Hi Dr. Marx,

I'm somewhat confused about Bradstreet's images of the "new world" in her
poem about "New England" and "Old England." Here are some passages that I'm
unsure about:

'Then fullness of the Nations in shall flow,/And Jew and Gentile to one
worship go.'
Could "Then fullness of the Nations in shall flow," refer to trade? or
imports from England's colonies?
'No Canaanite shall then be found 'n the th' land/And holiness on horses'
bells shall stand.'

Since she's puritan, is she invisioning England being cleansed of Catholics?
If so, then is the "Jew and Gentile" in the preceding quotation able to
worship freely in England? Or can they only worship in other colonies? Or are
they forced to convert since she says 'to one worship go?'

Thanks for your time.
Beatrice

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Hi Beatrice
good questions about obscure parts of the otherwise lucid Ann Bradstreet's poem, parts only decipherable by reference to what William Blake called "The Great Code" of the Old and New Testaments.

At the end of the poem Bradstreet follows the Hebrew prophets and John the author of Revelation in envisioning the New Jerusalem or New world that will be ushered in at the end of time. This will happen after the victory of the Parliamentary forces over those of King Charles. She imagines that Cromwell's victorious army, a little like Tamburlaine's, will go on to "sack proud Rome" (267) capturing the treasure of the Catholic church and then "tearing the flesh of the beast"--Revelation's Roman Empire, now envisioned as the Catholic Church.

Following those victories, the English armies will go on a crusade to defeat the infidel Turks(278) and conquer Jerusalem, which was under their control during the 17th century. That victory will set in motion "the conversion of the Jews," mentioned wittily by Marvell in "To His Coy Mistress," and predicted by St. Paul in Chapter 11 of the epistle to the Romans. The idea is at the end of time, the Jews will see the errors of their ways and finally accept Jesus.

[for a discussion of this idea by a Christian commentator who supports it, see http://www.geocities.com/questioningamillennialism/index-1.htm For a discussion of this idea in the context of the forced conversion of the Jew Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, see chapter 6 of my book, _Shakespeare and the Bible_, entitled "'Dangerous Conceits' and 'Proofs of Holy Writ': Allusion in The Merchant of Venice and Paul’s Letter to the Romans" which you can read online at http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/204/SBcomplete.htm ]

"The fullness of the nations flowing into Jerusalem"(286) is a repeated Old Testament prophecy--the nations being non-Jews who the Hebrew prophets imagined coming to Jerusalem and accepting the rule of the Jahweh at the end of time. This vision of ethnic cleansing--no Canaanite shall then be found 'n th' land (290)--is the precursor of the later Christian vision espoused by Bradstreet of eliminating Catholics, Jews and Muslims. Its the hope of this outcome stemming from Parliament's victory that New England offers to her mother to end her sighs about the civil war in England.

You might notice that Bradstreet's "New England" Puritan views still reverberate with the religious politics of our own time.