizes her spiritual awakening and conversion.

As in other conversion experiences, "Contemplations" opens with the poet recalling a time when her sensual appreciation of nature brought her to an awareness of God's glory. Step by step she recounts how she became aware of God's attributes: "goodness, wisdom, glory, light" which grow out of the apparent "excellence" of this world. By beginning her poem, her meditation, just before nightfall, Bradstreet emulates the Psalmist, who not only "prevented the dawning of the morning" to "hope in the word," but who also sings "mine eyes prevent the night watches that I might meditate in thy word" (Psalm 119:147, 148). In Puritan theology, Psalm 119 "moves the faithful to a deeper consideration of God's glory" by setting "before their eyes the most exquisite workmanship of the heavens," the purpose of which is to lead God's "chosen people" to the "law, where in God hath reveiled himself more familiarly" and to "reproach man his ingratitude seeing the heavens, which are dumme creatures, set forth God's glorie" (Geneva Psalm 119).

Anne Bradstreet expresses poetically in "Contemplations" her belief that nature reveals God to mankind, a belief restated in her prose autobiography:

That there is a God my reason would soon tell me by the wondrous works that I see, the vast frame of the heaven and the earth, the order of all things, night and day, summer and winter, spring and autumn …

The affirmation of reason as capable of discerning God through his works is finely detailed in "Contemplations" through the poet's rich description of nature and by her subsequent response of amazement. As she contemplates nature, her vision is brought higher; the "stately oak" causes her to think of "eternity." Her contemplation of the "sun" suggests a "deity." Amazed at the wonder of the sun, "this bright light luster" (l. 49), she desires to "sing some song" in admiration of her "great Creator" (1. 54). The opening celebration of nature is merely a feeble awakening to God's glory: "All mortals here the feeling knowledge hath" (1. 40). All individuals, even the depraved, are capable of perceiving the most obvious of God's attributes from his creation. "Of God's glory and blessedness," Perkins remarks, "the more obscure manifestation is the vision of God's majesty in this life by the eyes of the mind through the help of things perceived by the outward senses." Thus, "feeling knowledge" (knowledge perceived through the senses) is not the same as "saving knowledge"—the knowledge of the Fall, sin and death, and redemption from God's Grace as mediated by Christ. Bradstreet's desire to "magnify" her Creator is merely evidence of a false awakening. She is unaware of her errors; only her sinful, her sensous being apprehends the glory of God from the "bright light luster" of" a fallen world.

While it is possible for a Puritan to know God in nature through the faculty of his reason, that reason has been corrupted by the Fall. "Men's minds received from Adam: ignorance, namely a want, or rather a deprivation of knowledge in the things of God," [Perkins writes]. Since original sin has corrupted human "faculties," there is nothing of a saving nature in becoming aware of God's glory through the senses. Only by attendence on the word of God is one able to have "revealed" knowledge of Him. And only by "Saving Grace" does one attain true faith. Anne Bradstreet clearly distinguishes in her prose spiritual autobiography between knowledge of God through reason and revealed knowledge from scripture:

I have argued thus with myself. That there is a God, I see. If ever this God hath revealed himself, it must be in His word, and this must be it or none.

Bradstreet affirms the Puritan doctrine that knowledge of God through nature—in Perkins' words, the "more obscure manifestation"—cannot lead to salvation; salvation depends on revealed understanding of the deity. Bradstreet's sensual appreciation of nature in stanzas 1–8 has brought her to an awareness of God and the desire to glorify Him. But the poet is not yet aware of her "fallen" condition, or of her "sins."

