Anne Bradstreet, one of the world’s most well known female Puritan writers, is known for her poems that are rich in detail and imagery, reflecting her passions and her faith. One of the most powerful and thought-provoking themes that she uses throughout her works is the comparison between life on earth and the afterlife, expressed by her thoughts and feelings that she so delicately laces in between the two ideas, tying the comparisons together.
Bradstreet made it clear in her literary works that she had a strong love for her earthly life, delighting in her husband and children, in the life they had together, as well as their home. However, she had an even stronger love for God, and her faith was what saw her through the trials she endured on earth. In one of her most well known poems, Upon the Burning of Our House, she describes the grief she felt when they lost all their possessions when the house burnt down in a fire.
As she sleeps peacefully through the night, she is awakened abruptly by cries of “fire! and instantly her world crashes down around her. She and her family stand by as they helplessly watch all their material possessions burn out of existence. Realizing that there was nothing else she could do, she turns her mind to God, giving Him praise by saying “And when I could no longer look, I blest his Name that gave and took, That layd my goods now in the dust,” (lines 13-15). By saying this, she accepted that everything she owned was not hers to begin with, but all belongs to God, and that He has the right to give as well as take away from His children at any time.
Despite this, however, she still has human emotions and has trouble with the idea of giving all her possessions to God. Whenever she passes the ruins of what was once her home, not only does she miss the material things that were once there, but the memories that were attached to them: “Under thy roof no guest shall sitt, Nor at thy Table eat a bitt. No pleasant tale shall’ere be told, Nor things recounted done of old. No Candle ‘ere shall shine in Thee, Nor bridgegroom’s voice ere heard shall bee,” (lines 29-34).
But then she quickly reminds herself that she shouldn’t focus on earthly things, no matter how attached she had become to them, because Earth was not her real home to begin with. She remembers that in her real home in Heaven, God has made her a far better home that is waiting for her, one that won’t be susceptible to earthly damages like fire, but will stand forever; “Thou hast a house on high erect, Fram’d by that mighty Architect,” (lines 43, 44).
With this thought in mind, she is able to finally let go of what she had lost on earth, and in the last lines states that she will not become attached to earthly possessions anymore, for her real home and her real possession are in Heaven; “The world no longer let me Love, My hope, and my Treasure Iyes Above,” (lines 53, 54). Her family’s earthly possessions were not the only attachments Bradstreet had struggled with. But like anyone else, she worried about the fragility of life and the reality of death and meditated on these things often.
Being a colonial woman, death was all around her, and she reflects her contemplations on death in several of her works, one being Before the Birth of One of Her Children. Bradstreet composed the poem when she was pregnant and realized that she could die in childbirth, as it was a very common death for so many woman. Being close to delivery, her mind begins to worry about the great possibility of her dying and leaving her family behind.
She starts the poem off by contemplating life and death, realizing that no matter how many joys that life brings, there is just as much despair in the world resulting from death. She reflects on “[t]he sentence past… most irrevocable, [a] common thing, yet oh inevitable,” (lines 5-6) being Eve’s punishment of great labor pains when she disobeyed God. She addresses her husband throughout the poem, making it a sort of farewell letter if worse comes to worst. She tells him to remember her for all of her virtues and to take comfort in them when she is gone, and also to continue loving her in memory.
She also tells him “And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains, [l]ook to my little babes my dear remains,” (lines 21-22) saying to take comfort in their children who are a part of her she will leave behind. Being strong in her faith, Bradstreet was content in knowing that childbearing pains and the possibility of death accompanying them was the will of God; but being only human, she still had difficulty with the thought of leaving her family behind to grieve her absence. However, though sad, her faith and love for the Lord has prepared her to depart her earthly life to enter her Heavenly life.
She recognizes the reality of death, but she knows that it is not the end. Being a Puritan, she is comforted by her belief in the eternal life after death, where she will live in Heaven with the Lord and her loved ones in peace forever. Though her love for both the earthly life and the afterlife are reflected through her thoughts on loss and death, it is perhaps even more broadened and brought to light by what critics call her”greatest poetic achievement,” Contemplations, a poem composed of thirty-three seven-line stanzas.
It opens with Bradstreet admiring the beauties of earth’s nature, such as the autumn trees, the sun, and rivers, by the following lines: “Their leaves [and] fruits seem’d painted, but was true, [o]f green, of red, of yellow, mixed hew, [r]apt were my sences as this delectable view,” (stanza 1, lines 5-7); “Then higher on the glistering Sun Igaz’d, [w]hose beams was shaded by the leavie Tree, [t]he more I look’d, the more I grew amaz’d,” (stanza 4, lines 1-3); “I once that lov’d the shady woods so well, [n]ow thought the rivers did the trees excel, [a]nd if the sun would ever shine, there would I dwell,” (stanza 21, lines 5-7).
