“The Flea”

Summary

The speaker tells his beloved to look at the flea before them and to note “how little” is that thing that she denies him. For the flea, he says,

has sucked first his blood, then her blood, so that now, inside the flea, they are mingled; and that mingling cannot be called “sin, or shame,

or loss of maidenhead.” The flea has joined them together in a way that, “alas, is more than we would do.”

As his beloved moves to kill the flea, the speaker stays her hand, asking her to spare the three lives in the flea: his life, her life, and the

flea’s own life. In the flea, he says, where their blood is mingled, they are almost married—no, more than married—and the flea is their

marriage bed and marriage temple mixed into one. Though their parents grudge their romance and though she will not make love to him,

they are nevertheless united and cloistered in the living walls of the flea. She is apt to kill him, he says, but he asks that she not kill herself

by killing the flea that contains her blood; he says that to kill the flea would be sacrilege, “three sins in killing three.”

“Cruel and sudden,” the speaker calls his lover, who has now killed the flea, “purpling” her fingernail with the “blood of innocence.” The

speaker asks his lover what the flea’s sin was, other than having sucked from each of them a drop of blood. He says that his lover replies

that neither of them is less noble for having killed the flea. It is true, he says, and it is this very fact that proves that her fears are false: If

she were to sleep with him (“yield to me”), she would lose no more honor than she lost when she killed the flea.

Form

This poem alternates metrically between lines in iambic tetrameter and lines in iambic pentameter, a 4-5 stress pattern ending with two

pentameter lines at the end of each stanza. Thus, the stress pattern in each of the nine-line stanzas is 454545455. The rhyme scheme in

each stanza is similarly regular, in couplets, with the final line rhyming with the final couplet: AABBCCDDD.

Commentary

This funny little poem again exhibits Donne’s metaphysical love-poem mode, his aptitude for turning even the least likely images into

elaborate symbols of love and romance. This poem uses the image of a flea that has just bitten the speaker and his beloved to sketch an

amusing conflict over whether the two will engage in premarital sex. The speaker wants to, the beloved does not, and so the speaker,

highly clever but grasping at straws, uses the flea, in whose body his blood mingles with his beloved’s, to show how innocuous such

mingling can be—he reasons that if mingling in the flea is so innocuous, sexual mingling would be equally innocuous, for they are really the

same thing. By the second stanza, the speaker is trying to save the flea’s life, holding it up as “our marriage bed and marriage temple.”

But when the beloved kills the flea despite the speaker’s protestations (and probably as a deliberate move to squash his argument, as

well), he turns his argument on its head and claims that despite the high-minded and sacred ideals he has just been invoking, killing the

flea did not really impugn his beloved’s honor—and despite the high-minded and sacred ideals she has invoked in refusing to sleep with

him, doing so would not impugn her honor either.

This poem is the cleverest of a long line of sixteenth-century love poems using the flea as an erotic image, a genre derived from an older

poem of Ovid. Donne’s poise of hinting at the erotic without ever explicitly referring to sex, while at the same time leaving no doubt as to

exactly what he means, is as much a source of the poem’s humor as the silly image of the flea is; the idea that being bitten by a flea would

represent “sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead” gets the point across with a neat conciseness and clarity that Donne’s later religious lyrics

never attained.

“The Sun Rising”

Summary

Lying in bed with his lover, the speaker chides the rising sun, calling it a “busy old fool,” and asking why it must bother them through

windows and curtains. Love is not subject to season or to time, he says, and he admonishes the sun—the “Saucy pedantic wretch”—to go

and bother late schoolboys and sour apprentices, to tell the court-huntsmen that the King will ride, and to call the country ants to their

harvesting.

Why should the sun think that his beams are strong? The speaker says that he could eclipse them simply by closing his eyes, except that

he does not want to lose sight of his beloved for even an instant. He asks the sun—if the sun’s eyes have not been blinded by his lover’s

eyes—to tell him by late tomorrow whether the treasures of India are in the same place they occupied yesterday or if they are now in bed

with the speaker. He says that if the sun asks about the kings he shined on yesterday, he will learn that they all lie in bed with the speaker.

