When love with unconfined wings / Hovers within my gates
-- Speaker (Lines 1 – 2)

Importance: The initial image of freedom in the poem is attributed to love. With “unconfined wings,” love is able to appear before the speaker in the image of Althea (1). However, as the poem progresses, this image disappears. Ultimately, it is not romantic love at all, but the love that the speaker feels for his king, that defines his sense of what freedom is.

When I lie tangled in her hair / And fettered to her eye.
-- Speaker (Lines 5 – 6)

Importance: Here, the speaker describes the nature of his secretive affair with Althea, conducted through the prison bars. They have access to only highly restricted forms of intimacy. In spite of this, the poem crafts images of erotic and romantic love. This demonstrates the speaker’s enjoyment of the world’s pleasures, as well as foreshadowing the poem’s conclusion that literal, physical freedom is irrelevant to one...