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Nature In Anne Bradstreet's In Memory Of My Dear Grandchild

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In the poem "In Memory of My Dear Grandchild…" , Anne Bradstreet uses the symbolism of nature to represent the feeling of loss. Bradstreet uses many pieces of nature to reflect on the loss of her granddaughter. Some pieces of nature that Bradstreet uses in her poem are a "fair flower" (3), trees not fully grown (8), ripe plums and apples (9), and flower buds not blooming (13). All of the symbolism relating to nature is showing that Anne Bradstreet lost her granddaughter, and that she lost her way to early on her path in life. One use of symbolism in Bradstreet 's saddening poem is relating her granddaughter, Elizabeth Bradstreet, to a fair flower. The line from the poem states "Farewell fair flower that for a space was lent" (line 3). The …show more content…

Another use of symbolism in the poem is through trees. Bradstreet talks about how trees rot when they are fully grown. The exact saying is "By nature trees do rot when they are grown" (line 8). Anne Bradstreet is portraying that it is truly natural for nature to take its course, but this wasn 't the case. She is saying that her daughter was taken before nature got to take its course. In the poem, the trees lived until they rotted. In her granddaughter 's case she didn 't get to live a full life or "rot". The line is also saying the trees were also grown when they rotted. The contrast to that is that her granddaughter wasn 't fully grown when she …show more content…

Lastly, the last symbol I found in the poem was the flower buds not blooming. This is somewhat relating to the "fair flower" line, but not quite. The line from the poem says "And buds new blown to have so short a date" (line 13). The first part of this line is saying that new flowers have blown, or began to grow. This happens from components of nature getting their full circle of life. She is saying that flowers got to fully grow and go through the circle of life, while her granddaughter didn 't get to. The second part is saying even the new blown flowers have such a short time in this brutal world. In simpler terms, some of the flowers never got to bloom just like her granddaughter never got to life a full life, or as some would say "bloom." This correlates to her granddaughter, Elizabeth Bradstreet, who died at the age of one and a half years old. In conclusion, Anne Bradstreet 's poem uses the symbolism of nature to the represent the loss that she is feeling. She provides many examples of this inside of the poem. Most are in the second stanza. The pieces of nature that Bradstreet uses are a "fair flower" (3), trees not grown (8), ripe plums and apples (9), and flowers not blooming (13). As almost all readers can see, most of the symbolic changes happen in the second stanza of the sonnet. There is only one nature correlation in the first stanza and that is in line three. She uses these symbols to show that these pieces of nature got live a full life, while her infant

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