To My Dear and Loving Husband

If ever two were one, than surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women, if you can
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee, give repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love letís persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

I need to know how this poem uses form and imagery to achieve its purpose and a line by line breakdown of what this poem means. Can anyone help me out?

Reading the poem and thinking about it would help- Bradstreet says 'we are one person, no one is loved like you love me and I love you. In fact, our love is so great that it will live on after we die.


Form- think about how she uses the 'if ever' phrase. It's short for 'If anyone in the world.....'

Imagery- think about the 'whole mines of gold,' 'rivers,' 'riches from the East.' Balance those things against love. Is she prizing it a lot or a little?


pam

This is a love poem wrote by Anne Bradstreet. She dictated by her emotion which was such great love for her husband, that she wished their love will be honored even after their death, and said “ If ever two were one, then surely we, if ever man were loved by wife, then thee:” Usually in the earlier writers, majority of the poems, describing the love, were wrote by masculine. So the existing of Anne was became extraordinarily occasion time that a woman proving the love to her husband.
When she said “ if ever wife was happy in a man, compare with me, ye woman, if you can.” she is clearly in love with her husband and declares her love for him through out this passage. She feels this desire for him and his love for her is like no other in the world. She challenges any woman, who may claim they too have experienced this same kind of love.
She was thankfully valued their love, “I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold or all the riches that the East doth hold.” and explains how their love is never changing even through difficult times. She describes his love as her sole satisfaction that "quenches" and said in the passage “My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense” her soul and she prays to the heavens that their infinite love will go on after their death.
In this passage, “Thy love is such I can no way repay, The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.” She saying even if this love was a debt, or a something obligate would be harder for no way to pay back.
The last phrase of the poem, “Then while we live, in love let's so persevere
That when we live no more, we may live ever.” determine the value of love when the person are alive, then if they are passed away.

hi , this poem is about hate and anger. the wife describes about how she hates her husband so much that she wants to kill him by some way. she uses a very angry tone and describes that she wanted to be single and not ever ever ever get married.

Angella, I can only assume you have some totally different poem in mind, in which case you should start a new thread for your request (click on New Topic, at the top). If you are searching for the text of a particular poem, go first to Lost Poetry Quotations and post there.

Ian



Post Edited (09-21-04 20:28)

Presumably in the penultimate line, the pronunciation is 'per-SEV-er'. Wonder when the change took place to what we say now?



Stephen

A typo. Should read 'let's persever'.

And there are some other errors in the poem's quotation at the start of this thread: notably a merging of the 8th and 9th lines (not helpful when you are looking for a 'line by line' breakdown!); and 'mines' and 'rivers' should, I believe, be 'Mines' and 'Rivers', the upper case suggesting a larger symbolic significance.

Best quote it correctly:

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

I like her choice of 'persever'. A fine poetic word. The Shorter Oxford gives it as an obsolete alternative for 'persevere', but doesn't say when it became obsolete. Some derivitaves like 'perseverate' still have the stress on the second syllable.

Another virtually obsolete word in the poem is 'ought' in line 8, used as an alternative to 'aught' (= anything).

Lines 7 and 8 are so compressed in expression that they are hard to paraphrase in a way that captures their full infolded and implicit meaning. I understand them as saying:

My love [for you] is such [a blaze] that [even the waters of] great rivers can't extinguish it,
and [so rich that] there isn't anything [in the world] valuable enough to exchange it for, except your love [for me].



Post Edited (09-24-04 19:01)

I believe this poem is secretly talking about Hermione Granger talking bout her love for Ron Weasely.

What the hell are some of these ppl saying???
go to this website the give an awesome analysis [www.vcu.edu]

Thanks for the info. Astonished, perhaps some of our future Bradsteet students will be able to use this:

[tinyurl.com]


Les

I need the paraphrase of this poem. Could angone help me out?