The convert should feel "infinite despair" at his sins as he becomes increasingly aware of God's attributes. Since understanding of God and the "law" comes from the gospel, the convert must prepare himself to hear the "saving" word of God. First, he needs to sever himself from this world; and second, he needs to have "a sensible feeling of [his] own beggary"—he needs to be "truly humbled," [according to] Perkins. As part of her "Effectual Calling," the poet metaphorically sets herself apart from mankind: "silent alone, where none or saw, or heard, / In pathless paths I lead my wand'ring feet" (ll. 51–52). And the poet's subsequent lament, in addition to expressing her inability to praise God, dramatizes her "abject," humbled condition:

I heard the merry grasshopper then sing.
The black-clad cricket bear a second part;
They kept one tune and played on the same string,
Seeming to glory in their little art.
Shall creatures abject thus their voices raise
And in their kind resound their Maker's praise,
Whilst I, as mute, can warble forth no higher lays?
(ll. 58–64)

Without grace, the poet is like the "abject creatures" with whom she compares herself—unregenerate. She too is doomed by time and mortality. The unregenerate speaker is not yet aware of her sins, or indeed, that the world is fallen. In the first nine stanzas of "Contemplations," the poet has no knowledge of God's word, of the "law," or of redemption. She has no understanding of the covenant of grace; and without grace, she cannot, like the Psalmist, sing and "make a joyful noise unto the Lord, make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise" (Psalm 98:4). Without faith that results from saving grace, the poet cannot praise God as she desires.

The poet, humbled yet unaware of the possibility of redemption, describes her further growth in "Effectual Calling." By recounting the story of the Fall and Expulsion, she is brought to an awareness of the sins which in Puritan theology she shares with Adam and all mankind: "All Adam's posterity is equally partaker of this corruption," Perkins [writes]. The poet affirms the theological position that each individual partakes of the Fall by imaginatively reconstructing the scene. As Robert D. Richardson, Jr. pointed out [in "The Puritan Poetry of Anne Bradstreet," Texas Studies in Language and Literature 9 (1967)], "the poet lives in the present and the Biblical stories exist also in the present, alive in her imagination." While affirming mankind's fallen state, she emphasizes its fallen faculties, its predilection for error. Ironically, individuals conquer time by an act of imagination—"it makes a man more aged in conceit … / While of their persons and their acts his mind doth treat" (ll. 69–71). That is, the act of fancy and thought, and even meditation itself, has been a crucial factor in the history of mankind's downfall because of this reliance on "fallen" faculties. Perkins reminds us that "sin is … a corruption of man's faculties." The poet reconstructs the Biblical scene to meditate on human apostacy and to affirm that reason and fancy are fallen faculties. In each stanza, the participants of the Fall are engaged in the human "conceit" of thinking: "sometimes in Eden fair he seems to be, … Fancies the apple, dangle on the tree" (ll. 72–74). Holding "bloody Cain," Eve "sighs to think of Paradise, / And how she lost her bliss to be more wise" (ll. 83–84). Cain "Hath Thousand thoughts to end his brother's days" (l. 91); while Abel "keeps his sheep, no ill he thinks" (l. 93). Later, with a "dreadful mind," Cain "thinks each he sees will serve him in his kind" (l. 98). The poet relives the Fall: she "Fancies" Cain "now at the bar" (l. 100). [My italics.] She brings to the reader a sense of immediacy in the Biblical account of human apostacy along with an understanding that men and women have been betrayed by their own thoughts. The poet's understanding of this apostacy through her attendance on the word and her identification with the acts of thinking which lead to the Fall, her imaginative participation in the Fall, give her the knowledge of sin as "vain delight" and death as "perpetual night" (ll. 118–19).

The poet then considers the implications of Adam's Fall. In stanzas 17 and 18, she meditates on death and time—the consequences of the Fall, and on the paradox arising from the knowledge gained by the Fall: knowledge has brought mankind old age and death; the earth, "though old," is continually reborn, "still clad in green"; the sensual stones and trees are insensible of time (ll. 122–23). Each paradox comments on the uselessness of the "knowledge" gained by the Fall—mankind is sensible of time in a world of the senses, a fallen world. Finally, the poet expresses the ultimate despair, "man grows old, lies down, remains where once he's laid" (l. 127). The speaker's new knowledge of sin and death in conjunction with her awareness of God's glory and majesty correspond to a necessary development in her "Effectual Calling." But as long as the poet depends on the knowledge gained through nature and custom, her faith in salvation and in man's nobility remains limited: "By birth more noble than those creatures all, / Yet seems by nature and by custom cursed" (ll. 128–29). Thus, "Effectual Calling" is incomplete without faith which comes from grace.

