EDWARD TAYLOR

(1644-1729)

Edward Taylor was a New England Puritan, was born in Leicestershire, England in 1644.
He was a yeoman farmer son and emigrated to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1668. He
studied Divinity at Harvard College and like a Harvard-trained minister. He knew Greek,
Latin, and Hebrew and worked as a minister for sixty years. He was twice married, first
to Elizabeth Fitch, who had eight children, five of them died in childhood, and second
wife Ruth Wyllys, who bore six more children. Edward was one of the best educated man
in New England, who puts his knowledge to use, working as the town minister, doctor,
and a civic leader. Taylor died on June 29, 1729.
During his life as a minister, he wrote a great deal of poetry which has a pious quality
where emphasis is given to self-examination, particularly in an individual's relations to
God. Although these poems survived in leather bindings of his own manufacture, Taylor
had left instructions that his heirs should "never publish any of his writings," so they were
forgotten for more than 200 years. In 1937 Thomas H. Johnson discovered Taylor's
manuscripts in the library of Yale University and published a selection from it in The New
England Quarterly. The appearance of these poems, "established almost at once and
without quibble as not only America's finest colonial poet of 17th century, but as one of
the most striking writers in the whole range of American literature.
TAYLOR’S WORK
-The first sections of Preparatory Meditations (1682-1725)
- God's Determinations Touching His Elect and the Elects Combat in Their Conversion
and Coming up to God in Christ: Together with the Comfortable Effects Thereof
(c.1680), were published shortly after their discovery.
- 500-page Metrical History of Christianity
- Many funeral elegies, lyrics, and a medieval debate.
His complete poems, however, were not published until 1960, by Donald E. Stanford.
His poetical work has been defined as Metaphysical, although others have preferred to
particularize it as "American Baroque".
For example, these are some fragments of Taylor’s poetry

Meditation Twenty
“God is Gone up with a triumphant shout:
The Lord with sounding Trumpets melodies:
Sing Praise, sing Praise, sing Praise, sing Praises out,
Unto our King sing praise seraphick-wise!
Lift up your Heads, and lasting Doore, they sing,
And let the King of Glory Enter in.”

Huswifery
“Make me, O Lord, Thy spinning-wheel complete.
Thy holy word my distaff make for me.
Make mine affections Thy swift flyers neat
And make my soul Thy holy spool to be.
My conversation make to be Thy reel
And reel thy yarn thereon spun of Thy wheel.”

Within these poems we can notice great devotion to religion and its robust spiritual
content glorifying the Christian experience.
His poetry is full of his expression of love for God and his commitment to serve his creator
amid the isolation of rural life.
Though not for the most part identifiably sectarian, Taylor's poems nonetheless are
marked by a robust spiritual content, characteristically conveyed by means of homely
and vivid imagery derived from everyday Puritan surroundings. "Taylor transcended his
frontier circumstances, biographer Grabo observed, "not by leaving them behind, but by
transforming them into intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual universals."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.poemhunter.com/edward-taylor/poems/
http://www.puritansermons.com/poetry/taylor.htm
https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/american-literature-
biographies/edward-taylor
https://allpoetry.com/Edward-Taylor