... poems for Jonathan Mitchell, one byFrancis Drake and one by an English elegist, boasted that New Englandwas fully capable of harvesting its own gracious fruits: “Let it be known, that America ... Puritan elegy it, Corlet has outgrown “nature” itself. Elegists repeatedly maintained that the best die so that the worst may be corrected. Oakes, warning that when “men of mercy go, / It is ... ). The “Diviner Warrant” that will validate the effort is notan assumption that Oakes can write with David’s eloquence, but that thesincerity of his desire to mourn one of God’s people will...