Anne Bradstreet

Another (II)

For works with similar titles, see Another.

hartless = without hart

A hart is a male deer. She's punning: the female deer is 'heartless' (anxious) because she lacks her 'hart-less' (without her male). Bradstreet loves this kind of wordplay.

As loving hind that (hartless) wants her deer,
Scuds through the woods and fern with hark'ning ear,
Perplext, in every bush and nook doth pry,
Her dearest deer, might answer ear or eye;
So doth my anxious soul, which now doth miss
A dearer dear (far dearer heart) than this.

dearer dear, dearer heart

She's one-upping her own metaphor—her husband is even more precious than the deer is to the hind. The stacked comparatives show she's trying to measure the immeasurable.

Still wait with doubts, and hopes, and failing eye,
His voice to hear or person to descry.
Or as the pensive dove doth all alone
(On withered bough) most uncouthly bemoan
The absence of her love and loving mate,
Whose loss hath made her so unfortunate,
Ev'n thus do I, with many a deep sad groan,

turtle = turtledove

Turtledoves mate for life and were proverbial symbols of faithful love in Renaissance literature. Not the reptile.

Bewail my turtle true, who now is gone,
His presence and his safe return still woos,
With thousand doleful sighs and mournful coos.
Or as the loving mullet, that true fish,

mullet folklore

Renaissance natural history claimed mullets would beach themselves to die near their captured mates. Likely false, but the myth appears in emblem books about marital devotion.

Her fellow lost, nor joy nor life do wish,
But launches on that shore, there for to die,
Where she her captive husband doth espy.
Mine being gone, I lead a joyless life,
I have a loving peer, yet seem no wife;
But worst of all, to him can't steer my course,

both kept by force

This reveals the separation isn't voluntary—he's traveling on business or civic duty, she's home-bound by gender restrictions. The constraint is social, not just geographical.

I here, he there, alas, both kept by force.
Return my dear, my joy, my only love,
Unto thy hind, thy mullet, and thy dove,
Who neither joys in pasture, house, nor streams,
The substance gone, O me, these are but dreams.

substance vs. dreams

Puritan theological language: the material world without spiritual (or marital) union is mere shadow. She's applying metaphysics to marriage.

Together at one tree, oh let us browse,
And like two turtles roost within one house,
And like the mullets in one river glide,
Let's still remain but one, till death divide.
Thy loving love and dearest dear,
At home, abroad, and everywhere
This work was published before January 1, 1931, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Three Animal Metaphors

Bradstreet builds the poem on three extended comparisons, each taking up a verse paragraph: hind and hart (deer), turtledoves, and mullets. This isn't decorative—it's structural. Each metaphor does different work.

The deer emphasizes frantic searching and sensory longing ("hark'ning ear," "failing eye"). The dove shifts to vocal mourning ("doleful sighs and mournful coos"). The mullet—the strangest choice—introduces death-wish and captivity. That escalation matters: she's not just missing him, she's dramatizing her willingness to die, and revealing they're both imprisoned by circumstance.

CONTEXT Simon Bradstreet, her husband, made multiple trips to England on colonial business, sometimes for years. These weren't pleasure trips—he was negotiating the Massachusetts Bay Colony's charter. Anne stayed home. The "force" keeping them apart was both his civic duty and her domestic confinement.

The final stanza collapses all three metaphors into imperative verbs: "browse" (deer), "roost" (doves), "glide" (fish). She's not asking him to come home—she's imagining a future where they inhabit all three animal marriages simultaneously. It's excessive, almost greedy, which is the point. One metaphor can't contain what she feels.

Puritan Love Poetry

This poem does something unusual for Puritan writing: it makes earthly marriage the "substance" and everything else "dreams." That's risky theology. Puritans were supposed to love God first, spouse second.

Bradstreet knows this. Her phrasing "dearer dear (far dearer heart)" and "my only love" flirt with idolatry—the language of absolute devotion that should be reserved for Christ. But she doesn't apologize. Instead, she doubles down by using three natural-world metaphors to sanctify marital love. If God made deer, doves, and fish to mate faithfully, isn't human marriage participating in divine order?

Notice the final couplet breaks off mid-sentence: "Thy loving love and dearest dear, / At home, abroad, and everywhere." It's grammatically incomplete—no verb, just a fragment. Some editors think lines are missing. More likely, Bradstreet is trailing off into inexpressibility, the way actual letters do. The poem becomes the thing it describes: a message sent across distance, yearning to complete itself.