Spiritual Values In Anne Bradstreet's Upon The Burning Of Our House

The value of earthly treasures versus eternal treasures is a key theme in Anne Bradstreet’s “Upon the Burning of Our House.” Throughout the poem, Bradstreet uses the following three examples to discover her feelings about losing her earthly treasures in the house fire and moving toward eternal treasures: her earthly possessions, her position in society, and her ultimate choice to focus on eternity. Anne Bradstreet is a woman who was the first English colonial poet. while she resided in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She wrote this poem around July of 1666 to describe the event of her home burning to the ground. Bradstreet creates a deeper meaning in her poem through her discussion of earthly value versus eternal value and how she discovers the importance of eternal value through the loss of her earthly possessions. The first example of her discovery is her feeling that she has lost her earthly possessions. In her recount of the flames overtaking her house, Bradstreet says, “I blest His name that gave and took, That laid my goods now in the dust” (Bradstreet ll. 14-15). In these lines,

She now fully understands where her treasure lies and how the things of this earth are in no way comparable to the life that eternity has to offer. In the world today, many people have this same mentality: that earthly treasures are more important than those of eternal value. People in today’s world value many things that will have no value to them at the end of their life and unfortunately, it usually takes some drastic event, like Bradstreet’s house fire, to understand the true value of Eternity. People can still learn from Bradstreet’s discovery, that the things of this earth are of very little worth compared to sharing eternity with the