The Puritan distinction concerning the knowledge gained from custom and nature without grace is crucial. Perry Miller explains [in The New England Mind, 1939]

Knowledge of the passing away of one generation after another shows us our mortality and misery, but gives us no relief; the heavens and earth are divine creations, but tell us nothing of divinity unless the spirit of God bears witness in them.

Mankind is unable to find salvation through his own understanding of nature or of the scriptures. Stanzas 1–19 of "Contemplations" articulate the limits of nature and custom. The poet has demonstrated her ability to seek God in nature—but nature can tell her, in Perry Miller's words, "nothing of divinity." The poet has experienced merely the preparatory stages in her "Effectual Calling": "a man not destined for salvation could go this far and never get any further," [according to Edmund S. Morgan in Visible Saints]. Predestination and the Puritan doctrine that human efforts are entirely ineffectual in attaining salvation in spite of knowledge and sincere effort are thus affirmed by stanza nineteen:

No sooner born, but grief and care makes fall
That state obliterate he had at first;
Nor youth, nor strength, nor wisdom spring again,
Nor habitations long their names retain,
But in oblivion to the final day remain
(ll. 130–34).

The poet affirms that mankind, viewed through the perspective of nature and custom, is doomed to "oblivion" and that through Adam's Fall mutability is the only law to which the unredeemed are subject. Even more significantly, the poet realizes that unregenerate thoughts (reason without grace) drive individuals to this position of despair. And yet, paradoxically, despair and the realization of hopelessness are themselves necessary steps within "Effectual Calling." Thus, the poet prepares the reader for the recognition of the change wrought by grace.

In contrast to the poet's announcement in stanzas 18 and 19 of mankind's hopeless fate resulting from the Fall, in stanza 20 Bradstreet reverses herself by announcing that "man was made for endless immortality." This positive statement of faith has no logical precedent in the poem. The poet's sudden affirmation of salvation corresponds to her receiving grace, resulting in "true faith," "which is a miraculous supernatural faculty of the heart," that is, "a serious desire to believe" [according to] Perkins.

The rebirth of the poet and her new faith is the subject of stanza 20. In the 19th stanza, mankind is "born" to "oblivion." In the 20th stanza, the poet answers her rhetorical question, "Shall I wish there, or never to had birth," with a rousing "Nay." This is her spiritual rebirth, her conversion, a different "birth" than that mentioned in stanza 19. Of course, "birth" is a common metaphor for spiritual regeneration. Daniel Shea [in Spiritual Autobiography in Early America, 1968] has called attention to the importance of the symbol of childbirth in the poet's prose spiritual autobiography: "scriptural as well as personal …, birth sums up much of what Anne Bradstreet wished to say." Beginning then, with stanza 20 of "Contemplations," the poet exhibits the new theologically correct vision which grace has given her: the heavens, the trees, and the earth are no longer seen in their "strength and beauty." Now they, not mankind, "shall darken, perish, fade and die, / And when unmade so ever shall they lie" (ll. 139–40). Anne Bradstreet even puns on the false, the "lying" beauty and youth of the earth.

From stanza 21 to the end of "Contemplations," Anne Bradstreet's vision of nature demonstrates the theological principles governing sanctification wherein "holiness is enlarged" and "those that are quickened … rise up to the newness of life" (Perkins). Bradstreet's desire for holiness is reflected in stanzas 21–23. Each of these three stanzas restates the regenerate soul's desire for union with God: "Thou emblem true of what I count the best, / O could I lead my rivulets to rest, / So may we press to that vast mansion, ever blest" (ll. 160–63). Further expressing her desire for redemption, the poet places herself in the scene, "under the cooling shadow of a stately elm … by a goodly river's side" (ll. 142–43). This symbolic scene alludes to the First Psalm of David, to "a tree planted by the rivers of water," wherein a person meditates with "delight" on God's "laws." The tree by a "goodly river's side" also suggests the river and tree of life of revelation:

And he showed me a pure river of the water of life.
In the midst of the street of it, and on either side
of the river, was there the tree of life….
And there shall be no night there
(Revelation 22:1,2,5).