The speaker explains this claim by saying that his beloved is like every country in the world, and he is like every king; nothing else is real.

Princes simply play at having countries; compared to what he has, all honor is mimicry and all wealth is alchemy. The sun, the speaker

says, is half as happy as he and his lover are, for the fact that the world is contracted into their bed makes the sun’s job much easier—in its

old age, it desires ease, and now all it has to do is shine on their bed and it shines on the whole world. “This bed thy centre is,” the speaker

tells the sun, “these walls, thy sphere.”

Form

The three regular stanzas of “The Sun Rising” are each ten lines long and follow a line-stress pattern of 4255445555—lines one, five,

and six are metered in iambic tetrameter, line two is in dimeter, and lines three, four, and seven through ten are in pentameter. The rhyme

scheme in each stanza is ABBACDCDEE.

Commentary

One of Donne’s most charming and successful metaphysical love poems, “The Sun Rising” is built around a few hyperbolic assertions—

first, that the sun is conscious and has the watchful personality of an old busybody; second, that love, as the speaker puts it, “no season

knows, nor clime, / Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time”; third, that the speaker’s love affair is so important to the universe

that kings and princes simply copy it, that the world is literally contained within their bedroom. Of course, each of these assertions simply

describes figuratively a state of feeling—to the wakeful lover, the rising sun does seem like an intruder, irrelevant to the operations of love;

to the man in love, the bedroom can seem to enclose all the matters in the world. The inspiration of this poem is to pretend that each of

these subjective states of feeling is an objective truth.

Accordingly, Donne endows his speaker with language implying that what goes on in his head is primary over the world outside it; for

instance, in the second stanza, the speaker tells the sun that it is not so powerful, since the speaker can cause an eclipse simply by closing

his eyes. This kind of heedless, joyful arrogance is perfectly tuned to the consciousness of a new lover, and the speaker appropriately

claims to have all the world’s riches in his bed (India, he says, is not where the sun left it; it is in bed with him). The speaker captures the

essence of his feeling in the final stanza, when, after taking pity on the sun and deciding to ease the burdens of his old age, he declares

“Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere.”

“A Valediction: forbidding Mourning”

Summary

The speaker explains that he is forced to spend time apart from his lover, but before he leaves, he tells her that their farewell should not be

the occasion for mourning and sorrow. In the same way that virtuous men die mildly and without complaint, he says, so they should leave

without “tear-floods” and “sigh-tempests,” for to publicly announce their feelings in such a way would profane their love. The speaker says

that when the earth moves, it brings “harms and fears,” but when the spheres experience “trepidation,” though the impact is greater, it is

also innocent. The love of “dull sublunary lovers” cannot survive separation, but it removes that which constitutes the love itself; but the love

he shares with his beloved is so refined and “Inter-assured of the mind” that they need not worry about missing “eyes, lips, and hands.”

Though he must go, their souls are still one, and, therefore, they are not enduring a breach, they are experiencing an “expansion”; in the

same way that gold can be stretched by beating it “to aery thinness,” the soul they share will simply stretch to take in all the space between

them. If their souls are separate, he says, they are like the feet of a compass: His lover’s soul is the fixed foot in the center, and his is the

foot that moves around it. The firmness of the center foot makes the circle that the outer foot draws perfect: “Thy firmness makes my circle

just, / And makes me end, where I begun.”

Form

The nine stanzas of this Valediction are quite simple compared to many of Donne’s poems, which utilize strange metrical patterns overlaid

jarringly on regular rhyme schemes. Here, each four-line stanza is quite unadorned, with an ABAB rhyme scheme and an iambic tetrameter

meter.

Commentary

“A Valediction: forbidding Mourning” is one of Donne’s most famous and simplest poems and also probably his most direct statement of his

ideal of spiritual love. For all his erotic carnality in poems, such as “The Flea,” Donne professed a devotion to a kind of spiritual love that

transcended the merely physical. Here, anticipating a physical separation from his beloved, he invokes the nature of that spiritual love to

ward off the “tear-floods” and “sigh-tempests” that might otherwise attend on their farewell. The poem is essentially a sequence of

metaphors and comparisons, each describing a way of looking at their separation that will help them to avoid the mourning forbidden by the

poem’s title.

