Sherry Chandler » Cotton Mather
Cotton Mather
I’ve always thought of Cotton Mather as a fairly monstrous individual, because of the witch trials, but there is power in this poem:
The Rain gasped for
Oh Father of the Rain, Look down
Upon us from on high;
If thy land be not Rain’d upon,
What Lives on it will Dy.
Lord of the Clouds; In thee we hope;
Thine all the Bottels are;
Except Thou open them, a Drop
won’t fall upon us here.
If thou make Heav’n as Brass, and burn
From thence the groaning Field
Thy Earth will soon to Iron turn,
And no Production yield.
Oh let thy Seasonable Rain
Drop Fatness on our Soyl;
And grant to most unworthy Man
The Harvest of his Toil.
But, O my SAVIOUR, in a Showre
Of Righteousness descend:
Gifts on me, with thy SPIRIT poure;
And Life that cannot End.
Yea, come upon a World forlorn,
And with a Quickening Dew,
Make thou Mankind, of Water born,
Tho’ Dead, their Life Renew.
In the mean time, thy Ministers,
As Clouds, how Fat and Bright!
May they upon Salvations Heirs,
Distil Things Good and Right.
— Cotton Mather, from American Religious Poems
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1 Comment
1. Sherry Chandler » A&hellip replies at 1st March 2007, 8:53 pm :
[...] It’s the first day of Women’s History Month and also the anniversary of the beginning of the Salem Witch Trials, and I must begin it by qualifying my earlier statement about Cotton Mather. According to today’s Writers Almanac, Mather, in the end, tried to moderate the witch hysteria: There were multiple attempts to keep the trials from getting out of control. Judges resigned in protest of the convictions. Neighbors gathered petitions in support of the accused. But in the end, 19 accused witches were hanged, 14 of them women, and three more died in jail. By the following fall, the preacher Cotton Mather was speaking out against the trials. He said, “We ought not to practice witchcraft to discover witches. It is better that 10 suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned.” [...]
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