Echoing this symbolic desire for redemption, the poet expresses a preference for the river of life and for a place of perpetual light:

I once that loved the shady woods so well,
Now thought the rivers did the trees excel,
And if the sun would ever shine, there would I dwell
(ll. 146–48).

Grace endows "spiritual wisdom," by which the desire for holiness becomes part of the convert's vision. Through "an illumination of the mind," the convert acknowledges the "truth" of God's word and applies the truth to the "good ordering of … both things and actions" (Perkins). Through this "illumination of mind," nature loses its sensual quality in order to present theological truth.

In addition to the convert being "renewed in holiness," as part of his sanctification, he is expected to engage in spiritual battle ("Christian Warfare"). In stanzas 24 and 25, the poet's vision of nature presents a drama of the "spiritual battle." The combatants are personified as two kinds of "fish." The first, in stanza 24, are "nature taught." That is, like the poet in the first eight stanzas of "Contemplations," they have no knowledge of redemption; they "know not" of their "felicity." They lead an instinctual existence in which their actions are governed by the seasons. And so they leave their "numerous fry" landlocked in "lakes and ponds"; they are unable to reach the ocean. In contrast to this depiction of the unregenerate "fish" who are cut off from God (the Ocean), the "fish" in stanza 25, the "great ones," are the elect. The activity of "combat" in which they are engaged is "Christian Warfare"; they "take the trembling prey before it yield" (l. 175). They are engaged in a spiritual battle. These combatant "fish," "whose armour is their scales, their spreading fins their shield" (l. 176), have the "whole armour of God" and "the shield of faith" (Ephesians 6:13,16). Anne Bradstreet is theologically correct in alluding to Ephesians to dramatize an important part of sanctification. The marginal notes in the Geneva Bible specify this chapter as "an exhortation to the spiritual battel and what weapons the Christian should fight with all." In his discussion of Sanctification, Perkins renders the "complete armour of God" as six specific virtues with which the "Christian soldier" fights "the tempter" ("Satan, the flesh, and the world"). The poet, then, presents her spiritually renewed vision of nature in complete accordance with puritan doctrine.

When the poet's view of nature in the first nine stanzas of "Contemplations" is contrasted with that of stanza 21 and following, the change that takes place is clearly revealed. The poet's early view of nature is sensual ("rapt were my senses at this delectable view") (l. 7) while the latter view is spiritual ("thou emblem true of what I count the best") (l. 160). The former implies the speaker as being in a state of nature, the latter as being in a state of grace.

"Contemplations" thus reveals the poet's conversion experience in her changing vision of nature. It also suggests her sanctification by its success in affirming Puritan doctrine. In other words, the poet implies the sanctification of her poetic vocation. As in other accounts of conversion, a tension exists between the convert's view of the world before and after receiving grace. That is, Anne Bradstreet is describing an experience which has, by necessity, been changed by the experience itself. It is evident then that the first nine stanzas in which she states her feeble awakening to God's glory in nature, and her errors due to her fallen condition, are seen in retrospect from her new redeemed vision. Thus, her description of the sun in these early stanzas can also be seen as emblematic of the "son," signifying the glory of Christ and anticipating the redemption. Stanza 5, which personifies the sun as a "bridegroom" is the key to this reading:

Thou as a bridegroom from thy chamber rushes,
And as a strong man, joys to run a race;
The morn doth usher thee with smiles and blushes;
The Earth reflects her glances in thy face
(ll. 30–33).

Although this personification seems pagan, as critics have pointed out, Anne Bradstreet was keenly aware of the religious implications of the word, "bridegroom." In her last dated poem, "As Weary Pilgrim" (August 31, 1669), the poet expresses her redeemed soul's desire for the promise in revelation to the elect:

Lord make me ready for that day,
Then come, dear Bridegroom, come away.

