Edward Taylor

Edward Taylor (c. 1642 – 1729) was a colonial American poet and Puritan minister. His poems, unpublished and all but forgotten for 200 years, were discovered in 1937 by Thomas H. Johnson in several manuscript books at Yale University Library. Johnson published a selection of the poems in The New England Quarterly that year and, says biographer Norman S. Grabo, "established [Taylor] almost at once and without quibble as not only America's finest colonial poet but as one of the most striking writers in the whole range of American literature."

Quotes

• Thou sorrow, venom Elfe.
     Is this thy play,
  To spin a web out of thyselfe
     To Catch a Fly?
       For Why?
  [...]
  To tangle Adams race
     In's stratigems
  To their Destructions, spoil'd, made base
     By venom things
       Damn'd Sins.
  • "Upon a Spider Catching a Fly" St. 1 & 8

• Am I new minted by thy Stamp indeed?
     Mine Eyes are dim; I cannot clearly see.
  Be thou my Spectacles that I may read
     Thine Image and Inscription stampt on mee.
  • from "Meditation VI (Canticles II:1)"