Contents - BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD - INDEX TO CHAPTERS - INDEX TO BIBLIOGRAPHIES - INDEX TO AUTHORS

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VIII. The Age of Dryden.

IV. The Early Quakers

§ 13. Ellwood’s Collection of Poems on Various Subjects

Of poetry, in the writings of the early quakers, there is nothing that deserves the name. Such versification as we find is, for the most part, prosaic disquisition on moral and spiritual themes, marked by piety without inspiration, and facility without imagination. Thomas Ellwood, in addition to the “poems” which are scattered through his autobiography, issued A Collection of Poems on Various Subjects, from which we extract the following:

He’s a true lover, not who can subdue

Monsters and giants for his mistress’ sake,

And sighs perhaps, and weeps, with much ado

For fear she should some other happy make;

But who so far her happiness prefers

Before his own, that he can be content

To sacrifice his own to purchase hers,

Though with the price of his own banishment.