Here Follow Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666 by Anne Bradstreet
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Transcript of Here Follow Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666 by Anne Bradstreet
Introducing the Poem
Literary Focus: The Plain Style
Reading Skills: Analyzing Text Structures: Inversion
Here Follow Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666
by Anne Bradstreet
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Here Follow Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666
by Anne Bradstreet
We increase our possessions only to the enlargement of our anxieties.
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
Here Follow Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666
by Anne Bradstreet
• She escapes from her burning house and then watches the flames consume it.
• The shock of losing her house causes her to reflect on what truly matters to her.
In this poem, the speaker awakens to shouts of “Fire!”
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Here Follow Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666
by Anne Bradstreet
• simplicity
Puritan writers favored the plain style—a way of writing that stresses
Here Follow Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666
Literary Focus: The Plain Style
• clarity of expression
• the use of everyday words
Puritan writings may now seem hard to read, but to readers in the 1600s, they sounded simple and direct.
Although Bradstreet uses figurative language in her poetry, her writing is still influenced by strong, simple Puritan style and diction.
Here Follow Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666
Literary Focus: The Plain Style
“Here stood that trunk, and there that chest,
There lay that store I counted best.”
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Inversion is the reversal of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase.
“My pleasant things in ashes lie,And them behold no more shall I.”
Inversion
Normal order My pleasant things lie in ashes,And I shall behold them no more.
• Poets often use inversion to accommodate the demands of meter and rhyme.
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Here Follow Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666
Reading Skills: Analyzing Text Structures: Inversion