A book of similar title was _Divine Blossoms, a Prospect or Looking Glass for Youth_. The lack of poetry may also account in some degree for the astonishing popularity of a poem which appeared in 1662, written by a Puritan preacher named Michael Wigglesworth, and entitled, _The Day of Doom; or a Poetical description of the Great and Last Judgement_. This "epic of hell-fire and damnation" was reprinted again and again, and was sold in such large numbers that it is safe to assert that every New England household, whose members could read, was familiar with it. It was printed as a broadside, and children committed it to memory; teachers extolled it; ministers quoted it. Its horrible descriptions of hell and the sufferings of the damned are weakened to the modern mind by the thought of the presumptuous complacence of the author who would dare to give page after page of what he conceived the great Judge would say on the Day of Judgment. But of course no child, certainly no child of Puritan training, would note either absurdity or impropriety in assigning such words, and it is sad to think what must have been the climax of horror with which a sensitive child read God's answer to the plea for salvation made by "reprobate infants"; the terrible words running on through many stanzas, and ending thus:-- "Will you demand Grace at my hand, and challenge what is mine? Will you teach me whom to set free and thus my Grace confine? You sinners are, and such a share as sinners may expect; Such you shall have; for I do save none but my own Elect. "Yet to compare your sin with their's who liv'd a longer time, I do confess yours is much less, though every sin's a crime. A Crime it is, therefore in bliss you may not hope to dwell; But unto you I shall allow the easiest room in Hell."