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Anne Bradstreet (ca. 1612-1672)
Verses upon the Burning of our House, July 18th, 1666
Here follows some verses upon the burning
of our house, July. 18th. 1666. Copied out of
a loose Paper.
1In silent night when rest I took,
2For sorrow near I did not look,
3I waken'd was with thund'ring noise
4And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice.
5That fearful sound of "fire" and "fire,"
6Let no man know is my Desire.
7I starting up, the light did spy,
8And to my God my heart did cry
9To straighten me in my Distress
10And not to leave me succourless.
11Then coming out, behold a space
12The flame consume my dwelling place.
13And when I could no longer look,
14I blest his grace that gave and took,
15That laid my goods now in the dust.
16Yea, so it was, and so 'twas just.
17It was his own; it was not mine.
18Far be it that I should repine,
19He might of all justly bereft
20But yet sufficient for us left.
21When by the Ruins oft I past
22My sorrowing eyes aside did cast
23And here and there the places spy
24Where oft I sate and long did lie.
25Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest,
26There lay that store I counted best,
27My pleasant things in ashes lie
28And them behold no more shall I.
29Under the roof no guest shall sit,
30Nor at thy Table eat a bit.
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31No pleasant talk shall 'ere be told
32Nor things recounted done of old.
33No Candle 'ere shall shine in Thee,
34Nor bridegroom's voice ere heard shall bee.
35In silence ever shalt thou lie.
36Adieu, Adieu, All's Vanity.
37Then straight I 'gin my heart to chide:
38And did thy wealth on earth abide,
39Didst fix thy hope on mouldring dust,
40The arm of flesh didst make thy trust?
41Raise up thy thoughts above the sky
42That dunghill mists away may fly.
43Thou hast a house on high erect
44Fram'd by that mighty Architect,
45With glory richly furnished
46Stands permanent, though this be fled.
47It's purchased and paid for too
48By him who hath enough to do.
49A price so vast as is unknown,
50Yet by his gift is made thine own.
51There's wealth enough; I need no more.
52Farewell, my pelf; farewell, my store.
53The world no longer let me love;
54My hope and Treasure lies above.
Notes
52] pelf: wealth.
Online text copyright © 2005, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of
Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University
of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Anne Bradstreet, manuscript of meditations, Stevens Memorial Library,
North Andover, Mass., reproduced in Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse (1650), a
facsimile reproduction with an introduction by Josephine K.
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1997.
Recent editing: 4:2002/1/20
Form: Tetrameter Couplets
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Anne Bradstreet (ca. 1612-1672)
The Author to her Book
1Thou ill-form'd offspring of my feeble brain,
2Who after birth did'st by my side remain,
3Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,
4Who thee abroad expos'd to public view,
5Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,
6Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
7At thy return my blushing was not small,
8My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.
9I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
10Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight,
11Yet being mine own, at length affection would
12Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.
13I wash'd thy face, but more defects I saw,
14And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
15I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,
16Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.
17In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
18But nought save home-spun Cloth, i' th' house I find.
19In this array, 'mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam.
20In Critics' hands, beware thou dost not come,
21And take thy way where yet thou art not known.
22If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none;
23And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,
24Which caus'd her thus to send thee out of door.
Notes
7] by friends: Rev. John Woodbridge, her brother-in-the-law (White xiii), took her
manuscript to the printer without her knowledge.
Online text copyright © 2005, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of
Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University
of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Anne Bradstreet, Several Poems, 2nd edn. (Boston: John Foster, 1678).
Cf. The Complete Works of Anne Bradstreet, ed. Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., and Allan P.
Robb (Boston: Twayne, 1981): 177-78.
First publication date: 1678
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
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RP edition: RPO 1997.
Recent editing: 4:2002/1/19
Form: Heroic Couplets
Anne Bradstreet (ca. 1612-1672)
Prologue
1To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings,
2Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun,
3For my mean Pen are too superior things;
4Or how they all, or each their dates have run,
5Let Poets and Historians set these forth.
6My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth.
7But when my wond'ring eyes and envious heart
8Great Bartas' sugar'd lines do but read o'er,
9Fool, I do grudge the Muses did not part
10'Twixt him and me that over-fluent store.
11A Bartas can do what a Bartas will
12But simple I according to my skill.
13From School-boy's tongue no Rhet'ric we expect,
14Nor yet a sweet Consort from broken strings,
15Nor perfect beauty where's a main defect.
16My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings,
17And this to mend, alas, no Art is able,
18'Cause Nature made it so irreparable.
19Nor can I, like that fluent sweet-tongued Greek
20Who lisp'd at first, in future times speak plain.
21By Art he gladly found what he did seek,
22A full requital of his striving pain.
23Art can do much, but this maxim's most sure:
24A weak or wounded brain admits no cure.
25I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
26Who says my hand a needle better fits.
27A Poet's Pen all scorn I should thus wrong,
28For such despite they cast on female wits.
29If what I do prove well, it won't advance,
30They'll say it's stol'n, or else it was by chance.
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31But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild,
32Else of our Sex, why feigned they those nine
33And poesy made Calliope's own child?
34So 'mongst the rest they placed the Arts divine,
35But this weak knot they will full soon untie.
36The Greeks did nought but play the fools and lie.
37Let Greeks be Greeks, and Women what they are.
38Men have precedency and still excel;
39It is but vain unjustly to wage war.
40Men can do best, and Women know it well.
41Preeminence in all and each is yours;
42Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.
43And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies,
44And ever with your prey still catch your praise,
45If e'er you deign these lowly lines your eyes,
46Give thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no Bays.
47This mean and unrefined ore of mine
48Will make your glist'ring gold but more to shine.
Notes
8] Bartas: Guillaume du Bartas (1544-90), French poet translated into English by
Thomas Hudson (1584) and Joshua Sylvester (1605, 1608).
19] that fluent sweet-tongued Greek: Demosthenes.
33] Calliope: muse of heroic or epic poetry
Online text copyright © 2007, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of
Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University
of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: The Tenth Muse Lately sprung up in America. By a Gentlewoman in those
parts (London: Stephen Bowtell, 1650): 3-4. See Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse
(1650), a facsimile reproduction
First publication date: 1650
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1997.
Recent editing: 4:2002/1/20*1:2007/1/26*1:2007/1/27
Composition date: 1643 - 1647
Composition date note: See White 254
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Form: Heroic Sestets
Rhyme: ababcc
Couplets are any two lines working as a unit, whether they comprise a
single stanza or are part of a larger stanza. Most couplets rhyme (aa), but they
do not have to. There are several set forms of the couplet and a myriad of
variations based on line length and meter. All of the following rhyme "aa":

