Anne Bradstreet

Before the Birth of One of Her Children

All things within this fading world hath end,
Adversity doth still our joys attend;
No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,

Death's parting blow

Bradstreet uses violent language—death doesn't separate, it strikes. The physical brutality matches her fear of childbirth mortality.

But with death's parting blow is sure to meet.
The sentence past is most irrevocable,
A common thing, yet oh, inevitable.
How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend.
How soon't may be thy lot to lose thy friend,
We both are ignorant, yet love bids me
These farewell lines to recommend to thee,
That when that knot's untied that made us one,

That knot's untied

Marriage metaphor: they became 'one flesh' at the wedding, so her death will undo that knot. She'll be 'none'—literally nobody.

I may seem thine, who in effect am none.

Half my days

Psalm 90 reference—'threescore years and ten' is the biblical lifespan. She's doing mortality math, calculating what she'll miss.

And if I see not half my days that's due,
What nature would, God grant to yours and you;
The many faults that well you know
I have Let be interred in my oblivious grave;
If any worth or virtue were in me,
Let that live freshly in thy memory
And when thou feel'st no grief, as I no harms,
Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms.
And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains
Look to my little babes, my dear remains.
And if thou love thyself, or loved'st me,
These O protect from step-dame's injury.

Step-dame's injury

Step-mother. If her husband remarries, she wants him to protect their children from a potentially cruel replacement wife.

And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,

Absent hearse

The poem becomes her body—he'll honor her 'absent hearse' by reading it. The paper is a stand-in for her corpse.

With some sad sighs honour my absent hearse;
And kiss this paper for thy love's dear sake,
Who with salt tears this last farewell did take.
This work was published before January 1, 1931, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Writing Your Will in Verse

CONTEXT Bradstreet wrote this around 1640 in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Childbirth was the leading cause of death for women—roughly 1 in 8 mothers died. This isn't morbid poetry; it's practical estate planning.

The poem is a legal and emotional will. She's distributing her assets: her husband gets her memory (lines 17-18), her children get his protection (line 22), and the poem itself becomes proof she existed. Notice how she shifts from abstract mortality ("all things... hath end") to specific instructions ("Look to my little babes"). This is a woman making arrangements.

The step-mother warning (line 24) reveals Puritan social reality. Widowers remarried quickly—they needed household management and childcare. Bradstreet knows she's replaceable as a wife, so she makes her husband promise to be irreplaceable as a father. The phrase "if thou love thyself, or loved'st me" is manipulation: she's binding his self-interest to her children's protection.

The Poem as Body

Bradstreet turns the physical poem into her corpse. Line 26: "honour my absent hearse" means this paper is her funeral. Line 27: "kiss this paper for thy love's dear sake" makes the page a substitute for her body. He'll kiss the poem like he kissed her.

The final image—"salt tears this last farewell did take"—suggests she's literally crying on the page as she writes. The tears are both metaphorical (emotional) and physical (wet ink, smudged words). The poem becomes a relic, stained with her bodily fluids, proof she was here.

This materiality matters because Puritan women left few traces. No portraits, rarely any property in their names, often not even marked graves. The poem is her only guaranteed survival. She's not being poetic when she asks him to remember her 'worth or virtue'—she's asking him to remember she existed at all.