The Full Text of “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
1All things within this fading world hath end,
2Adversity doth still our joyes attend;
3No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,
4But with death’s parting blow is sure to meet.
5The sentence past is most irrevocable,
6A common thing, yet oh inevitable.
7How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend,
8How soon’t may be thy Lot to lose thy friend,
9We are both ignorant, yet love bids me
10These farewell lines to recommend to thee,
11That when that knot’s untied that made us one,
12I may seem thine, who in effect am none.
13And if I see not half my dayes that’s due,
14What nature would, God grant to yours and you;
15The many faults that well you know I have
16Let be interr’d in my oblivious grave;
17If any worth or virtue were in me,
18Let that live freshly in thy memory
19And when thou feel’st no grief, as I no harms,
20Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms.
21And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains
22Look to my little babes, my dear remains.
23And if thou love thyself, or loved’st me,
24These o protect from step Dames injury.
25And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,
26With some sad sighs honour my absent Herse;
27And kiss this paper for thy loves dear sake,
28Who with salt tears this last Farewel did take.
The Full Text of “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
1All things within this fading world hath end,
2Adversity doth still our joyes attend;
3No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,
4But with death’s parting blow is sure to meet.
5The sentence past is most irrevocable,
6A common thing, yet oh inevitable.
7How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend,
8How soon’t may be thy Lot to lose thy friend,
9We are both ignorant, yet love bids me
10These farewell lines to recommend to thee,
11That when that knot’s untied that made us one,
12I may seem thine, who in effect am none.
13And if I see not half my dayes that’s due,
14What nature would, God grant to yours and you;
15The many faults that well you know I have
16Let be interr’d in my oblivious grave;
17If any worth or virtue were in me,
18Let that live freshly in thy memory
19And when thou feel’st no grief, as I no harms,
20Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms.
21And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains
22Look to my little babes, my dear remains.
23And if thou love thyself, or loved’st me,
24These o protect from step Dames injury.
25And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,
26With some sad sighs honour my absent Herse;
27And kiss this paper for thy loves dear sake,
28Who with salt tears this last Farewel did take.
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“Before the Birth of One of Her Children” Introduction
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Anne Bradstreet's "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" is actually about death—specifically, death in childbirth, an all-too-common fate when this poem appeared in 1678. The first published writer from England's North American colonies, Bradstreet was also the mother of eight children. She writes from a pregnant woman's perspective, capturing the inner life of the speaker as she grapples with her vulnerability as an expectant mother. This poem is at once a confrontation with mortality and a celebration of the rewards of motherhood.
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“Before the Birth of One of Her Children” Summary
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Everything in this fleeting world dies, and hardship follows every joy; there are no human connections strong enough, no friendships special enough, that they can escape the separation of death. Death (and God's judgment) cannot be undone: they're humanity's shared, normal, and unavoidable fate. Indeed, my beloved husband, very soon I may die. Very soon, it may be your misfortune to lose your dear wife. And though whether or not I will die in childbirth is still a mystery to us both, the love I have for you compels me to write you this goodbye poem, and remind you that, should our marriage come to an end at my death, I am still yours, even if I am gone. And if I don't even live out half of the years I should get on earth, I hope that God grants the extra time nature owes me to you and our children instead. As for my many flaws, of which you are well aware—bury those in my forgetful grave. Instead, if I have any good points, remember those. And even when you no longer feel grief, and I no longer feel pain, please go on loving me, the woman who lay in your arms for so many years. And when you replace me with a new wife, take care of my little babies, the dear children I leave behind. For if you love yourself, or really loved me, then oh, you will be sure to protect our babies from a stepmother's cruelty. And if you should happen to read this poem again one day, please honor my memory with some mournful sighs, and kiss the paper this poem is written on in recognition of your lost love, who wrote these words of goodbye with tears in her eyes.
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“Before the Birth of One of Her Children” Themes
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The Inevitability of Death
“Before the Birth of One of Her Children,” is, as the title suggests, a poem about childbirth. Nevertheless, its main concern is not life, but death. The poem was written in the 17th century, when women often died in labor. Throughout the poem, the pregnant speaker accepts her vulnerability as an expectant mother, demonstrating her levelheaded outlook on death. This practical acceptance of her own mortality suggests that death is simply a fact of life that people ought to expect and prepare for rather than fear.
