By Night When Others Soundly Slept (1650) || Poem by Anne Bradstreet

By night when others soundly slept
And hath at once both ease and Rest,
My waking eyes were open kept
And so to lie I found it best.

I sought him whom my Soul did Love,
With tears I sought him earnestly.
He bow'd his ear down from Above.
In vain I did not seek or cry.

My hungry Soul he fill'd with Good;
He in his Bottle put my tears,
My smarting wounds washt in his blood,
And banisht thence my Doubts and fears.

What to my Saviour shall I give
Who freely hath done this for me?
I'll serve him here whilst I shall live
And Loue him to Eternity

Anne Bradstreet (née Dudley; (1612 – 1672) Born to a wealthy Puritan family in Northampton, England, she was the most prominent of early English poets of North America and first writer in England's North American colonies to be published. She is the first Puritan figure in American Literature and notable for her large corpus of poetry, as well as personal writings published posthumously. Read more

Image: Frontispiece for An Account of Anne Bradstreet The Puritan Poetess, and Kindred Topics, edited by Colonel Luther Caldwell (Boston, 1898) (cropped).No portrait of her lifetime exists.