To be sure, Mrs. Bradstreet's personification of the sun as a "bridegroom" would not have appeared as a pagan influence to her contemporaries. They probably would have thought instead that the "morn" in this passage symbolized the "New Jerusalem." The pious Puritan would have recognized Psalm 19 not only as the authority for finding God's attributes in nature ("the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork"); but he also would have recognized this Psalm as the source of the "bridegroom" in the fifth stanza:

In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race
(Psalm 19:4,5).

Anne Bradstreet's lines personifying the sun as a bridegroom in fact paraphrase this Biblical passage: "thou as a bridegroom from thy chamber rushes, / And as a strong man, joys to run a race." In addition to providing the metaphor of the sun as a bridegroom, Psalm 19 affirms God's attributes and laws in converting the soul. In the Geneva Bible, the marginal notes reveal that the "intent" of the Psalm is to "move the faithfull to a deeper consideration of God's glory." Thus, Bradstreet makes clear that it is the Psalm that has awakened her spiritually rather than the sensual beauty of nature. And in Psalm 19, David affirms God as his personal redeemer. David ends the Psalm with the prayer: "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord" (Psalm 19:14).

Psalm 19 is Anne Bradstreet's primary inspiration for "Contemplations." The Psalmist's desire for redemption is her desire; his prayer for his "meditation" and his "words" to be acceptable in God's eyes is her unspoken prayer. David is the type of Christ; throughout "Contemplations" the movement of the poem is to the Redemption. Though Christ and the passion are not explicitly considered, Christ's covenant of redemption is continually implied. Time and mortality enter human life through the Fall. Individuals overcome time and mortality through the covenant of grace made possible by Christ. And time and mortality are central issues in "Contemplations." Though David the Psalmist is Bradstreet's immediate inspiration (poetically as well as spiritually), he is also typologically important, prefiguring Christ and the redemption she seeks. Thus the last two lines of the poem directly paraphrase revelation, and the promise of salvation (glorification) made possible by Christ's covenant with God:

But he whose name is graved in the white stone
Shall last and shine when all of these are gone
(ll. 232–33).

Every line in "Contemplations" anticipates this evidence of redemption.

Anne Bradstreet's choice of the Psalmist for her inspiration is symbolically and emblematically explained in the poem. The poet is interrupted in her meditation on "Christian Warfare" by the chant of the "sweet-tongued Philomel." This Philomel represents David the Psalmist. The poet addresses the bird: "the dawning morn with songs thou dost prevent" (l. 198), paraphrasing David's prayer to God in Psalm 119:147: "I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried: I hoped in thy word." The spiritual significance of the Philomel appears as we consider closely the poet's description of her attributes. This bird is "merry" and "fears no snares" (l. 184), while the nightingale, that secular bird of poetic inspiration is melancholy. This Philomel is unconcerned with worldly things, "reminds not what is past, nor what's to come dost fear" (l. 190). It is a spiritual bird whose "meat" is "everywhere" (l. 188). The "meat" refers to the promise of grace and salvation in Revelation 2:17 with which "Contemplations" ends. We may also recall that in Bradstreet's poem "The Flesh and the Spirit," the spirit affirms her meditative habit, arguing against the flesh by exclaiming: "the hidden manna I do eat, / The word of life it is my meat." And that "hidden manna" is Bradstreet's metaphor for Grace in her prose spiritual autobiography, "To My Dear Children." The Psalmist, then, who eagerly meditates on the word of God, is characterized by the poet as a Philomel. To God he cries out for inspiration and life: "quicken me" (Psalm 119:149).

