[12] the special student, though it is in no way behind that of the most distinguished English poetess of the same period, Mrs. Katharine Phillips. Yet Cotton Mather said of her works that “they would outlast the stateliest marble,” and other admirers “weltered in delight” or were “sunk in a sea of bliss” on reading them. Her literary taste was, like that of other Puritans, fatally compromised by religious prejudice. Shakespeare and the other robust Elizabethan spirits were an abomination to her; and she readily fell * under the influence of “fantastic” poets like Herbert, Quarles, and Du Bartas, upon whom she formed her own style. It is on the whole remarkable that she should have been able now and then to free herself from these chosen fetters, and speak her own heart in really simple and noble verse. Her “Contemplations,” not published until after her death, contain verses which suggest that Spenser might have been her master, and require no apology. This is true, for instance, of her poem upon “The seasons:”
When I behold the heavens as in their prime,
And then the earth (though old) still clad in green,
