American Literature / Unit 4 AML 0314 short lesson, about 20 seconds
"Before the Birth of One of Her Children"
Captions available
The idea
Written about sixteen fifty, this poem addresses her husband in expectation of a childbirth she might not survive. It arranges her affairs in verse: asks to be remembered, asks him to protect their children from a stepmother's harms, and offers the poem itself as what survives her.
In practice
A will, written in couplets.
Where people slip
Maternal death was an ordinary expectation.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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