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To Althea, from Prison Summary & Analysis
by Richard Lovelace

To Althea, from Prison Summary & Analysis
by Richard Lovelace

  • Intro
  • Summary
  • Themes
  • Line-by-Line
    Explanations
  • Symbols
  • Poetic
    Devices
  • Vocabulary &
    References
  • Form, Meter, &
    Rhyme Scheme
  • Speaker
  • Setting
  • Context
  • Resources
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The Full Text of “To Althea, from Prison”

1When Love with unconfinèd wings

2Hovers within my gates,

3And my divine Althea brings

4To whisper at the grates;

5When I lie tangled in her hair

6And fettered to her eye,

7The birds that wanton in the air

8Know no such liberty.

9When flowing cups run swiftly round,

10With no allaying Thames,

11Our careless heads with roses bound,

12Our hearts with loyal flames;

13When thirsty grief in wine we steep,

14When healths and draughts go free,

15Fishes, that tipple in the deep,

16Know no such liberty.

17When, like committed linnets, I 

18With shriller throat shall sing

19The sweetness, mercy, majesty,

20And glories of my King;

21When I shall voice aloud how good

22He is, how great should be,

23Enlargèd winds, that curl the flood,

24Know no such liberty.

25Stone walls do not a prison make,

26Nor iron bars a cage;

27Minds innocent and quiet take

28That for an hermitage.

29If I have freedom in my love,

30And in my soul am free,

31Angels alone, that soar above,

32Enjoy such liberty.

  • “To Althea, from Prison” Introduction

    • "To Althea, from Prison" is Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace's famous song of devotion and defiance. Writing from jail, the poem's speaker declares that plain old "stone walls" can't truly imprison him: as long as he can adore his beloved Althea and swear his loyalty to King Charles I, his spirit will remain as free as a bird. Lovelace wrote this poem in 1642 during his real-life imprisonment, but it was first published in 1649 in Lovelace's book Lucasta.

  • “To Althea, from Prison” Summary

    • When Love, with its unbound wings, flies into my jail cell, and brings my beloved Althea to whisper to me through the bars; when I lie down with her, all tangled up in her hair, and we gaze into each other's eyes as if we were chained together—then even the playful birds in flight aren't as free as I am.

      When my friends and I pass overflowing glasses of wine around (without even diluting it with water), wearing crowns of roses on our carefree heads and feeling burning loyalty to the King in our hearts; when we drown our sorrows in wine, toasting and gulping freely—then even the fish who constantly drink the waters of the ocean aren't as free as I am.

      When, like a songbird in a cage, I only sing more passionately of King Charles I's goodness, kindness, and glory; when I proclaim what an excellent king he is, and how much he ought to be venerated and respected—then even the roaming winds that whip the ocean into waves aren't as free as I am.

      It takes more than stony walls and metal bars to build a jail. People who are at peace with themselves and their ethics experience prison merely as a hermitage (a place where holy men pray in isolation). If I'm free to love my sweetheart and my king, and if my soul is free to feel and believe what it likes—then I'm as free as only the angels themselves can be.

  • “To Althea, from Prison” Themes

    • Theme The Freedom of the Mind, Heart, and Soul

      The Freedom of the Mind, Heart, and Soul

      The speaker of “To Althea, from Prison” might, from the outside, seem to be trapped: he’s in prison, locked behind “stone walls” and “iron bars.” But it takes more than physical confinement to make a prison, this speaker insists. So long as he has the “liberty” to love who he loves and believe what he believes, then he’s as free as a bird in the sky, a fish in the sea, or an angel in the heavens. Freedom, in this speaker’s eyes, can’t be taken away: it’s an inner state of the mind and the heart.

      The speaker has two central passions: one for a woman he calls Althea, and one for his King (in this instance, Charles I, the beleaguered—and eventually beheaded—17th-century King of England during the English Civil War). And prison can’t rob him of either of these; prison might stop the speaker from physically going where he wants, but it can’t stop him from feeling what he feels. Thinking both of Althea’s visits to his cell and his memories of gathering with friends to joyfully (and drunkenly) swear loyalty to the king, the speaker insists that even birds aren’t as free as he is: his body is in prison, but his soul is at “liberty” to feel the utmost love and loyalty.

