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

Feature Menu

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!”

[End of Section]

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.”

[End of Section]

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.

[End of Section]

Here Follow Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666

Reading Skills: Analyzing Text Structures: Inversion