"To Althea, from Prison" begins with a strange visit. Love itself, personified as a god with "unconfinèd wings" outstretched, has brought a lady by the name of Althea to the jail where the speaker is currently imprisoned.
There's a sense of both power and calm in these first images. This winged love-god doesn't swoop in with a blare of trumpets: it just "hovers" quietly. Perhaps it doesn't need to make a big fuss to reveal its strength. Similarly, the speaker's beloved Althea doesn't fling herself at the speaker's "grates" (the bars of his cell) with a heartrending cry. She "whispers"—and that's all she needs to do.
Right away, then, the reader gets the feeling that this will be a poem about quiet strength. This speaker, readers will soon learn, is a political prisoner, jailed for his loyalty to his "King." But while his enemies can lock his body up in prison, they can't control his heart, his mind, or his soul—especially not when he's near his "divine Althea."
It's worth noting that the name "Althea" sounds a lot like the Greek word for "truth," aletheia. In 17th-century poems like this one, it wasn't unusual for a male speaker to give his female beloved a stylized pseudonym like "Chloris" or "Lucasta." But this name feels especially pointed. This poem's imprisoned speaker will find comfort not just in love and loyalty, but in his own "unconfinèd" beliefs: his sense of what's really true.
And that feeling gets even more pronounced when the reader knows a little bit about the poet. Richard Lovelace was indeed in jail when he wrote this poem, imprisoned for presenting a Royalist bill to a hostile Parliament during the English Civil War. Everything the speaker in this poem will go on to say is born from Lovelace's own intense personal convictions—and his real-life experience.