Freedom versus imprisonment
The dominant theme in the poem is that if you follow your beliefs and have a pure heart, then even imprisonment can be a kind of freedom. What matters is not whether you are surrounded by walls and bars, but what you feel inside. An innocent mind can turn a jail into a kind of retreat. Because the speaker has all these things, he is freer than the birds in the sky, fish in the sea, winds on the ocean, and even the angels in heaven.
Mind over body
Even though the speaker is in jail, his spirit remains free. This shows a kind of stoicism, a philosophical approach that teaches one to be indifferent to hardship and pain. He has trained the body to ignore physical suffering and instead find freedom and relief in the mind.
Love as both trap and freedom
The language used to describe the speaker’s embrace with Althea emphasizes that it is like being imprisoned. He is “tangled in her hair” and so cannot get free. He is “fettered to her eye” as if with a shackle. Like many Cavalier poets, Lovelace wrote frequently about love and sex, often describing the cruelty of the women he loved. In this case, being trapped in Althea’s love is so glorious to the speaker that it is a form of freedom. Imprisoned in her embrace, he is as free as a bird.
Drunkenness
The speaker describes a scene of drinking with loyal friends, either in jail itself or remembered from the past. The drunker they get, the more their hearts burn with “loyal flames” for the king. In this period in England, royalists were known to gather to drink wine and enjoy themselves. In fact, the Puritan government was suspicious of these gatherings because they thought royalists were gathering to plot against parliament. This scene in the poem shows a symposium of pro-Royalist poets whose inebriation is a metaphor for how passionately they love their monarch.
The importance of honor
The poem argues for the importance of an honorable life in favor of a cause. If one has belief, they can more easily overcome obstacles or temporary inconveniences. Because the speaker lives according to his principles, he is internally at peace. Even if he is imprisoned or insulted, he knows internally that he has behaved honorably.