First, the speaker says that their farewell should be as mild as the uncomplaining deaths of virtuous men, for to weep would be “profanation

of our joys.” Next, the speaker compares harmful “Moving of th’ earth” to innocent “trepidation of the spheres,” equating the first with “dull

sublunary lovers’ love” and the second with their love, “Inter-assured of the mind.” Like the rumbling earth, the dull sublunary (sublunary

meaning literally beneath the moon and also subject to the moon) lovers are all physical, unable to experience separation without losing the

sensation that comprises and sustains their love. But the spiritual lovers “Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss,” because, like the

trepidation (vibration) of the spheres (the concentric globes that surrounded the earth in ancient astronomy), their love is not wholly

physical. Also, like the trepidation of the spheres, their movement will not have the harmful consequences of an earthquake.

The speaker then declares that, since the lovers’ two souls are one, his departure will simply expand the area of their unified soul, rather

than cause a rift between them. If, however, their souls are “two” instead of “one”, they are as the feet of a drafter’s compass, connected,

with the center foot fixing the orbit of the outer foot and helping it to describe a perfect circle. The compass (the instrument used for drawing

circles) is one of Donne’s most famous metaphors, and it is the perfect image to encapsulate the values of Donne’s spiritual love, which is

balanced, symmetrical, intellectual, serious, and beautiful in its polished simplicity.

Like many of Donne’s love poems (including “The Sun Rising” and “The Canonization”), “A Valediction: forbidding Mourning” creates a

dichotomy between the common love of the everyday world and the uncommon love of the speaker. Here, the speaker claims that to tell

“the laity,” or the common people, of his love would be to profane its sacred nature, and he is clearly contemptuous of the dull sublunary

love of other lovers. The effect of this dichotomy is to create a kind of emotional aristocracy that is similar in form to the political aristocracy

with which Donne has had painfully bad luck throughout his life and which he commented upon in poems, such as “The Canonization”: This

emotional aristocracy is similar in form to the political one but utterly opposed to it in spirit. Few in number are the emotional aristocrats who

have access to the spiritual love of the spheres and the compass; throughout all of Donne’s writing, the membership of this elite never

includes more than the speaker and his lover—or at the most, the speaker, his lover, and the reader of the poem, who is called upon to

sympathize with Donne’s romantic plight.

“The Broken Heart”

Summary

The speaker declares that any man who claims he has been in love for an hour is insane; not because love “decays” in so short a time, but

because, in an hour, love can “devour” ten men—in other words, not because love itself is destroyed in an hour, but because it will destroy

the lover in much less time than that. To explain himself, the speaker uses an analogy: He says that anyone who heard him claim to have

had the plague for an entire year would disbelieve him because the plague would have killed him in much less time than that. He also says

that anyone who heard him claim to have seen a flask of gunpowder burn for an entire day would laugh at him because the flask would

have exploded immediately. Like the plague and the powder-flask, love works violently and swiftly.

“What a trifle is a heart,” the speaker says, “If once into Love’s hands it come!” Unlike love, other feelings and “other griefs” do not demand

the entire heart, only a part of it. Other griefs “come to us” but Love draws us to it, swallowing us whole. Masses of people are felled by

Love as ranks of soldiers are felled by chain-shot. Love is like a ravenous pike, and our hearts are like the small fish it feasts on.

Addressing his beloved, the speaker asks her a question: If what he says about love is false, then what happened to his heart the first time

he saw her? He says that he entered the room with a heart, and left the room without one. If his heart had been captured whole by his

beloved, he says, it would have taught her to treat him more kindly; instead, the impact of love shattered his heart “as glass.”

Still, he says, a thing cannot be so utterly destroyed that it becomes nothing; the pieces of his shattered heart are still in his breast. In the

same way that a broken mirror reflects “a hundred lesser faces,” the speaker says that his “rags of heart” can “like, wish, and adore”; but

after experiencing the shock of “one such love,” they can never love again.

