Anne Bradstreet: Poems & such

"If ever two were one, then surely we/ If ever man were loved by wife, then thee/ If ever wife was happy in a man/ Compare with me, ye women, if you can"

These are the first few lines of a poem written by Anne Bradstreet, to her husband, in the late 1600s.

While I've enjoyed reading most of Bradstreet's poetry, those sweet lines will stay with me for a while, I think. I even found myself repeating them to my fiancée. That's the girly romantic in me, I suppose.

What's most striking about Bradstreet's poetry is the personal nature of it... The things she wrote about are things that, in a sense, carry over into the modern world. Maybe not all of it, but some. I guess when I picture "Puritans" I don't think of people feeling deeply about things such as this. I'm not sure why I felt that way, since they were people, after all. Maybe I just didn't expect that she would've expressed these feelings, or that she would've been allowed to.
Misty Jones says in Norms and Criticism in Anne Bradstreet's Poetry that her poetry "depicts and respects Puritan standards and expectations, but it also includes discussions of ideas contrary to these standards."
I guess that's putting it exactly the way I might put it, if I were to try to explain Bradstreet. It's quite refreshing, actually. I think she might be one of my new favorites.