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The Prologue by Anne Bradstreet

Analysis

This poem speaks about Bradstreet's struggle with being a woman within a puritan society. During this time, women were not meant to speak their mind and were meant to recognize only men's supposed superiority. As a reference to this is line 40, "Men can do best, and women know it well".

"The Prologue" is written in the ABABCC rhyme scheme for a total of six lines per each of the eight stanzas. Each line consists of ten syllables. This is much of a tribute to writing as it is anything else. She's basically saying that she cannot be heard without her poetry, so she writes in hopes of being read. She is not a man, so she cannot speak her mind publicly, so she writes.

Poem

The Prologue
By 

To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings,
Of cities founded, commonwealth begun,
For my mean pen are too superior things:
Or how they all, or each their dates have run
Let poets and historians set these forth, 
My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth. 

II
But when my wond'ring eyes and envious heart 
Great Bartas sugared lines do but read o'er, 
Fool I do grudge the Muses did not part
Twixt him and me that overfluent store; 
A Bartas can do what a Bartas will 
But simple I according to my skill. 

III
From schoolboy's tongue no rhetoric we expect, 
Nor yet a sweet consort from broken strings, 
Nor perfect beauty where's a main defect; 
My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings, 
And this to mend, alas, no art is able, 
"Cause nature made it so irreparable.

IV 
Nor can I, like that fluent sweet tongued Greek
Who lisped at first, in future times speak plain. 
By art he gladly found what he did seek, 
A full requital of his striving pain. 
Art can do much, but this maxim's most sure: 
A weak or wounded brain admits no cure. 

V
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue 
Who says my hand a needle better fits, 
A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong, 
For such despite they cast on female wits; 
If what I do prove well, it won't advance, 
They'll say it's stol'n, or else it was by chance. 

VI
But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild 
Else of our sex, why feigned they those nine
And poesy made Calliope's own child; 
So 'mongst the rest they placed the arts divine; 
But this weak knot they will full soon untie, 
The Greeks did nought, but play the fools and lie.

VII
Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are
Men have precedency and still excel, 
It is but vain unjustly to wage war; 
Men can do best, and women know it well. 
Preeminence in all and each is yours; 
Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours. 

VIII
And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies,
And ever with your prey still catch your praise,
If e'er you deign these lowly lines your eyes,
Give thyme or parsley wreath, I ask no bays;
This mean and unrefined ore of mine
Will make your glist'ring gold but more to shine.

Published in The Tenth Muse .
Next: The Vanity of All Worldly Things