To My Dear and Loving Husband

Love Poem for Husband

Anne Bradstreet really loved her husband. She loved him so much that she wrote several poems about him. In addition to "To My Dear and Loving Husband," there is "A Letter to Her Husband Absent Upon Public Employment" and "A Love Letter to Her Husband." There's also "Upon My Dear and Loving Husband His Going Into England" and "In Thankful Remembrance for My Dear Husband's Safe Arrival" (apparently Bradstreet really loved the word "dear").

As you can see just from looking at the titles, Bradstreet talks about her husband in a relatively consistent way. She loves him a lot, and cannot stand it when he's away. Both in this poem, and in the other love poems she wrote to her husband, she makes many of the same claims. In "To My Dear and Loving Husband," for example, she talks about how she and her husband are one. In "A Letter to Her Husband Absent Upon Public Employment," she writes "If two be one, as surely thou and I" (3), an idea also expressed in "A Love Letter to Her Husband" but in a slightly different way. Clearly this was her topic of choice, and she describes this love in the same way in poem after poem.

So if you find yourself reading a love poem that's to a husband, about a husband, or with a husband in it (and maybe has a few "thee"s here and there), you're probably dealing with Bradstreet. Brace yourself for some romance, awesome readers.