Form

The four regular stanzas of “The Broken Heart” utilize Donne’s characteristically angular iambic meters; each stanza is eight lines long, with

lines one, two, three, five, and six in iambic tetrameter, and lines four, seven, and eight in iambic pentameter. (The line-stress pattern,

therefore, is44454455 in each stanza.) Each stanza follows a rhyme scheme of ABABCCDD.

Commentary

“The Broken Heart” is an excellent example of Donne’s style in his metaphysical mode, transforming a relatively simple idea (that love

destroys the hearts that feel it) into an oblique, elaborate meditation full of startling images (the burning powder-flask, love as a carnivorous

fish) and implications. Structurally, the poem looks at its theme from a different angle in each of its stanzas. The first stanza is metaphorical

and explanatory, establishing the basic idea of the poem by showing that to be in love for an entire hour would be like having the plague for

a year or seeing a flask of gunpowder burn for an entire day; love is instant, like the explosion of the flask. The second stanza personifies

love as a kind of monster that destroys human beings, trifling with hearts, swallowing men whole (he “never chaws”), killing whole ranks,

and devouring men as a pike devours smaller fish (“He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry”).

In the third stanza, the speaker departs from the general and enters the specific, addressing his beloved and recalling the moment when

love destroyed hisheart, enabling him to understand that which he now writes in his poem; the instant he saw his beloved, love shattered

his heart like glass. The final stanza offers a kind of moral for the poem, opening in a homiletic tone (“nothing can to nothing fall, / Nor any

place be empty quite”) and detailing what happens to a heart after it has been shattered by the force of love. The heart remains, the

speaker claims, in the breast, like shards of a broken mirror, able to reflect lesser emotions, such as hope and affection, but never again to

love.

Throughout, “The Broken Heart” typifies the quality of Donne’s metaphysical poems. It is often difficult to understand the speaker’s

language or to see quite where he is coming from (the opening of the poem is particularly difficult), but once the basic idea is grasped, most

of the conceptual elements of the poem fall easily into place. It is remarkable for its unusual conception of love—not many poets would

compare love to death by a violent disease—and for the surprising angles from which the speaker approaches that conception.

Themes, Motifs and Symbols

Themes

Lovers as Microcosms

Donne incorporates the Renaissance notion of the human body as a microcosm into his love poetry. During the Renaissance, many people

believed that the microcosmic human body mirrored the macrocosmic physical world. According to this belief, the intellect governs the

body, much like a king or queen governs the land. Many of Donne’s poems—most notably “The Sun Rising” (1633), “The Good-Morrow”

(1633), and “A Valediction: Of Weeping” (1633)—envision a lover or pair of lovers as being entire worlds unto themselves. But rather than

use the analogy to imply that the whole world can be compressed into a small space, Donne uses it to show how lovers become so

enraptured with each other that they believe they are the only beings in existence. The lovers are so in love that nothing else matters. For

example, in “The Sun Rising,” the speaker concludes the poem by telling the sun to shine exclusively on himself and his beloved. By doing

so, he says, the sun will be shining on the entire world.

The Neoplatonic Conception of Love

Donne draws on the Neoplatonic conception of physical love and religious love as being two manifestations of the same impulse. In

theSymposium (ca. third or fourth century B.C.E.), Plato describes physical love as the lowest rung of a ladder. According to the Platonic

formulation, we are attracted first to a single beautiful person, then to beautiful people generally, then to beautiful minds, then to beautiful

ideas, and, ultimately, to beauty itself, the highest rung of the ladder. Centuries later, Christian Neoplatonists adapted this idea such that

the progression of love culminates in a love of God, or spiritual beauty. Naturally, Donne used his religious poetry to idealize the Christian

love for God, but the Neoplatonic conception of love also appears in his love poetry, albeit slightly tweaked. For instance, in the bawdy

“Elegy 19. To His Mistress Going to Bed” (1669), the speaker claims that his love for a naked woman surpasses pictorial representations

of biblical scenes. Many love poems assert the superiority of the speakers’ love to quotidian, ordinary love by presenting the speakers’ love

as a manifestation of purer, Neoplatonic feeling, which resembles the sentiment felt for the divine.

