This poem by Anne Bradstreet dramatizes the conflict between personal desire and inevitable reality. Although the speaker's location is not made readily available throughout the length of the poem, it is the speaker's voice and audience that are given such due attention. The speaker, Bradstreet, is speaking of events which may soon befall her. As the title of the poem indicates, the speaker is expecting a child. During the time that this poem was written the leading cause of death in women of childbearing age was childbirth. As written "But with death's parting blow is sure to meet" and "A common thing, yet oh, so inevitable" (4, 6). Death is inevitable, it comes to us all, and so the speaker has recognized that with the arrival of her child her time to leave this life may also arrive. This was a fact of life for women in Colonial America, and so the speaker has accepted it and her fate and wishes to leave some message with her audience, should death indeed arrive to claim her.
At the beginning of the poem, it is not yet clear who the speaker is intending as the audience, the title may lead some readers to initially believe that the audience is in fact the child, but we learn differently as she writes, "How soon't may be thy lot to lose thy friend," (8). The first indication of the audience is the use of the word friend, here we see that the speaker does not intend her message for her child, but someone she holds to be a peer. For many women in the Colonial age, their immediate peers were not women or girlfriends as we understand them today, but their husband's and adult family members. Therefore it stands to reason that the speaker intends her husband to be the bearer of her message as she remarks on life, or the possible end of her life with the impending birth of her child. This ideal is further supported as she goes on to express, "That when that knot's untied that made us one," (11). Until death do we part, a vow spoken upon marriage, so now it is clear that the audience is the speaker's husband, and that her message is for him.
The speaker's message becomes one of practicality, that yes she understands and has accepted that she may die, but that does not mean that life must come to an end for her husband. Her message, while practical, also has a light note of pleading to it. "And if I see not half my days that's due, / What nature would, God grant to yours and you;" (13, 14). The speaker wants her husband to live on after she is gone, to have a long and fulfilling life, but do not forget her, "If any worth or virtue were in me, / Let that live freshly in thy memory" (17, 18). It is here that the reader may begin to understand that the calm practicality with which the speaker has delivered her message so far may not be entirely due to acceptance. She has great love of her husband, she wants his life without her to have meaning and happiness, and so if she greets death's inevitability calmly, so too may he greet grief and mourning with the same grace.
The speaker also has accepted that her husband will remarry after she has gone. This was a common and accepted practice in that era, and knowing this she still wishes for his life to be long, but now begins her pleas more fervently. "Look to my little babes, my dear remains" (22). The speaker wants her husband to look after the children, take care of them, "And if though love thyself, or loved'st me," (23) she does not ask this only for her sake, but clearly states that if he ever loved her, or if he loves himself, look after the children and protect them from "step-dame's injury" (24). She wants him to care for her children as she would, even though she has gone from this life.
The calm that previously filled the poem has been broken with pleading for the care of her children and the life after her loss for the speaker's husband. The subject of her death has become painful and filled with grief and woe. Yet she knows that these words must be laid down, and it is still her great hope that some day he shall read what she has left for him and understand that her leaving was not for want and the idea of it is very painful for her. "And kiss this paper for thy love's dear sake, / Who with salt tears this last farewell did take" (27, 28). When Bradstreet's husband finds the words she has left for him, she wants him to hold them dear although she understands that his life has continued without her, and rightly so. She wishes him to understand that leaving these words brought tears from her and could she stay, she would have.
