Anne Bradstreet wrote this poem while pregnant, addressing her husband as she faces the real possibility of dying in childbirth. The opening lines meditate on the inescapable end of all things: joy is shadowed by adversity, and even the deepest bonds are severed by death. That knowledge leads her to speak directly and tenderly, hoping these verses might outlast her. She asks him to bury her faults with her body, but to let any goodness she possessed live on in his memory. She urges him to protect their children from a cruel stepmother—a haunting, practical plea. The poem’s mood is intimate and elegiac, yet it never slips into despair. There is a quiet courage in her acceptance of mortality, and deep love in the way she entrusts herself to a husband who may soon be a widower. The final image—him kissing the paper stained with her tears—makes grief feel physical and immediate, transforming a letter into a relic of affection.
Before the Birth of One of Her Children — Summary
All things within this fading world hath end, Adversity doth still our joys attend; No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet, But with death's parting blow are 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 the knot's untied that made us one, I may seem thine, who in effect am none. 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 harmes, 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 stepdame's injury. And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse, With some sad sighs honor my absent hearse; And kiss this paper for thy dear love's sake, Who with salt tears this last farewell did take.