Religious Enlightenment as Sexual Ecstasy

Throughout his poetry, Donne imagines religious enlightenment as a form of sexual ecstasy. He parallels the sense of fulfillment to be

derived from religious worship to the pleasure derived from sexual activity—a shocking, revolutionary comparison, for his time. In Holy

Sonnet 14 (1633), for example, the speaker asks God to rape him, thereby freeing the speaker from worldly concerns. Through the act of

rape, paradoxically, the speaker will be rendered chaste. In Holy Sonnet 18 (1899), the speaker draws an analogy between entering the

one true church and entering a woman during intercourse. Here, the speaker explains that Christ will be pleased if the speaker sleeps with

Christ’s wife, who is “embraced and open to most men” (14). Although these poems seem profane, their religious fervor saves them from

sacrilege or scandal. Filled with religious passion, people have the potential to be as pleasurably sated as they are after sexual activity.

The Search for the One True Religion

Donne’s speakers frequently wonder which religion to choose when confronted with so many churches that claim to be the one true

religion. In1517, an Augustinian monk in Germany named Martin Luther set off a number of debates that eventually led to the founding of

Protestantism, which, at the time, was considered to be a reformed version of Catholicism. England developed Anglicanism in 1534,

another reformed version of Catholicism. This period was thus dubbed the Reformation. Because so many sects and churches developed

from these religions, theologians and laypeople began to wonder which religion was true or right. Written while Donne was abandoning

Catholicism for Anglicanism, “Satire 3” reflects these concerns. Here, the speaker wonders how one might discover the right church when

so many churches make the same claim. The speaker of Holy Sonnet 18 asks Christ to explain which bride, or church, belongs to Christ.

Neither poem forthrightly proposes one church as representing the true religion, but nor does either poem reject outright the notion of one

true church or religion.

Motifs

Spheres

Donne’s fascination with spheres rests partly on the perfection of these shapes and partly on the near-infinite associations that can be

drawn from them. Like other metaphysical poets, Donne used conceits to extend analogies and to make thematic connections between

otherwise dissimilar objects. For instance, in “The Good-Morrow,” the speaker, through brilliant metaphorical leaps, uses the motif of

spheres to move from a description of the world to a description of globes to a description of his beloved’s eyes to a description of their

perfect love. Rather than simply praise his beloved, the speaker compares her to a faultless shape, the sphere, which contains neither

corners nor edges. The comparison to a sphere also emphasizes the way in which his beloved’s face has become the world, as far as the

speaker is concerned. In “A Valediction: Of Weeping,” the speaker uses the spherical shape of tears to draw out associations with

pregnancy, globes, the world, and the moon. As the speaker cries, each tear contains a miniature reflection of the beloved, yet another

instance in which the sphere demonstrates the idealized personality and physicality of the person being addressed.

Discovery and Conquest

Particularly in Donne’s love poetry, voyages of discovery and conquest illustrate the mystery and magnificence of the speakers’ love affairs.

European explorers began arriving in the Americas in the fifteenth century, returning to England and the Continent with previously

unimagined treasures and stories. By Donne’s lifetime, colonies had been established in North and South America, and the riches that

flowed back to England dramatically transformed English society. In “The Good-Morrow” and “The Sun Rising,” the speakers express

indifference toward recent voyages of discovery and conquest, preferring to seek adventure in bed with their beloveds. This comparison

demonstrates the way in which the beloved’s body and personality prove endlessly fascinating to a person falling in love. The speaker of

“Elegy 19. To His Mistress Going to Bed” calls his beloved’s body “my America! my new-found land” (27), thereby linking the conquest of

exploration to the conquest of seduction. To convince his beloved to make love, he compares the sexual act to a voyage of discovery. The

comparison also serves as the speaker’s attempt to convince his beloved of both the naturalness and the inevitability of sex. Like the

Americas, the speaker explains, she too will eventually be discovered and conquered.

Reflections

Throughout his love poetry, Donne makes reference to the reflections that appear in eyes and tears. With this motif, Donne emphasizes the

way in which beloveds and their perfect love might contain one another, forming complete, whole worlds. “A Valediction: Of Weeping”

portrays the process of leave-taking occurring between the two lovers. As the speaker cries, he knows that the image of his beloved is

reflected in his tears. And as the tear falls away, so too will the speaker move farther away from his beloved until they are separated at last.

