Verses upon the Burning of our House

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1678

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form

What is immediately striking about “Some Verses” is that the poem itself is a single 54-line stanza. Because Bradstreet’s other poetry evidences her ability to design and execute stanzas, the form of the poem itself becomes part of its thematic argument.

The poem is itself something of a prayer, as Bradstreet works through her wavering feelings for the material possessions she has lost before she commits herself in solid Puritan fashion to thanking God for providing her with this abject lesson in God’s might and providential love. Only by destroying her home and her possession could God teach her the danger to her soul by putting too much store in earthly things. Thus, the poem moves swiftly, unerringly, and absolutely upward. With stanza breaks, that movement upward would lose its momentum, would allow for pauses that might indicate doubt. As Bradstreet designs the form, there is no break, no second-guessing—only the momentum of affirmation.

Thus the poem reflects how Bradstreet prays her way back into God’s good graces. That uninterrupted form creates the momentum of prayer itself. That momentum is further heightened by Bradstreet’s decision to use rhyming couplets as her poetic form. The poem never breaks the couplet rhyming scheme. The rapid-fire rhyme scheme keeps the poem moving at a hurtling pace, as does the frequency of one line feeding into the next without end punctuation, a formal device known as enjambment. In creating a poem with momentum and movement, not only does Bradstreet avoid spiraling into maudlin self-pity but shows how her movement to contentment, to affirming God’s power and mercy, is seamless and steady.

Meter

The meter is consistent and anticipated, even programmed. Each of the 54 lines is measured in eight syllable beats, that is four units (called iambs) each with two syllables: the first unstressed, and the second stressed, as in the word “respect” or “forlorn.” Four units per line is known as iambic tetrameter. Here, this eight-beat da-DUM metric pattern is unrelenting, even galloping despite the tragedy the poem recounts.

Consider this poignant moment when Bradstreet looks about the ruins of her home, all set to the steady iambic tetrameter beat:

When by the ruins oft I past

My sorrowing eyes aside did cast

What is remarkable is how consistently Bradstreet abides by that metrical pattern. Often to create subtle emotional shifts or to give a poem less of a songlike feel, poets artfully deconstruct their metrical patterns to provide quiet, elegant touches of tempo. Bradstreet, however, is not interested in promoting her own skills. In a poem that could provide the opportunity for reflection and painful introspection when the belongings and the home of the poet are reduced to ashes, why does Bradstreet insist on such a brisk and steady meter?

By maintaining this consistent and reliable meter throughout the poem, in never surrendering to the chaos and drift of unanticipated rhyme, Bradstreet controls her sorrow, gives it dignity and clarity. The meter reveals Bradstreet’s determination not to spiral into maudlin emotions. There is a parable-directness to Bradstreet’s military-style metrics. After all, designing intricate metrical patterns with subtle shifts, sonic effects, and tempo variations would merely draw attention to her talent as a poet and in turn deflect from the purpose of her verse: to guide and direct her readers to a moral life that, in turn, will reflect God’s glory.

Speaker

Anne Bradstreet is the speaker—and in that the poem represents a radical departure from the poetry of her era.

There is a baldness to “Some Verses”—we hear the plaintive voice of Bradstreet herself—that is remarkable only when the reader peruses other Puritan poetry. Such directness is an anomaly in that tradition. Bradstreet conjures no speaker, filters her experience through no character. She does not posture as some public figure dispensing wisdom from some august heights. She is a woman, a good Christian woman, who just lost her home and everything she owned. More like a diary entry or a private prayer, the poem reveals Bradstreet’s own intensely private movement from shock to sorrow to gratitude to joy. She struggles to understand the magnitude of her loss, addressing first her lost home and then, in her effort to redirect her emotions heavenward, she admonishes her own wayward heart in direct address.

These are not so much the deliberate stages of a fictional character’s emotional development. They are the honest reflection of Bradstreet’s own experience. Even the title suggests that urgency—as if the poem were written in the very moment of loss, written on a piece of loose scrap paper. In this choice of such an intensely personal speaker, of sharing in poetry a trauma that befell her, Bradstreet anticipates confessional poets more than two centuries later. Likewise, she stands apart from the conventional Puritan poetics, in which poets maintained a discrete emotional distance from their work to use poetry to elevate the moral and religious life of the reader, rather than reveal elements of the poet’s own private life.