Edward Taylor

Edward Taylor (c. 1642 – 1729) was a colonial American poet and Puritan minister. His poems, unpublished and all but forgotten for 200 years, were discovered in 1937 by Thomas H. Johnson in several manuscript books at Yale University Library. Johnson published a selection of the poems in The New England Quarterly that year and, says biographer Norman S. Grabo, "established [Taylor] almost at once and without quibble as not only America's finest colonial poet but as one of the most striking writers in the whole range of American literature."

Quotes
Is this thy play, To spin a web out of thyselfe To Catch a Fly? For Why? [...] To tangle Adams race In's stratigems To their Destructions, spoil'd, made base By venom things Damn'd Sins.
 * Thou sorrow, venom Elfe.
 * "Upon a Spider Catching a Fly" St. 1 & 8

Mine Eyes are dim; I cannot clearly see. Be thou my Spectacles that I may read Thine Image and Inscription stampt on mee.
 * Am I new minted by thy Stamp indeed?
 * from "Meditation VI (Canticles II:1)"