Very little is known of Edward Taylor's life before he arrived in Amer-
ica. ¹ Born into a family of dissenters from Leicestershire, England in
1642, Taylor left England on April 26, 1668; seventy days later, he
arrived in Boston. For the next three and a half years Taylor studied
at Harvard College.

On May 5, 1671, Taylor and four fellow members of his Harvard
senior class met to present their final declamations. Among the 212
lines of heroic couplets that Taylor wrote for this occasion appears the
first reference to alchemy written by the Puritan poet: "no such spirits
flow / From mine alembick, neither have I skill / To rain such honey
falls out of my still." ² Taylor offers the preceding as an apology and
evokes the image of the alchemical vessel, the alembic and its medicinal
spirits, with which he contrasts the product(s) of his own unrefined
poetic imagination.

Although it may seem strange to some scholars that the poetry of a
Puritan preacher finds its way into a study of alchemical imagination
and early American literature, the work of Joan Del Fattore and Cheryl
Oreovicz has laid a foundation by which scholars may note the alchem-
ical references and tropes in Taylor Meditations. ³ A closer examina-
tion of Taylor Meditations, however, illuminates how his Puritan
mind encountered and incorporated the tropes and philosophy of al-
chemy into his poetic work to illustrate his vision of regeneration.

Upon first encountering Taylor Meditations, it is apparent that the
poet held the figure of the earthly alchemist in utter contempt. In Med-
itation 1.9 Taylor describes the alchemist:

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