Anne Bradstreet Quotes

“My love is such that rivers cannot quench”
― Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, Or, Severall Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Full of Delight: Wherein Especially Is ... Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Man, ...

“Still, the limitations of what we can know, no matter how obsessed we are, have, inevitably, become clear to me. She walks ahead of me and I don't get to see her face. Was her hair brown or pale? Was she slim? Did she get heavier as she bore her children? Or was she petite, like a bird? What did her voice sound like? Did she argue with her husband? Did she like to cook? Was she as ambitious as I think she was? Would she have approved of my writing about her? But the closer I have drawn, the more she has receded, her figure diminishing, no matter how I strain to catch up. Those shores of early America are irretrievable, as is Anne. I have tried to retrieve her here, but some of the most important things are bound to be left unknown.”
― Charlotte Gordon, Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America's First Poet