The speaker establishes this down-to-earth tone early in the poem, noting that all living things die, and every joy is shadowed by hardship. The speaker then explicitly counts herself among those for whom “death’s parting blow” is destined, noting “how soon […] death may my steps attend.” Taken in context with the poem’s title, this statement acknowledges the danger that the speaker faces as a woman about to give birth in a time when it was very common for women to die in labor.
Accepting this reality doesn’t mean the speaker isn’t emotional about dying. She sheds “salt tears” as she thinks about the possibility, expressing love and sorrow for the husband and children who will survive her. Throughout the poem, she expresses a clear love of life despite its hardships, naming “friends so dear and sweet” and her “little babes” among the “joyes” of her existence.
Nevertheless, the speaker clearly views death as an unavoidable reality, describing it as “a common thing, yet oh inevitable” that should therefore be addressed matter-of-factly rather than fearfully. This acceptance of her own mortality allows her to prepare herself (and her family) for her death. The speaker coaches her husband on how to cope with loss, and even generously wishes that, should she die in childbirth, God will bestow the lost days of her life on her husband and her children instead.
By accepting death as inevitable, the speaker is able to prepare herself and her family to face human mortality.
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Remembrance and Legacy
Throughout “Before the Birth of One of Her Children,” the speaker worries about death’s impact on her legacy. Her final request, after all, is that her memory be honored and sustained not only through her children, but through the words she leaves behind. Childbirth and poetry thus become ways for her to leave a lasting part of herself in the world after she dies.
Concerned with the memory she will leave behind, the speaker wants her husband to remember her virtues instead of her flaws. She asks that he metaphorically bury—or forget—her “many faults,” hoping that her virtues will instead “live freshly in [his] memory.” The fact that the speaker is so concerned with how her husband remembers her suggests that she’s more worried about how she'll be remembered than about the fact that she might die.
The speaker then worries for a more tangible form of her legacy: her children. She anticipates that her husband will eventually recover from his grief and remarry, so she asks him to protect their children: “Look to my little babes, my dear remains. / […] protect [them] from step Dames injury." Here, the speaker understands that her memory will live on not only in the abstract, but also through the physical “remains” that she leaves behind in the form of her children’s bodies.
Last but not least, the speaker extends her legacy to include the literary. She closes by asking her husband to cherish this very poem, imploring him to one day “kiss this paper for thy loves dear sake.” In other words, the speaker also sees her poetry as an important aspect of her "remains." This final instruction to honor and preserve her poem reveals the speaker’s understanding (and desire) that the words she leaves behind will also keep her "alive" in the world—even after her death.
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Motherhood and Childbirth
For a poem titled in honor of a child’s upcoming birth, “Before the Birth of One of Her Children” doesn't say much about the particulars of childbirth or motherhood. Instead, it focuses on the possibility that the speaker might die in labor, and the way the speaker hopes her husband will handle the aftermath of that possible tragedy. And yet, the speaker’s explicit love for her husband and concern for her children suggest that she views the risks of childbirth as worthwhile and important. Ultimately, the poem accomplishes a complex feat, remaining realistic about the hardships that mothers faced in the 17th century, but also joyfully celebrating motherhood in spite of its dangers.
Though the poem opens by accepting the inevitability of death, it also immediately mentions the “joyes” of life on earth. Several references to earthly pleasures and delights—“friends so dear and sweet,” “long lay[ing] in thine arms,” and the suggestion that more time on earth is the speaker’s “due”—make clear that the speaker truly enjoys and cherishes her life.
What’s more, the speaker’s preoccupation with how her husband should proceed in the event of her death shows her deep appreciation of family life. Her love for her husband is clear throughout the poem: she writes that it is “love [that] bids [her]” to write “these farewell lines,” and describes her potential death as the metaphorical untying of the “knot[]” that “made [them] one.” Likewise, her care and concern for her children, whom she fondly refers to as “my little babes, my dear remains,” is obvious. Her implication that her children are her “remains”—or legacy—on earth shows that motherhood is an important and meaningful part of the speaker’s identity.