The melodious songs of David are thus Anne Bradstreet's inspiration. She, too, desires to be quickened, to have "wings" to "take flight" (l. 183) with the Philomel, to be inspired spiritually as well as poetically in order to sing God's praises. "The principal end of [man's] election is to praise and glorifie the grace of God," the Puritan theologians remind us (Geneva Ephesians 1:5). But the "merry" Philomel, whose song is God's "inspired word," is the means to the poet's salvation as well as her inspiration. Bradstreet's song of praise will be the poem "Contemplations." No wonder, then, her inability to sing her "great creator's" praises (ll. 55–57) at the time of her first "obscure" awakening, when she compared her "mute" attempt to the "merry" grasshopper and the cricket.

The last five stanzas of "Contemplations" testify further to the poet's sanctification, affirming her belief in Puritan theology and her ability to sing of its perfect wisdom. Dramatizing the necessity for affliction as part of God's plan for mankind, the poet describes the individual as either unregenerate, "a weatherbeaten vessel wracked with pain," with no hope of salvation (l. 207), or as one of the Elect who "sings merrily" until a "storm" makes "him long for a more quiet port" (l. 217). Affliction tests the soul, providing a life of misery to the unregenerate, but the impetus for the elect to turn from worldly things to spiritual matters in search of redemption. In her prose spiritual autobiography, Bradstreet makes a similar distinction concerning the uses of affliction:

If at any time you are chastened of God, take it as thankfully and joyfully as in greatest mercies; for if ye be His, ye shall reap the greatest benefit by it.

As a significant part of sanctification, affliction ("the patient bearing of the Cross") is God's instrument to spur the convert to holiness and virtue (Perkins). Affliction also enables the convert, the elect, to make the soul-saving distinction between this world and the next, a distinction the poet was unable to make at the outset of "Contemplations":

Fond fool, he takes this earth ev'n for heav'n's bower.
But sad affliction comes and makes him see
Here's neither honour, wealth, nor safety;
Only above is found all with security
(ll. 222–25).

The poet, then, in stanza 32 renounces her youthful error in mistaking the earth for "heav'n's bower." And, finally, in the last stanza of the poem, the worth and beauty of the natural world, "a bright light luster" is fully rejected as meretricious. Only the promise of redemption in Revelation 2:17, the "name … graved in the white stone / Shall last and shine when all of these are gone" (ll. 232–33).

Anne Bradstreet's affirmation of her Puritan faith in "Contemplations" is virtually identical in its important aspects with the simple and brief expression of her faith intended only for her family. In her prose spiritual autobiography addressed "To My Dear Children," she desires to help her children be reborn—"I now travail in birth again of you till Christ be formed in you." She affirms the ability of mankind's fallen reason to discern God in nature: "That there is a God my reason would soon tell me by the wondrous works that I see." In addition, she affirms her belief in the "word" of God which promises free grace; it is her "meat"—"I have sometimes tasted of that hidden manna that the world knows not"—just as it is the "meat" of the Philomel in "Contemplations" and the "meat" of the Spirit in "The Flesh and the Spirit." But most significantly, Anne Bradstreet's inspiration in her prose spiritual autobiography is the same as in her poetic account. It is David the Psalmist, the type of Christ. It is to David that she turns in the midst of affliction:

Sometimes He hath smote a child with a sickness, sometimes chastened by losses in estate, and these times (through His great mercy) have been the times of my greatest getting and advantage; yea, I have found them the times when the Lord hath manifested the most love to me. Then have I gone searching and have said with David, "Lord, search me and try me, see what ways of wickedness are in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

Profoundly inspired by the Psalms of David, Anne Bradstreet identifies with him. David's spiritual searching is her searching. His poetic mode of expression in praise of God is hers. And as a type of Christ, he symbolizes the salvation of her spirit. Confident in her faith, Anne Bradstreet chose to express her conversion poetically, using her greatest skill to praise God. If she revealed that her talent as well as her inspiration was God given, it was not through any sinful display of pride. Yet her singular expression of" religious conversion in "Contemplations" testifies to her craft as a poet as well as to her spiritual state. Bradstreet's quest for faith to sing God's praises is inexorably tied to her desire for poetic inspiration. Thus, rather than presenting any conflict between her vocation as a poet and her spiritual state, "Contemplations" reconciles the two.