      In fact, the speaker insists, to the person who keeps their mind “innocent and quiet,” prison might as well be a “hermitage”—a secluded holy place for prayer and reflection. Far from crushing his spirit, then, this speaker’s physical imprisonment has only deepened his feelings for his beloved and his king and has even enriched his “soul.” He’s discovered that no one can control or extinguish his inner life because, by their very nature, the mind, heart, and soul are “free.”

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “To Althea, from Prison”

    • Lines 1-4

      When Love with unconfinèd wings
      Hovers within my gates,
      And my divine Althea brings
      To whisper at the grates;

      "To Althea, from Prison" begins with a strange visit. Love itself, personified as a god with "unconfinèd wings" outstretched, has brought a lady by the name of Althea to the jail where the speaker is currently imprisoned.

      There's a sense of both power and calm in these first images. This winged love-god doesn't swoop in with a blare of trumpets: it just "hovers" quietly. Perhaps it doesn't need to make a big fuss to reveal its strength. Similarly, the speaker's beloved Althea doesn't fling herself at the speaker's "grates" (the bars of his cell) with a heartrending cry. She "whispers"—and that's all she needs to do.

      Right away, then, the reader gets the feeling that this will be a poem about quiet strength. This speaker, readers will soon learn, is a political prisoner, jailed for his loyalty to his "King." But while his enemies can lock his body up in prison, they can't control his heart, his mind, or his soul—especially not when he's near his "divine Althea."

      It's worth noting that the name "Althea" sounds a lot like the Greek word for "truth," aletheia. In 17th-century poems like this one, it wasn't unusual for a male speaker to give his female beloved a stylized pseudonym like "Chloris" or "Lucasta." But this name feels especially pointed. This poem's imprisoned speaker will find comfort not just in love and loyalty, but in his own "unconfinèd" beliefs: his sense of what's really true.

      And that feeling gets even more pronounced when the reader knows a little bit about the poet. Richard Lovelace was indeed in jail when he wrote this poem, imprisoned for presenting a Royalist bill to a hostile Parliament during the English Civil War. Everything the speaker in this poem will go on to say is born from Lovelace's own intense personal convictions—and his real-life experience.

    • Lines 5-8

      When I lie tangled in her hair
      And fettered to her eye,
      The birds that wanton in the air
      Know no such liberty.

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    • Lines 9-12

      When flowing cups run swiftly round,
      With no allaying Thames,
      Our careless heads with roses bound,
      Our hearts with loyal flames;

    • Lines 13-16

      When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
      When healths and draughts go free,
      Fishes, that tipple in the deep,
      Know no such liberty.

    • Lines 17-20

      When, like committed linnets, I 
      With shriller throat shall sing
      The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
      And glories of my King;

    • Lines 21-24

      When I shall voice aloud how good
      He is, how great should be,
      Enlargèd winds, that curl the flood,
      Know no such liberty.

    • Lines 25-28

      Stone walls do not a prison make,
      Nor iron bars a cage;
      Minds innocent and quiet take
      That for an hermitage.

    • Lines 29-32

      If I have freedom in my love,
      And in my soul am free,
      Angels alone, that soar above,
      Enjoy such liberty.

  • “To Althea, from Prison” Symbols

    • Symbol Birds, Flight, and the Sky

      Birds, Flight, and the Sky

      The poem's birds (and the heavens they soar through) symbolize freedom, delight, and spirituality.

      Able to soar across the wide-open spaces of the sky, birds have long been taken as a symbol of the "liberty" this poem delights in. Perhaps that's part of the reason that people (including the speaker in lines 31-32 here) have traditionally imagined spiritual figures like gods and angels in the heavens, too. Because the sky seems to stretch on forever, it invites earthbound people to imagine infinity—and things associated with infinity, like an eternal afterlife among angels.

      The reader can imagine the imprisoned speaker of this poem peeking out his "grates" to see a corner of sky with birds flying across it—and seeing in them an image of his soul's own eternal freedom.

    • Symbol Fish, Water, and the Ocean

      Fish, Water, and the Ocean

      This poem's wild oceans (and the fish that live in them), like its skies and birds, symbolize freedom—but freedom of a slightly different nature.