Short Couplet- iambic or trochaic tetrameter. From Maxine Kumin's
"Morning Swim"
Into my empty head there come
a cotton beach, a dock wherefrom
I set out, oily and rude
through mist in oily solitude.

Split Couplet- the first line in iambic pentameter, the second in iambic
dimeter. From Richard Steere's "On a Sea-Storm Nigh the Coast"
The weighty seas are rowled from the deeps
In mighty heaps,
And from the rocks' foundations do arise
To kiss the skies.

Heroic Couplet- two lines of iambic pentameter, also the last two lines of
the English sonnet. From Richard Steere's "On a Sea-Storm Nigh the
Coast"
Wave after wave in hills each other crowds,
As if the deeps resolved to storm the clouds.
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
Alexandrine Couplet- an alexandrine is a line of iambic hexameter, so an
alexandrine couplet is two rhymed lines of such. These often come at the
end of stanzas or poems and, in these cases, are also called codas.

Qasida- an Arabic form consisting of any number of lines all rhyming on
the same rhyme.
How To: You can do almost anything with a couplet. They can stand as single
thoughts, meaning they can exist on their own, outside of the poem, or they can
be enjambed, relying on the previous and succeeding couplets to be complete.
Most open form couplets are written this way, and a rhyme scheme should play
no bearing on how couplets are or are not interlocked.
The couplet can be a very lonely stanza, minimalistic. Poems whose content is
melancholy or depressing, for example, can make good use of the couplet
because--on the page--there is a lot of white space, emptiness, as opposed to
writing in quatrains where the stanzas are blocks which limit the white space. As
well, because the couplet can be so small, it is a good idea to pack it full of image
and emotion, like a hard punch packed in a tight space, very concentrated. If the
power in a couplet is not contained to the couplet, then you have a quatrain or
something larger. This doesn't mean the idea and emotion cannot flow between
or through couplets, I am only suggesting that each couplet be a powerful,
emotionally-intensive unit to the whole.
By Damon McLaughlin
One of the most pervasive features of the closed, or heroic couplet is a feature
called "balance and antithesis." The second line of the couplet is given a strong
break (caesura) after the fourth or sixth syllable, and each part of the line has a
noun and a verb antithetical to the noun and/or verb in the other. Here is an
example by Pope from The Rape of the Lock:
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
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And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
This is more an effect one would associate with poetry of wit and intellect than
with anything heroic. The term heroic couplet comes from the fact that just after
the theaters were reopened in 1660, there was a fashion for what was called
Heroic Plays, operatic nonmusicals filled with grand passions and set in exotic
locals. These were written in closed couplets, and so gave the form its name.
Nobody writes heroic couplets anymore. The form was pretty much killed by
Alexander Pope who brought it to a perfection that could not be matched. As a
young poet, Lord Byron used it in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, but
never tried it again. Probably the two best and most original poems in the form
after Pope were Samuel Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes, which is so much
slower and weightier than Pope's verse that it has a feel of originality, and Oliver
Goldsmith's Deserted Village, which makes the form more relaxed and homey
than it had ever seemed before. Pope is young, and not at his fullest power as a
poet in The Rape of the Lock, but this passage from that poem is a good
representative of the form:
Close by those meads forever crowned with flowers,
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising towers,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighboring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home.
Note the strong balance and antithesis in the last line.