[Erik Olson]

On such an occasion, as appropriate as pumpkin pie, maize, or Native Americans must be Puritans, indeed; yet to think that they are so made me nearly laugh for some reason. I cannot say why. Perhaps because those history classes inculcated the excesses of the round-heads who, at worst, banned artwork in the churches as well as secular music and public dancing in the years of Cromwell's banishment of the monarchy. They are a less obvious object for encomium from, first impressions, though universally admitted and received as a trope of the holiday as pilgrim's buckled hats and harvest of corn. Ironic is that Puritan appears consistently in early use as a term of reproach used by opponents and resented by those to whom it was applied. What was coined to fortify the cause of their opponents and mock their own with derision, gained currency and eventually became what is now the received and neutral term to designate these folks:

Originally the name applied chiefly to those within the Church of England who sought further reform, especially in the direction of Presbyterianism, and who gained ascendancy during the Commonwealth period. Subsequently (and especially after the Restoration of 1660) it was applied to those who separated from the established episcopal Church as Presbyterians, Independents (Congregationalists), or Baptists, including many who were prominent in the colonization of the North American seaboard (especially New England). It is now used as a historical term without negative connotations. (OED)

Few Puritans I can think of seem to so well recommend themselves to reverence and regard, by the example of their lives, than Johnathan Edwards; I first learned about him from reading Lowell's For the Union Dead where he figures more than once. "Edwards", says Wikipedia, "is widely regarded as one of America's most important and original philosophical theologians, Edwards' theological work is broad in scope, but he was rooted in Reformed theology, the metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage. Recent studies have emphasized how thoroughly Edwards grounded his life's work on conceptions of beauty, harmony, and ethical fittingness, and how central The Enlightenment was to his mindset."

JOHNATHAN EDWARDS IN WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS by Robert Lowell

Edwards' great millstone and rock
of hope has crumbled, but the square
white houses of his flock
stand in the open air,

out in the cold,
like sheep outside the fold.
Hope lives in doubt.
Faith is trying to do without

faith. In western Massachusetts,
I could almost feel the frontier
crack and disappear.
Edwards thought the world would end there.

We know how the world will end,
but where is paradise, each day farther
from the Pilgrim's blues for England
and the Promised Land.

Was it some country house
that seemed as if it were
Whitehall, if the Lord were there?
so nobly did he live.

Gardens designed
that the breath of flowers in the wind
or crushed underfoot,
came and went like warbling music?

Bacon's great oak grove
he refused to sell,
when he fell,
saying, "Why should I sell my feathers?"

Ah paradise! Edwards,
I would be afraid
to meet you there as a shade.
We move in different circles.

As a boy, you built a booth
in a swamp for prayer;
lying on your back,
you saw the spiders fly,

basking at their ease,
swimming from tree to tree
so high, they seemed tacked to the sky.
you knew they would die.

Poor country Berkley at Yale,
you saw the world was soul,
the soul of God! The soul
of Sarah Pierrepont!

So filled with delight in the Great Being,
she hardly cared for anything
walking the fields, sweetly singing,
conversing with someone invisible.

Then God's love shone in sun, moon and stars,
on earth, in the waters,
in the air, in the loose wind,
which used to greatly fix your mind.
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