Main Blog Post (October 9th)

Bella Martinez

Dr. Lee

ENGL&244

8 October 2015

Blog Assignment: “As Weary Pilgrim” by Anne Bradstreet

            Anne Bradstreet was a talented poet. As a young girl, she would write poems to please her father and from then on her talents soared. Her brother-in-law, John Woodbridge, even published a collection of her poems known as The Tenth Muse; the first published volume of poems written by a resident of America (207). As for her journey to the Americas she and her family came over on Winthrop’s fleet in the year 1630. At that time she would have been just 18 years old. With regards to her poem, “As Weary Pilgrim” she is writing from personal experience. Life as a pilgrim, which is what she was, was not easy. Life at sea during that time especially was undeniably hard; no bathrooms, no showers, shortages of food and sickness all make for one horrible trip to endure through. Then one has to also consider the types of stress one faces with regards to finding a means of survival once making it to the Americas as well. She endured and fought hard and even “risked death by childbirth eight times” (207). Although she endured, she looked more forward to escaping it all; the hard life of a pilgrim that is, which is the basis for her poem.

            In her poem, “As Weary Pilgrim” Bradstreet talks about the hard life of a pilgrim and the ultimate way to overcome that. She focuses on death and how death in and of itself is how one can truly escape all the things life has to throw at us. She also continually expresses the idea that through death, pain will be no more as well as all the cares and worries one could muster. Being a pilgrim herself, she knows exactly what it’s like and in her writing one can tell that she wants to be done with it all. This is particularly evident when she says, “Oh, how I long to be at rest and soar on high among the blest” (234). On one hand she sounds as if she is sad and is ungrateful for the life she has had to endure through, but on the other she talks about death with a happiness even saying, “As weary pilgrim, now at rest, hugs with delight his silent nest” (233). By saying these things she makes it clear that she too wants that sense of relief and a means of happiness again and to her death can provide those things. Rather than being afraid of it, she is happily welcoming it. For this reason the tone I feel she is using is one of gratitude and excitement for the next life to meet her Maker. With regards to the purpose of the text’s publication, I feel as if it was published to better reach out and help other pilgrims going through a hard time realize that it’s okay to feel done, but that they aren’t alone. In reading Bradstreet’s poem I feel as if she is trying to communicate that life especially as a pilgrim is hard, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel; Christ and Heaven where as she puts it “such lasting joys shall there behold” (234).

            What this poem offers is a deeper understanding of the life of a pilgrim. Although Bradstreet doesn’t offer up specific examples of hardships in her poem, one can feel her pain even in describing an excitement to be done with it all. In looking at the larger themes being developed in our module we have read accounts of Bradford’s voyages and occurrences of the ship not being sufficient enough for travel, times of starvation because of food shortages as well as wars breaking out between the Indians and the English (132-4). These particular struggles are in accordance with the fact that being a pilgrim is hard and miserable. Bradstreet’s text functions artistically in that she uses some forms of weather to explain the hardships one goes through as a pilgrim. She states that, “[n]or stormy rains on him shall beat” which offers clear imagery and means that death offers an escape from the hardships of being a pilgrim.

 

Baym, Nina. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8th Ed., New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.