"Rivers cannot quench..."See in text(Text of the Poem)
The speaker values her husband’s love above the most valuable things on earth, but note that the metaphors of thirst and water remind the reader that the speaker’s love for her husband cannot be measured or stopped in the way that gold and riches can. Her love for him thus transcends earthly confines, giving the poem a more divine and holy tone that suggests once again the Puritan influence on the poem.
Notice that the first three lines of the poem follow an “if...then” grammatical structure. Along with the use of somewhat formal language, this logical design gives the poem a kind of rational tone that contrasts with the poem’s emotional subject, love. The contrast between the logical and the emotional becomes an important theme throughout the poem, as the speaker struggles to describe highly sentimental, romantic feelings with language, something that is inherently limiting.