The reflections in their eyes indicate the strong bond between the lovers in “The Good-Morrow” and “The Ecstasy” (1633). The lovers in

these poems look into one another’s eyes and see themselves contained there, whole and perfect and present. The act of staring into each

other’s eyes leads to a profound mingling of souls in “The Ecstasy,” as if reflections alone provided the gateway into a person’s innermost

being.

Symbols

Angels

Angels symbolize the almost-divine status attained by beloveds in Donne’s love poetry. As divine messengers, angels mediate between

God and humans, helping humans become closer to the divine. The speaker compares his beloved to an angel in “Elegy 19. To His

Mistress Going to Bed.” Here, the beloved, as well as his love for her, brings the speaker closer to God because with her, he attains

paradise on earth. According to Ptolemaic astronomy, angels governed the spheres, which rotated around the earth, or the center of the

universe. In “Air and Angels” (1633), the speaker draws on Ptolemaic concepts to compare his beloved to the aerial form assumed by

angels when they appear to humans. Her love governs him, much as angels govern spheres. At the end of the poem, the speaker notes

that a slight difference exists between the love a woman feels and the love a man feels, a difference comparable to that between ordinary

air and the airy aerial form assumed by angels.

The Compass

Perhaps the most famous conceit in all of metaphysical poetry, the compass symbolizes the relationship between lovers: two separate but

joined bodies. The symbol of the compass is another instance of Donne’s using the language of voyage and conquest to describe

relationships between and feelings of those in love. Compasses help sailors navigate the sea, and, metaphorically, they help lovers stay

linked across physical distances or absences. In “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” the speaker compares his soul and the soul of his

beloved to a so-called twin compass. Also known as a draftsman’s compass, a twin compass has two legs, one that stays fixed and one

that moves. In the poem, the speaker becomes the movable leg, while his beloved becomes the fixed leg. According to the poem, the

jointure between them, and the steadiness of the beloved, allows the speaker to trace a perfect circle while he is apart from her. Although

the speaker can only trace this circle when the two legs of the compass are separated, the compass can eventually be closed up, and the

two legs pressed together again, after the circle has been traced.

Blood

Generally blood symbolizes life, and Donne uses blood to symbolize different experiences in life, from erotic passion to religious devotion.

In “The Flea” (1633), a flea crawls over a pair of would-be lovers, biting and drawing blood from both. As the speaker imagines it, the blood

of the pair has become intermingled, and thus the two should become sexually involved, since they are already married in the body of the

flea. Throughout the Holy Sonnets, blood symbolizes passionate dedication to God and Christ. According to Christian belief, Christ lost

blood on the cross and died so that humankind might be pardoned and saved. Begging for guidance, the speaker in Holy Sonnet 7 (1633)

asks Christ to teach him to be penitent, such that he will be made worthy of Christ’s blood. Donne’s religious poetry also underscores the

Christian relationship between violence, or bloodshed, and purity. For instance, the speaker of Holy Sonnet 9 (1633) pleads that Christ’s

blood might wash away the memory of his sin and render him pure again.

General Analysis

John Donne, whose poetic reputation languished before he was rediscovered in the early part of the twentieth century, is remembered

today as the leading exponent of a style of verse known as “metaphysical poetry,” which flourished in the late sixteenth and early

seventeenth centuries. (Other great metaphysical poets include Andrew Marvell, Robert Herrick, and George Herbert.) Metaphysical poetry

typically employs unusual verse forms, complex figures of speech applied to elaborate and surprising metaphorical conceits, and learned

themes discussed according to eccentric and unexpected chains of reasoning. Donne’s poetry exhibits each of these characteristics. His

jarring, unusual meters; his proclivity for abstract puns and double entendres; his often bizarre metaphors (in one poem he compares love

to a carnivorous fish; in another he pleads with God to make him pure by raping him); and his process of oblique reasoning are all

characteristic traits of the metaphysicals, unified in Donne as in no other poet.