At the same time, the poem makes it painfully clear that death during childbirth was common in the 1600s: motherhood was a dangerous endeavor. The speaker’s concern with how her family will cope in the event of her death emphasizes the devastating nature of such a loss—but her matter-of-fact tone also conveys how absolutely ordinary such a tragedy would be. The result is a clear-eyed depiction of motherhood’s dangers and difficulties.
In short, the poem demonstrates that motherhood is a bit of a paradox, carrying with it both joy and despair—both life and death. The speaker risks losing everything she loves in the very process of making more children to love. She sees childbirth as the price she pays for the joy of raising children, even if it might kill her. The moving final line, in which the speaker reveals that she is shedding “salt tears” as she pens these words, captures the depth of the speaker’s emotions as she grapples with the dueling risks and rewards of motherhood.
Ultimately, by depicting motherhood as something worth mourning, the poem implies that it’s also something worth celebrating. This perspective feels especially profound given the era in the which the poem was written, when relatively few poems about motherhood—or by women, for that matter—were published at all.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
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Lines 1-4
All things within this fading world hath end,
Adversity doth still our joyes attend;
No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,
But with death’s parting blow is sure to meet."Before the Birth of One of Her Children" opens with a broad meditation on death. The speaker calmly lays out the facts: all living things must die, and life's joys eventually come to an end.
Taken together with the poem's title, these lines establish the speaker's identity and mindset. While the title tells readers that the speaker is about to give birth, the four opening lines jump immediately to birth's opposite: death. All this suggests that this speaker lives in a world where death in childbirth is so common it's almost unremarkable.
But the speaker's tone betrays no surprise or discomfort with this connection. Instead, from the get-go, the poem links birth and death, suggesting that, in this speaker's mind, the two go hand in hand. Though it seems that death looms large in the speaker's mind—birth receives no mention apart from the title—the speaker is quite comfortable with this dark subject. She sees death as a simple fact of life, to be discussed calmly and with control.
A regular rhyme scheme of couplets and the steady rhythm of iambic pentameter give both the poem and its speaker an unflappable tone. (See the Rhyme Scheme and Meter sections for more on that.) And listen to the way alliteration supports the first two lines' meaning:
All things within this fading world hath end,
Adversity doth still our joyes attend;Here, the /w/ sound connects the "fading world" to everything "within" it, while the repeated /a/ sound reflects what it describes: "Adversity," or suffering, patiently "attend[s]" even the greatest joy, waiting to strike.
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Lines 5-6
The sentence past is most irrevocable,
A common thing, yet oh inevitable. -
Lines 7-8
How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend,
How soon’t may be thy Lot to lose thy friend, -
Lines 9-12
We are both ignorant, yet love bids me
These farewell lines to recommend to thee,
That when that knot’s untied that made us one,
I may seem thine, who in effect am none. -
Lines 13-18
And if I see not half my dayes that’s due,
What nature would, God grant to yours and you;
The many faults that well you know I have
Let be interr’d in my oblivious grave;
If any worth or virtue were in me,
Let that live freshly in thy memory -
Lines 19-24
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 Dames injury. -
Lines 25-28
And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,
With some sad sighs honour my absent Herse;
And kiss this paper for thy loves dear sake,
Who with salt tears this last Farewel did take.
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“Before the Birth of One of Her Children” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration lends musicality and consistency to the poem's already-regular meter and rhyme scheme. Steady, predictable, cohesive sounds reflect the poem's subject matter: the inevitability of death.
In the poem's early lines, for instance, alliterative /w/ and /a/ sounds reinforce the speaker's focus on death as an unavoidable aspect of life:
All things within this fading world hath end,
Adversity doth still our joyes attend;The repetition of the /w/ sounds in "within" and "world" links the mortality of living things with the fleeting world they live in. And the repetition of the /a/ sound in "Adversity" and "attend" literally "attends," or waits, to return just a few words later, mirroring the way that hardship follows every joy.
Later in the poem, lilting /l/ alliteration evokes the speaker's sorrow as she imagines her family's fate after her death:
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.These gentle, meditative /l/ sounds suggest the speaker's tenderness toward her family—and the sorrow she feels at even imagining their future life without her.
