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Biography of Edward Taylor
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Edward Taylor was born in Leicestershire, England in 1642. He originally worked as a school teacher, but later left England for the United States. He studied divinity at Harvard and then became a minister in Massachusetts.
Taylor, a New England Puritan, worked as a minister for sixty years. During that time wrote a great deal of poetry and has become known as one of the best writers of the Puritan times. His poetry has a pious quality and emphasis is given to self examination, particularly in an individual's relations to God. His works were not published until 1939 - over two years after his death. One collection was edited by Donald E. Stanford who commented:
"Taylor seems to have been endowed with most of those qualities usually connoted by the word puritan. He was learned, grave, severe, stubborn, and stiff-necked. He was very, very pious. But his piety was sincere. It was fed by a long continuous spiritual experience arising, so he felt, from a mystical communion with Christ. The reality and depth of this experience is amply witnessed by his poetry."
A custom of Taylor's was to write a poem (or 'Meditation') before each Lord's Supper. Important themes in his work included: his adoption of the Biblical David as his model for the poet; the concept of poetry as an act/offering of ritual praise; distinctions between the godly and ungodly; God's power as Creator; and God's voice as that which speaks truly and which man's voice merely echoes.
Taylor died in 1729.
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Popular Poems
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Meditation Sixty-Two
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Second Series
Canticle 1: 12: While the king sitteth at his table,
my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof.
Oh! thou, my Lord, thou king of Saints, here mak’st
A royall Banquet, thine to entertain
With rich and royall fare, Celestial Cates,
And sittest at the Table rich of fame.
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Poets
