Before the Birth of One of Her Children
By Anne Bradstreet
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 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,
Bradstreet often writes in rhymed couplets, but the form seems especially suited to this love poem which considers the bond between “me” and “thee” and whether the lovers will remain united in life as “one” or dissolved in death to “none.”We are both ignorant, yet love bids me
These farewell lines to recommend to thee,
The knot is a conventional image for marriage, and Bradstreet uses it here to figure death as an untying.That when that 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 harms,
Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms.
And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains
After death, the speaker’s “remains” will not be what is left of her physical body but the children in whom she lives on.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.
And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,
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.