      Like the sky, the ocean is a common image of the infinite: just as people can't see the limits of the sky, they can't see the depths of the ocean. But because the ocean is deep, it's also often used as an image of the inner world. When the speaker connects his image of "fishes" in "the deep" to his memories of sharing passionate loyalty (and a healthy quantity of wine) with his friends, he evokes the boundless freedom of his emotional life. His body might be imprisoned, but his heart is like a little fish in the freedom of the ocean.

  • “To Althea, from Prison” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Personification

      The speaker's personification helps to evoke the power and freedom of his heart, mind, and soul.

      The poem kicks off with a vivid (and familiar) personification: Love appears as a winged god, bringing the speaker's "divine Althea" to the prison for a visit. This image might allude to Eros or Cupid (the Greek and Roman love-gods), usually depicted as beautiful youths with angelic wings. Through that allusion, the speaker suggests that his feelings are infinitely more powerful than the jail that holds him. "Stone walls" can't keep the god of love out any more than they can keep the speaker's heart in.

      The speaker also subtly personifies the symbolic creatures he brings up at the end of every stanza. The birds "wanton" in the air, playing around like little children; the fishes "tipple" in the deep, like giddy drunks in a whole sea of wine; and the winds are "enlargèd," or released to roam free. Imagining these creatures with human-like feelings and behaviors, the speaker evokes the joy and freedom that people read into those creatures. In other words, he makes it clear that the birds, the fishes, and the winds all embody a very human feeling: the sheer delight of "liberty."

    • Allusion

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    • Imagery

    • Refrain

    • Anaphora

    • Assonance

    • Alliteration

  • “To Althea, from Prison” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Unconfinèd
    • Althea
    • Grates
    • Fettered
    • Wanton
    • No allaying Thames
    • Steep
    • Healths and draughts
    • Tipple
    • Committed linnets
    • Shriller throat
    • Enlargèd
    • Curl the flood
    • Hermitage
    Unconfinèd

    • Free, unrestrained, not imprisoned.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “To Althea, from Prison”

    • Form

      "To Althea, from Prison" is built from four octets, or eight-line stanzas. Each of these octets also breaks down into two four-line quatrains:

      • In every stanza, the opening quatrain introduces an activity, an idea, or a memory;
      • The closing quatrain then reveals how that thing allows the speaker to feel free even when he's imprisoned.

      This repeated structure helps the poem to create its slow build. The reader comes to expect each stanza to close with a refrain about "liberty"—and that "liberty" only gets more and more powerful as the poem goes on. At the beginning, the speaker is free as a bird; by the end, he's as free as the "angels" themselves.

    • Meter

      "To Althea, from Prison" uses common meter. That means its lines alternate between iambic tetrameter (lines of four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm) and iambic trimeter (lines of three iambs).

      Here's how that looks in lines 3-4:

      And my | divine | Althe- | a brings
      To whis- | per at | the grates;

      Common meter is, as its name suggests, pretty common, and this steady, familiar, musical meter lets the poem's imagery and philosophy take center stage.

      But Lovelace also plays with this meter. Take a look at the way the rhythm changes in line 15, for instance:

      Fishes, | that tip- | ple in | the deep,

      Here, line 15 starts not with an iamb, but with a trochee—the opposite of an iamb, with a DUM-da rhythm. That little alteration draws some extra attention to the speaker's vivid, charming image of fish that "tipple" in the deep, as if swimming in wine.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      The rhyme scheme of "To Althea, from Prison" is the same in each stanza, and it runs like this:

      ABABCDCD

      Each quatrain follows an alternating pattern, wherein the first and third lines rhyme with each other, as do the second and fourth lines. This is a pretty simple, gentle pattern, and it stays constant all through the poem. And in fact, the D rhyme is always the same: since every stanza of this poem ends with the word "liberty," that long /ee/ rhyme repeats throughout.

      The rhyme scheme thus helps the poem to stress its exuberant, defiant point: imprisonment can't destroy the true "liberty" of the heart and mind. The poem's unobtrusive, familiar rhymes make a revolutionary message feel as sweetly musical as a nursery rhyme, evoking the comfort the speaker takes in his own inner freedom.

