User:Cugonwa/"Before the Birth of one of Her Children" by Anne Bradstreet

"Before the Birth of One of Her Children" is a poem by Anne Bradstreet. Anne Bradstreet was the role model for the American Puritan woman. Anne was born in England in 1612, to Thomas and Dorothy Dudley, who were stewards of the Earl of Lincoln. Thus, Anne and her family knew wealth and its advantages. When she was 16, Anne married Simon Bradstreet, son of a Puritan minister. Although they could have lived a comfortable life in all ways in England, they chose to leave with Anne's parents in 1630, to serve their God in America under John Winthrop's leadership.

"Before the Birth of one of Her Children," published in 1678 voices woman's age-old fear of death in childbirth, in the seventeenth century a thoroughly realistic apprehension. The poem is consequently a practical document, a little testament. Neither bathos nor self-indulgence cloud the economy of these lines; they are honest, tender, and homely as a letter out of a marraige in which the lovers are also friends. The emotional interest of the poem lies in the human present and future; only in its conclusion does it gesture toward a hoped-for immortality. And the writers pangs arise, not from dread of what lies after death, but from the thought of leaving a husband she loves and children half-reared.

Original Text

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.