But for several generations
the boys and girls of New England had read the "Day of Doom" as
if Mr. Wigglesworth, the gentle and somewhat sickly minister of
Malden, had veritably peeped into Hell. It is the present fashion
to underestimate the power of Wigglesworth's verse. At its best
it has a trampling, clattering shock like a charge of cavalry and
a sound like clanging steel. Mr. Kipling and other cunning
ballad-makers have imitated the peculiar rhyme structure chosen
by the nervous little parson. But no living poet can move his
readers to the fascinated horror once felt by the Puritans as
they followed Wigglesworth's relentless gaze into the future of
the soul's destiny.
Historical curiosity may still linger, of course, over other
verse-writers of the period. Anne Bradstreet's poems, for
instance, are not without grace and womanly sweetness, in spite
of their didactic themes and portentous length. But this lady,
born in England, the daughter of Governor Dudley and later the
wife of Governor Bradstreet, chose to imitate the more fantastic
of the moralizing poets of England and France.
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