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Anne Bradstreet's Poem Verses Upon The Burning Of Our House

528 Words3 Pages

Anne Bradstreet through several of her poems does not show true Puritan beliefs. In “Verses Upon the Burning of our House”, Bradstreet is caught in the internal conflict between her faith and accepting the loss of her earthly possessions. She used personification to state that her heart “cried” to God not to leave her helpless but it delivers the idea that she only prays to him when she is in need (8). All the luxuries that Puritans have are given by God’s grace and belong to him. Anne is a materialistic person because she says, “When by the ruins oft I past, my sorrowing eyes aside did cast, and here and there the places spy, where oft I sate and long did lie” (21), thus she is still sorrowing about losing her things even though she knows …show more content…

According to Puritan beliefs, self-love or love to somebody else should not be superior to our love to God. In the poem, “To My Dear and Loving husband”, Anne Bradstreet boasts about the love she and her husband share. Anne exaggerates her love for her husband and thinks they are the perfect couple with a powerful connection. She expresses how her husband’s love is more important than “whole mines of gold or all the riches that the East hold” (Bradstreet, 5-6). With this phrase, she gives the idea that she does not care about any other love rather than her husbands and even makes us think that she loves her husband more than she loves God and that this love was distracting her from her commitment to him. Anne’s marriage should have been centered in worshiping God not only their love. She desires her husband so much that not even “rivers can quench” that thirst (Bradstreet, 7). Anne believes that God will pay her husband for his love towards her. She suggests that the big love she and her husband share is the pathway for eternal life. By the end she uses the paradox, “That when we live no more, we may live ever” (Bradstreet, 12), to reassure the idea that the love they share will live

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