A deeply religious poet, Anne Bradstreet focuses on the interrelationships of nature, humanity, and the Divine in her spiritual masterpiece "Contemplations."
Anne Bradstreet’s “Contemplations” consists of 33 stanzas; the first 32 have seven lines with the rime scheme, ABABCCC, while the final stanza has eight rimed couplets.
Stanzas 1-3
In the first stanza, the speaker describes the beauty of autumn: “Their leaves and fruits seem'd painted but was true / Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hew, / Rapt were my senses at this delectable view.”
Then the speaker, in the second stanza, intimates that she was so touched by such beauty she did not know what to think, but she naturally felt the impulse to wonder, “If so much excellence abide below, / How excellent is he that dwells on high?” Referring the Divine, she says that we know “his power and beauty by his works” and that he is “goodness, wisdom, glory, light.”
In the third stanza, her eye catches sight of the “stately Oak” and addressing the tree, she asks, “How long since thou wast in thine Infancy?” And she muses that the answer might be a hundred or even a thousand years, since it first broke forth from the acorn.
Stanzas 4-7
In stanza 4-7, the speaker muses on the sun, and declares that the sun is surely an amazing entity: “The more I looked, the more I grew amaz'd / And softly said, what glory's like to thee?” Her amazement led her to understand how some civilizations have considered the sun a god: “Soul of this world, this Universe's Eye, / No wonder some made thee a Deity.”
Then she likens the sun to a Bridegroom leaving his chamber every morning, and she muses on how the heat from the sun gives life to the earth, insects, animals, and vegetation. She dramatizes the sun as creator of the seasons, and once again, she contemplates the fact that the greatness of the sun is one more example of the greatness of the Creator, as she muses, “How full of glory then must thy Creator be! / Who gave this bright light luster unto thee.”
Stanzas 8-10
In stanza 8, the speaker looks to the sky and muses about what song she could sing to offer glory to her Maker, but she feels dumbfounded at the prospect of adding any glory to such a powerful Spirit. In stanza 9, she hears crickets and grasshoppers and berates herself for remaining mute, while these lowly creatures are singing to their Beloved. The speaker muses about the efficacy of looking back to past generations.
Stanzas 11-20
In stanzas 11-20, the speaker muses about biblical events from Adam and Eve to Cain and Abel and the Land of Nod, to which Cain was banished after he slew Abel. She concludes that our lives are often lived too mechanically: “And though thus short, we shorten many ways, / Living so little while we are alive.”
She becomes philosophical and she questions: “Shall I then praise the heavens, the trees, the earth, / Because their beauty and their strength last longer?” She finally asserts, “But man was made for endless immortality.” So she cannot condemn this life even though down through the years from biblical times humans have behaved as if they were not a spark of the Divine.
Stanzas 21-33
The speaker recalls sitting by a river and being reminded that the river is searching for and ever traveling toward the ocean. And thus from stanzas 20 through 26, she muses on the creatures of the sea, how they look and how they fulfill their own destiny. Then the speaker is brought back form the watery depths by a bird singing overhead; thus she contemplates the “feathery” world, until she is brought back to focus on mankind: “Man at the best a creature frail and vain, / In knowledge ignorant, in strength but weak.”
And in stanzas 29 to 33, she speaks of how mankind will glide along happily, until faced with a catastrophe: “Fond fool, he takes this earth ev'n for heav'ns bower, / But sad affliction comes and makes him see / Here's neither honour, wealth, or safety. / Only above is found all with security.”
Stanza 33
The speaker’s final summation is declared in eight rimed couplets, the theme of which is that time is the enemy on the earthly level: “O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things / That draws oblivion's curtains over kings.” Nothing on earth escapes Time’s wreckage, except the individual who has realized his soul unity with the Divine: “But he whose name is graved in the white stone / Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.” The speaker metaphorically likens God-union to having one’s name engraved on a white stone, an allusion to Revelation 2:17: “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written.”
