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.

UPON A FIT OF SICKNESS, _Anno_. 1632.
_Aetatis suce_, 19.

Twice ten years old not fully told since
nature gave me breath,
My race is run, my thread is spun, lo! here
is fatal Death.
All men must dye, and so must I, this cannot
be revoked,
For Adam's sake, this word God spake, when he
so high provoke'd.
Yet live I shall, this life's but small, in
place of highest bliss,
Where I shall have all I can crave, no life is
like to this.
For what's this life but care and strife? since
first we came from womb,
Our strength doth waste, our time doth hast and
then we go to th' Tomb.