"To My Dear and Loving Husband"

by

Anne Bradstreet

To My Dear and Loving Husband. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1678

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 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 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.

 

"To My Dear and Loving Husband" is written in one of the most often used forms of English verse, the iambic couplet. Iambic refers to the rhythmic pattern -- an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable: "If EVer WIFE was HAPpy IN a MAN." (If you beat out the accents mentally, the rhythmic pattern would sound like ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum.) Couplet -- as its resemblance to the couple suggests -- refers to two successive lines that rhyme.

The poem consists of two quatrains (four line stanzas), followed by rhyming couplets. The rhyme scheme is aabbcc. It is a lyric poem. That is it is a poem that expresses the writer's personal feelings and thoughts. These poems, which in ancient Greece were sung to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument called a lyre, tend to be melodic and focus on producing a single, unified effect.

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