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Allusion
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Assonance
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Consonance
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Repetition
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Enjambment
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Metaphor
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Parallelism
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"Before the Birth of One of Her Children" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Hath
- Doth
- Joyes
- Attend
- Irrevocable
- Thy
- Lot
- Thee
- Thine
- Dayes
- Interr'd
- Oblivious
- Step Dames
- Herse
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An old-fashioned form of "have."
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
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Form
"Before the Birth of One of Her Children" is an epistolary poem, which means it is a poem that directly addresses a specific audience—in this case, the speaker's husband. This gives the poem a deeply personal tone.
Composed of a single 28-line stanza, the poem is written in heroic couplets: pairs of rhyming lines that follow strict iambic pentameter. (More on that in the Meter and Rhyme Scheme sections.) Together, this orderly rhyme scheme and metrical pattern follow the conventions of 17th-century British poetry, the tradition in which poet Anne Bradstreet was educated.
However, the poem is less formal than many of its contemporaries in one important way: its plainspoken language. Though many of the words and phrases sound old-fashioned to today's ears, "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" was in fact a very un-flowery, un-showy poem for its time. It uses straightforward language that reflects how the poet likely spoke out loud. This conversational sound gives the poem an intimate, tender feeling, making the subject matter—the possibility of the speaker's death in childbirth—all the more poignant.
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Meter
"Before the Birth of One of Her Children" uses iambic pentameter, a meter with five iambs—poetic feet with a da-DUM rhythm—per line.
The poem follows this pattern quite strictly, though readers should note it does rely on Bradstreet's British pronunciation (such as a three-syllable pronunciation of oblivious, i.e., oh-bliv-yuss) in order to do so:
And if | I see | not half | my dayes | that’s due,
What na- | ture would, | God grant | to yours | and you;
The ma- | ny faults | that well | you know | I have
Let be | in-terr’d | in my | o-bliv- | ious grave;
If a- | ny worth | or vir- | tue were | in me,
Let that | live fresh- | ly in | thy mem- | oryIambic pentameter has a long history in British poetry, and can be found in works by writers from William Shakespeare to John Donne to Alexander Pope. By using iambic pentameter, Bradstreet places her work in a significant literary tradition and gives the poem a serious, weighty tone.
Her use of this traditional and celebrated meter acknowledges the seriousness of the poem's subject matter (the possibility of death in childbirth). But it also elevates subjects—childbirth, motherhood, marriage, and women's lives overall—that were, in Bradstreet's time, not usually considered important enough for poetic attention.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Before the Birth of One of Her Children" is made up of 28 lines, all of them rhyming couplets, like this:
AABBCC
Each of these rhyming couplets is also considered a heroic couplet—a couplet that uses strict iambic pentameter. (See the "Meter" section for more on that.)
Heroic couplets are the bedrock of British literary classics like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Pope's The Rape of the Lock. By using them here, Bradstreet links herself and this poem to a longstanding literary tradition.
What's more, heroic couplets—as the name implies—are traditionally associated with works of epic or narrative poetry, works that usually feature heroes (like Virgil's Aeneas) or larger-than-life people in extraordinary situations (like Chaucer's pilgrims).
At first glance, "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" could not be more different from these grand poems. But with her heroic couplets, Bradstreet implicitly compares the trials and tribulations of pregnant mothers in the 17th century to the plights of ancient heroes or medieval pilgrims. The use of the heroic couplet here suggests that to risk death with the birth of every child is every bit as brave and formidable as founding an empire or going on a pilgrimage.
The heroic couplets in "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" don't just provide a consistent rhyme scheme that situates the poem within the literary conventions of its day: they let the poem and the poet break new literary ground.
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“Before the Birth of One of Her Children” Speaker
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The first-person speaker of "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" is a pregnant woman, a wife, a mother, and a poet.
Each of these aspects of her identity is revealed in different parts of the poem, beginning with the title, which announces that the speaker is awaiting the birth of a child. Later, line 22 makes it that this is not the speaker's first child, but one of several "little babes."
