Source identified1
Image design Linen
Read & copy
“All things within this fading world hath end, Adversity doth still our joyes attend;”
Meaning & context
Writing with childbirth and mortality in view, Bradstreet begins from the instability of worldly life before leaving loving instructions and remembrance for her husband and children.
Source details
“Before the Birth of One of Her Children,” represented by Poetry Foundation. The poem is a seventeenth-century farewell written in the historical context of maternal mortality; it is personal religious-era reflection rather than medical guidance about childbirth.