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Religious poem

"The Day of Doom: or, A Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment" is a religious poem by clergyman Michael Wigglesworth that became a best selling classic in Puritan New England for a century after it was published in 1662 by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson. The poem describes the Day of Judgment, on which a vengeful God judges and sentences all men, going into detail as to the various categories of people who think themselves excusable who will nonetheless end up in Hell.

This early popularity did not prevent early 20th century scholars of literature and scholars of the colonial period more broadly from strongly criticizing The Day of Doom as dull, uncreative, and depressing. The assessment of Vernon Parrington in The Colonial Mind is typical: “It is not pleasant to linger in the drab later years of [the seventeenth] century. A world that accepted Michael Wigglesworth for its poet, and accounted Cotton Mather its most distinguished man of letters, had certainly backslidden in the ways of culture.” The poem is a "doggerel epitome of Calvinistic theology", according to the anthology, Colonial Prose and Poetry (1903).

See Reference 1 for the text of the poem. Over its two hundred and twenty four stanzas (the longest of any poem in the Colonial Period), The Day of Doom is an argument to encourage the faithful and challenge the faithless through describing plainly how scripture depicts the amazement (and later the judgment per se) of the unwise. This is a form of, while not quite apologetics, evangelistic messaging. There are similarities and contrasts to other “hellfire and brimstone” preaching and writing; the poem does not fit into the typical paradigm. Later editions included scripture references in the margins making the connections clear: each verse of the poem was inspired by a particular scripture passage. Wigglesworth stayed limited to scripture itself. In verse XVI, he wrote “And therefore I must pass it by, lest speaking should transgress.” This describes immediately his reluctance to describe God's glory, but it is also true in a broader sense. He does not speak without clear and complete warrant from scripture.