To My Dear and Loving Husband - Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then 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 gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that river cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
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.

"Un-confuse" it:

This poem is talking about a woman's love to her husband. The poet uses the structure of the poem to convey her intentions of the poem across. The poem has an obvious rhyming pattern of 6 couplets, thus this signifying how strong her love is for her husband through the use of couplets. Moreover, the language used in the first live "two were one", the second line "man" then "wife" and the third line "wife" then "man" show how deep a bond there is between the couple reinforcing the idea behind the rhyming couplets. The poet also compares her husband’s love in lines 6 – 8. In both lines 6 and 7, she compares her husband’s love to “riches” and “whole mines of gold”, and that she prizes her husband’s love to all those precious things. In lines 8 and 9, she compares her own love for him with nature where it is like “rivers that cannot quench” thus then showing how her love for her husband will just keep flowing and that her love for him is endless. Moreover, the only thing she wants back from her unfailing love for him is for him to love her back the same way through “nor ought but love from thee give recompense”.  Back the structure, the last three lines are the only lines that do not follow the iambic pentameter like the rest of the poem. This creates emphasis on the last three lines. These three lines, show both her love for her husband through life and death. “the heavens reward thee manifold, I pray” is the present along with “while we live, in love” show that she wants them to love now. And the last line indicates death in “when we live no more”, she wants them to continue loving till death in “may live ever” which is forever. This shows and reinforces the point to how she wants their love to be endless through both structure and language used and all she wants her husband to do is to love her back endlessly like she will to him. An endless love.