These stanzas show that she had a deep love and admiration for the earth’s nature, but in those admiring thoughts, her mind then leads her to her greater love—her love for God, the earth’s Creator. “I wist not what to wish, yet sure thought I, [i]f so much excellence abide below; [h]ow excellent is he that dwells on high? Whose power and beauty by his works we know,” (stanza 2, lines 1-4); “How full of glory then must thy Creator be?
Who gave this bright light luster unto thee: [a]dmir’d, ador’d for ever be that Majesty,” (stanza 7, lines 5-7); “My humble Eyes to lofty Skyes I rear’d, [t]o sing some Song, my mazed Muse thought meet. My great Creator I would magnifie,” (stanza 8, lines 3-5). Though she has an immense love for the natural world, her admiration for it leads her to contemplate the Lord and how He must be far greater and far more beautiful and glorious than His earthly creations.
Throughout the entire poem, Bradstreet’s mind wanders back and forth from the earth’s beauty to the earth’s Creator. In the first group of stanzas, she mostly makes connections with God to the sun, such as in stanza seven when she comments that since the sun is so bright and glorious that mortal human eyes cannot gaze upon it, then God must be even more glorious. In the second part, she begins to reflect on the Biblical stories of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel.
The nature that she admires so much reminds her of the Garden of Eden and how mankind had lost its privilege due to Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God. The thought of that sin leads her to think of the sin of the first murder—when Cain killed Abel. The story reminds her that the lives of humans are not nearly as long as they once were in Biblical times, yet ironically, men do not live as they should and waste their limited years away: “And though thus short, we shorten many wayes, [l]iving so little while we are alive,” (stanza 17, lines 3-4).
But she also states that though man will fade away like the earth, man will actually continue to live on in another life; “And when unmade, so ever shall they lye, [b]ut man was made for endless immortality,” (stanza 20, lines 6-7). With those thoughts in mind, Bradstreet then begins to contemplate Heaven as she watches a river from under a tree in the third part of the poem. She notices that the river has hundreds of brooks and streams connected to it, all leading towards the ocean.
To her, the river represents life on earth and the streams connecting to it are individual human lives, all flowing towards the ocean, which is Heaven. She then reflects on her desire—as is every Christian’s desire—to lead her loved ones, or “rivolets,” to Heaven. When a bird suddenly catches Bradstreet’s attention, she begins to admire it and sees that through its happy song, this is the way she wishes to be—happy and carefree. She says to it, “O merry Bird… that fears no snares, [t]hat neither toyles nor hoards up in thy barn, [feels n thoughts, nor cruciating cares… r]eminds not what is past, nor whats to come dost fear,” (stanza 27, lines 1-3 and 7).
She becomes jealous of the bird for its incapability to feel sadness, loss, or the burden of sin, when man on the other hand is, wat the best a creature frail and vain, [i]n knowledg ignorant, in strength but weak, [s]ubject to sorrows, losses, sickness, pain, [e]ach storm his state, his mind, his body break,” (stanza 29, lines 1-4). She states that this is because man chooses to not turn from sin to seek God’s face and His kingdom, so therefore the curse of earthly sin weighs down on man.
Fortunately at the conclusion of her poem, Bradstreet is comforted by the fact that eventually once man has had enough of the woes of sin, he will stop seeking the sinful pleasures of earth and will begin seeking eternal life with God. She ends it by saying that “Time [is] the fatal wrack of mortal things,” (stanza 33, line 1), stating that time will end all things earthly, except “he whose name is gray’d in the white stone,” (stanza 33, line 7) for they will be the ones to accept God’s grace in their hearts and receive His love and mercy and His gift of eternal life.
Many of Bradstreet’s poems reflect her love for this world and the next, but truly it is Contemplations that is the backbone of the theme. In the poem, as she meditates on God’s glory and the beautiful earth He created for man, she expresses a kind of conflict that many can relate to of the struggle between the love of the earthly world and the eternal world. Not only does the poem give readers a direct insight into her exact feelings, but also she expresses them in a way where she successfully addresses the ideal state of being for all Christians: being able to love the world without being of it.
Although she loved the world and her life, Bradstreet also acknowledges that the joys of life also come with many hardships. The world is beautiful, but it is also corrupt. Death is a daily occurrence, time steals earthly possessions, and destruction and sorrow are familiar to all. And the temptations of earth’s sins are rampant. Despite this knowledge, she kept her spirit strong by always keeping her mind on God’s great promise of the gift of salvation to all who would receive it. Even though she loved life on earth, in spite of its harshness, she knew that God had an even grander life waiting for her in Heaven.