Lumen: Early American Literature: "Verses Upon the Burning of Our House"

"Verses upon the Burning of our House" (July 10, 1666) is a poem by Anne Bradstreet. She wrote it to express the traumatic loss of her home and most of her material. However, she expands the understanding that God had taken them away in order for her family to live a more pious life. The poem has a couplet-based rhyme scheme. It has many lines with an inverted syntax, making lines sound "odd". Available in text and a video reading.