Her first volume, published at Boston in 1640, was dedicated to her father. The title is very long, and is as follows: "Several Poems, compiled with great variety of wit and learning, full of delight, wherein especially is contained a Complete Discourse and Description of the Four Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Man, and Seasons of the Year; together with an exact Epitome of the Three First Monarchies, viz.: the Assyrian, Persian, and Grecian, and the Beginning of the Roman Commonwealth to the end of their last King; with divers other pleasant and serious Poems. By a Gentlewoman of New England." The book met with much favour, and soon passed into a second edition. In the third edition, issued in 1658, her character is thus sketched: "It is the work of a woman honoured and esteemed where she lives, for her gracious demeanour, her eminent parts, her pious conversation, her courteous disposition, her exact diligence in her place, and discreet management of her family occasions; and more so, these poems are the fruits of a few hours curtailed from her sleep, and other refreshments." The work was reprinted and published in London in 1650, with the high-sounding title of "The Tenth Muse, lately sprung up in America." Compared with much that was written in the age in which she lived, her poetry is entitled to a foremost rank, but it is not sufficiently good to gain for it a lasting place in literature. It mainly attracts attention in our time as being the first collection of poetry published in America. Professor Charles F. Richardson, one of the soundest American critics, speaks of some of the poems as by "no means devoid of merit, though disfigured by a paucity of words and stiffness of style." The estimable writer of this volume won words of praise from her leading countrymen. President Rogers, of Harvard College, himself a poet, thus addressed her:-- "Madam, twice through the Muses's grove I walked Under your blissful bowers-- Twice have I drunk the nectar of your lines." All her critics were not so complimentary as President Rogers. Some did not think that a woman had a right to produce poetry and to such she adverts in the following lines:-- "I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits, A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong, For such despite they cast on female wits: If what I do prove well, it won't advance; They'll say it's stol'n, or else it was by chance." Here are four lines on "The Vanity of all Worldly Things," which, give a favourable example of her poetic power:-- "As he said vanity, so vain say I, Oh vanity, O vain all under sky; Where is man can say, lo! I have found On brittle earth a consolation sound?" The next specimen of her poetry is an "Elegy on a Grandchild":--