  • “To Althea, from Prison” Speaker

    • The speaker of "To Althea from Prison" is almost certainly Richard Lovelace himself. Lovelace wrote this poem while he was imprisoned during the English Civil War, and this speaker's circumstances and views—both political and spiritual—match Lovelace's own.

      This speaker is a passionate man, motivated by two kinds of love: love for his darling Althea, and love for his wronged king, Charles I. There's a sense that these loves aren't just personal, but spiritual: the name "Althea" derives from a Greek word meaning "truth," and the "King" the speaker praises could at once be Charles I and God himself.

      The speaker's big point here thus feels like it relates both to his own immediate circumstances and to a greater truth. So long as he has the inner freedom to feel what he feels, believe what he believes, and love who he loves, this speaker declares, no prison can truly hold him: his soul can't be imprisoned by mere "iron bars."

  • “To Althea, from Prison” Setting

    • "To Althea, from Prison" gives away its setting in its title. The speaker of this poem is trapped behind "stone walls" and "iron bars," imprisoned for his political beliefs.

      But most of his imagery conjures up a different setting: a world of birds in the air, fish in the sea, wild waves on the ocean—and the angels themselves cavorting in the heavens. The speaker certainly mentions the limiting "grates" of his jail cell, but his inner "setting" is a landscape of pure (and sometimes joyfully drunken) freedom.

      And that makes sense: the speaker's whole point is that the physical confines of the prison have no power over the "liberty" of his mind, his heart, and his soul.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “To Althea, from Prison”

      Literary Context

      Richard Lovelace (1617-1657) was the very picture of a Cavalier poet: a soulful, flamboyant soldier with a deathless loyalty to his king. And "To Althea, from Prison," with its song-like shape and its declarations of passionate devotion, is the very picture of a Cavalier poem. "To Althea, from Prison" first appeared in Lovelace's 1649 collection Lucasta—a book that came out in the very year that Lovelace's beloved King Charles I was executed.

      Like his contemporaries Robert Herrick and Sir John Suckling, Lovelace wrote musical poems of love and loss (both romantic and political). But Lovelace's work is often more sincere and heartfelt than that of his contemporaries: while Herrick, for instance, was busy writing carpe diem poems encouraging women to sleep with him while the sleeping was good, Lovelace wrote earnestly about both love and battlefield honor in poems like "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars." (He wasn't above writing about promiscuity, though: see "The Scrutiny" for one example.)

      Lovelace died in poverty and ignominy, but his poetry lives on: the lines "Stone walls do not a prison make / Nor iron bars a cage" have become so famous that they're almost proverbial. References to "To Althea, from Prison" appear everywhere from Charlotte Brontë's Villette to Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting; the English folk-rock band Fairport Convention even set the poem to music.

      Historical Context

      As a soldier and a Cavalier—that is, a royalist supporter of King Charles I—Lovelace was right at the heart of the English Civil War. In this earthshaking conflict, the Roundheads, led by Oliver Cromwell, rose up against King Charles I and against the monarchy in general, arguing for increased Parliamentary power as a curb on kingly tyranny. (That argument would start to look ironic when a temporarily victorious Cromwell began to exercise dictatorial power in his role as "Lord Protector.")

      This bloody conflict tore the British Isles apart for a decade and uprooted ancient certainties. The war came to a dramatic climax in 1649—the year that Lovelace's Lucasta was published—when Cromwell's forces tried, convicted, and beheaded Charles I for treason. This execution was a huge shock to a country whose recent monarchs had proclaimed the "divine right of kings," the idea that kings and queens were appointed by God himself.

      Lovelace, as "To Althea, from Prison" makes clear, was passionately committed to Charles and to the royalist cause. In fact, when he wrote this poem in 1642, he was in prison for presenting a Royalist bill to a hostile Parliament. He was imprisoned again in 1648-1649, and emerged to find his beloved king dead and his world utterly changed. (One popular story, probably apocryphal, even says that he came out of prison to find that his beloved model for "Althea" and "Lucasta" had married someone else, believing that he was dead.) He died in poverty not long afterward, and was buried in an unmarked grave.

  • More “To Althea, from Prison” Resources

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