Summary
The poem describes the speaker’s internal experience of prison. He argues that true imprisonment is what happens in one’s spirit. If one’s soul remains free and remains committed to one's beliefs, then even prison is not a punishment. The speaker’s experience overlaps with Lovelace’s own brief imprisonment in Westminster Gatehouse Prison in 1642 in London after he brought a petition in favor of King Charles I to the House of Commons. He did this at a time when parliament sought to restrict the power of the monarchy and Royalists were treated with suspicion. After Lovelace was released from jail, the English Civil War between pro- and anti-monarchy factions broke out. This struggle ended with King Charles being executed in 1648 after the parliamentary faction under Oliver Cromwell won the war.
The poem is made up of four stanzas of eight lines each. Each stanza ends with an image from nature to show how the speaker is free even in his imprisonment. In the first stanza, he imagines Cupid bringing his lover Althea to the bars of his prison cell. He says that being trapped in her love makes him as free as birds flying in the air. In the second stanza, he describes a drinking party. When drinking with his comrades, he is as free as fish in the water. In the third stanza, the speaker compares himself to a caged finch singing his king’s praises. When praising the king, he is as free as the winds blowing over the cresting waves. In the fourth and final stanza, he says that prison is not simply stone walls and iron bars. If one is free inside, then one is not really in jail at all. Because his soul is free, he is as free in his cell as angels flying in heaven.
Analysis
Lovelace was a Royalist poet who both wrote about and fought in favor of the king. He was also a Cavalier poet whose works often discussed erotic love, honor, revelry, and war. The poem is dedicated to a lover named Althea and we see this emphasis on love in the first stanza. There, he imagines the classical god of love Cupid bringing his lover to him at his prison cell. She speaks to him and he hears her voice through the grates. He embraces her and is “tangled in her hair.” Facing her, he is also “fettered to her eye.” Here, the poem is building on a poetic convention describing love as a kind of prison. Paradoxically, this imprisonment makes him free. Even though he is jailed, love is a kind of liberty. Some scholars have argued that the woman named Althea here is a reference to the poet’s lover Lucy Sacheverell. The name Althea comes from Greek mythology and is also close to the Greek word for “truth.” He gives his lover different names in other poems, such as in his other famous poem “To Lucasta, Going to the Warres.”
The second stanza describes a drinking party with friends. Though it is possible the speaker is reminiscing here, it is also possible that he is describing a real drinking gathering in prison. In the seventeenth century, British prisons could be quite relaxed places for members of the upper classes who had the money to bring in quality food and drink. The drinking circle was also a common theme among Cavalier poets. In this, they drew on the ancient Greek poet Anacreon, whose poems often focused on love, wine, and song. The description of “roses” here also emphasizes the pagan rather than Christian character of these gatherings. Because Royalist figures would often gather to toast to the king, the Puritan members of parliament who challenged the king saw these gatherings as immoral places of plotting against them. Here the speaker argues that when he drinks with his friends, who are similarly “loyal” to the cause of the monarchy, he is as free as fishes that “tipple” or drink in the water.
The third stanza makes the poem’s royalist politics clear. The speaker compares himself praising the king from his jail cell to a finch singing from its cage, even if his voice is not as sweet as a bird's. His song describes the “sweetness, mercy, majesty, / and glories” of King Charles I. When praising the king for his goodness and greatness, he is as free as the billowing winds that flow over the expanding waves. Just as the waves grow with the winds, the king’s greatness grows with every song of praise.
The final stanza begins with the poem’s most famous lines: “Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage.” In other words, even though the speaker is in jail, internally he is free. What matters is not whether one’s physical body is in jail but rather the state of one’s spirit. Because he has a mind that is “innocent” and calm, prison is for him like a “hermitage,” the shelter where a hermit or monk goes to escape the hustle and bustle of the world. He says that his love, both for his monarch and his lover, make him free in his soul. For this reason, his freedom is equaled only by that of the angels who “soar” in heaven.
