Friday, September 19, 2014

What does the poet fondly recall in Lines Upon the Burning of our House?

Anne Bradstreet as a poet had a tendency to memorialize
family events and the burning of her home is one that she recorded in 1666.  In a
lyrical poem, Bradstreet describes the experience of "piteous shrieks of dreadful
voice."  However, she praises God as did Job when he said that the Lord gives and the
Lord takes away.  She recalls fondly the places where she has often sat and lain.  A
trunk and a chest that "lay store I counted best" are also things that she mourns no
longer having.  Perhaps, the "store" that was in the chest were her book and papers and
unpublished poems which were lost in the fire.  But, she does not reveal these treasured
items.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the meaning of the 4th stanza of Eliot's Preludes, especially the lines "I am moved by fancies...Infinitely suffering thing".

A century old this year, T.S. Eliot's Preludes raises the curtain on his great modernist masterpieces, The Love...