Poetry Response 2: "To my dear and loving husband" by Anne Bradstreet

From the title it can be inferred that the narrator loves her husband very much and she cherishes the things he has done for her because it says “loving.”  The narrator, the wife of the man, claims in the beginning that if "two were one," that would be them.  Which means that she believes they are a great couple, they are meant to be together.  She is telling her husband that if any man were loved by their wife , it's him and if there was a wife that was happy with their husband, it's her.  She is no comparison to any other woman because she prizes his love more than riches and gold.  Even the rivers are not enough to satisfy her need, nothing but love from him can compensate.  She believes her husband's love is something she can not repay.  She prays that the heavens will reward him a lot.   So while they live in love, they should continue to work hard to be together so that even after death, their love could still live forever.  I think the narrator’s husband is dead because the title begins like a letter and the poem was in past tense.  Also towards the end the narrator mentions about heaven rewarding her husband for what he has done for her, so maybe she hopes that in his death he will be treated kindly because of his actions toward her when he was living.   The narrator also mentions that she could never repay him, maybe because it was too late which is why she is writing this letter to let him know of the feelings she couldn't convey to him earlier.  I think the theme of this poem is love takes effort from both sides, it is something that does not die even if the people who have created has passed on.