ANNE BRADSTREET TO HER HUSBAND
"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."
Anne Bradstreet came to New England on the ship Arabella, the first ship that brought the Puritans to New England, in 1630. Her first book of poetry was published in 1650, but the below poem Bradstreet thought too personal to be printed, and wasn't known to the public, in fact, until 1865. It was a poem Bradstreet wrote to her husband in the ninth month of a pregnancy. Giving birth in that wilderness in those years was a risky business, and Bradstreet feared she wouldn't survive it, and she wrote this poem to speak to him. The Victorian editor gave it the title "Before the Birth of One of Her Children."
"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."
"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 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.
