E.B. : "A Threnodia"

A stone more than the Ebenezer famed:

Stone, splendent diamond, right orient named;

A cordial stone, that often cheered hearts

With pleasant wit, with Gospel reach imparts;

Whetstone, that edgified the obtusest mind--

Loadstone, that drew the iron heart unkind--

A ponderous stone, that would the bottom sound

Of scripture depths, and bring out arcans found;

A stone for kingly David's use so fit

As would not fail Goliath's front to hit;

A stone, an antidote, that brake the course

Of gangrene error by convincing force;

A stone acute, fit to divide and square;

A squared stone became Christ's building rare.

[... In 1663 Samuel Stone, Hooker's colleague in the Hartford pulpit, died, much loved and lamented. One "E.B." wrote a threnody upon "our church's second dark eclipse" which was later printed in a history of the colonies. "E.B." was probably Edward Bulkeley, son of Peter of Concord, but this is not certain. Whoever wrote it took a leaping the metaphysical wilderness, and wrought upon the name "Stone" as elaborate a conceit as any court wit of the century ever devised.]

THE AMERICAN PURITANS - Their Prose and Poetry

Edited by Perry Miller

Doubleday Anchor Publishers, 1956