The speaker often directly addresses her husband; she also uses metaphors for their love (the "knot [...] that made us one") that confirm they are indeed married. Finally, at the end of the poem, the speaker refers to "this verse" and begs her husband to "kiss this paper," affirming that the speaker is not only a poet but the author of this very work.
Many readers interpret the speaker as Anne Bradstreet herself, given their similarities and the poem's self-referential ending. Bradstreet was also a wife, mother, and poet; readers may assume that the speaker of the poem shares other aspects of Bradstreet's identity as well. For example, the speaker's references to God and stoicism in the face of death suggest that, like Bradstreet, she's a Puritan living in 17th-century New England.
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“Before the Birth of One of Her Children” Setting
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The setting of "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" is likely the setting in which the poet Anne Bradstreet lived, wrote, and gave birth to eight children: 17th-century colonial New England. The speaker of the poem and the poet have a lot in common—including a high risk of death in childbirth. It is thus quite likely they share the same physical setting, as well.
However, the poem itself is mostly concerned with the inner life, tracing the thoughts and emotions of the pregnant mother at its center. Apart from its impact on her ability to safely deliver a baby, the external setting of the poem is less important than the speaker's internal landscape. The poem charts her thought process as she grapples with death, and prepares her family for that sad possibility.
The speaker's concern with her legacy and memory also extends the poem's setting to include time itself, as she makes plans in an uncertain present for a potential future—one in which she no longer lives.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
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Literary Context
Anne Bradstreet was the first writer—and the first woman—in colonial America to write and publish a book of poems. Her first volume, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, was printed in 1650, and met with acclaim in both England and its colonies.
Writing poetry, to say nothing of publishing it, was an extremely unusual activity for women at the time. In fact, Bradstreet's brother-in-law wrote a preface for the book to assure readers that the author, "a Woman, honored and esteemed where she lives," had not neglected her domestic duties to write these verses. This preface even implied that Bradstreet had not known that her book was going to be published, though this wasn't true!
"Before the Birth of One of Her Children" didn't appear in that first collection, but was published after Bradstreet's death in 1678, in a volume of her collected works titled Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning. This collection, rooted in Bradstreet's lived experience as a woman and a Puritan, is confident, expressive, deeply personal, and daring. While Bradstreet was educated in the old traditions of English poetry, her interest in everyday life separates her from dreamier, flightier, bawdier English contemporaries like Andrew Marvell and Robert Herrick.
Though she was not the only New England poet of her day, Bradstreet has outlasted the others, all of whom were men. Her unique attention to the intimacies and challenges of women's lives in colonial America is the bedrock of her legacy—the very legacy she hopes for in this poem.
Historical Context
Anne Bradstreet was born in England in the early 17th century to a wealthy Puritan family, and was unusually well-educated for a woman of her time. She was married at 16, and in 1630, she and her family migrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. (Both Bradstreet's husband and her father eventually served as governors there.) Their emigration was driven by their religious views: the Bradstreets were devout Puritans, a radical Protestant sect that was persecuted in England and left for America to practice their religion freely.
Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was strict. This Puritans practiced a faith obsessed with sin, salvation, obedience, and dedication to God—and their society was structured and controlled by male political and religious figures. As a writer and published poet, Bradstreet occupied an unusual position, expressing her individuality in a culture that was generally hostile to personal autonomy and only valued religious art. The fact that she was a woman publishing poetry, in a society that often found women's voices threatening, made her position still more fraught and unique. (Some women who challenged the colony's leaders, such as Anne Hutchinson, were exiled.)
This poem also treats another danger of women's lives in that time and place: childbirth. Before a modern understanding of germs and sanitation, maternal mortality rate in the colonies was shockingly high—and so was the birth rate! Though every new baby might mean death, Bradstreet became the mother of eight.
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More “Before the Birth of One of Her Children” Resources
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External Resources
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Anne Bradstreet's Biography — Read about the poet's life and work.
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Women in Puritan Society — Explore a study guide about the roles and rights of Puritan women.
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America's First Poet — Listen to an NPR piece about the life and work of Anne Bradstreet.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to the poet Robert Pinsky reading the poem aloud.
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Childbirth in Early America — Read a history of childbirth in colonial America.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Anne Bradstreet
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