Donne is valuable not simply as a representative writer but also as a highly unique one. He was a man of contradictions: As a minister in

the Anglican Church, Donne possessed a deep spirituality that informed his writing throughout his life; but as a man, Donne possessed a

carnal lust for life, sensation, and experience. He is both a great religious poet and a great erotic poet, and perhaps no other writer (with the

possible exception of Herbert) strove as hard to unify and express such incongruous, mutually discordant passions. In his best poems,

Donne mixes the discourses of the physical and the spiritual; over the course of his career, Donne gave sublime expression to both realms.

His conflicting proclivities often cause Donne to contradict himself. (For example, in one poem he writes, “Death be not proud, though some

have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.” Yet in another, he writes, “Death I recant, and say, unsaid by me / Whate’er

hath slipped, that might diminish thee.”) However, his contradictions are representative of the powerful contrary forces at work in his poetry

and in his soul, rather than of sloppy thinking or inconsistency. Donne, who lived a generation after Shakespeare, took advantage of his

divided nature to become the greatest metaphysical poet of the seventeenth century; among the poets of inner conflict, he is one of the

greatest of all time.

Essay on John Donne - A Journey Through Vulnerability 

John Donne uses poetry to explore his own identity, express his feelings, and most of all, he uses it to deal with the personal experiences occurring in his life. Donne's poetry is a confrontation or struggle to find a place in this world, or rather, a role to play in a society from which he often finds himself detached or withdrawn. This essay will discuss Donne's states of mind, his views on love, women, religion, his relationship with God; and finally how the use of poetic form plays a part in his exploration for an identity and salvation. 

The speaker in Donne's poetry is a theatrical character, constantly in different situations, and using different roles to suit the action. He can take on the role of the womanizer, as in "The Indifferent," or the faithful lover from "Lover's Infiniteness," but the speaker in each of these poems is always John Donnehimself. Each poem contains a strong sense of Donne's own self-interest. According to Professor J. Crofts, Donne: 

Throughout his life... was a man self-haunted, unable to escape from his own drama, unable to find any window that would not give him back the image of himself. Even the mistress of his most passionate love-verses, who must (one supposes) have been a real person, remains for him a mere abstraction of sex: a thing given. He does not see her --does not apparently want to see her; for it is not of her that he writes, but of his relation to her; not of love, but of himself loving. 

In "Elegy XIX [To His Mistress Going to Bed]," we are confronted with one of Donne's personalities. The poem begins abruptly: Come, Madam, come! All rest my powers defy;/ Until I labour, I in l abour lie. The reader is immediately thrust into the middle of a private scene in which Donne attempts to convince his lover to undress and come to bed. There is only one speaker in this poem, Donne, we do not hear the voice or a description of the feelings of another person, but she is always present. If Samuel Johnson was correct when he made the statement that "the metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour...," then the woman Donne is trying to convince is simply there so he can create this poem. Donne uses wit as his poetic device, wit being defined as an elaborate parallel between two dissimilar images or situations, namely the conceit. Donne does not give the woman a voice, and he most likely does not see her as human but as a means to create a role for himself. He describes her body and her undressing in metaphors: 

Off with that girdle, like Heaven's zone glittering, 

But far fairer would encompassing. 

Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear, 

That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopped there. 

Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime 

Tells me from you that it is now bedtime. 

Off with that happy busk, which I envy, 

That still can be, and still can stand so nigh. 

Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals 

As when from flow'ry meads th' hill's shadows steals. 

Off with that wiry coronet, and show 

The hairy diadem which on you doth grow. [lines 3-16] 

  

With these lines Donne is the poet first, using different poetic strategies to convince his lover, then he is a triumphant explorer: 

O my America, my new found land! 

My kingdom, safeliest when one man manned, 

My mine of precious stones, my empery, 

How blest I am in this discovering thee! [lines 27-30] 

Finally Donne is naked and vulnerable, involved in a battle of the sexes, struggling to get the woman undressed. Donne cannot control how quickly she undresses, or whether she will undress at all. He deals with this problem through his use of wit. "Elegy XIX" is an exercise for Donne, he explores various types of metaphors, and plays with the Petrarchan conceit, a popular poetic genre of his day. The main role Donne explores in "Elegy XIX" is that of the poet, and he enjoys this process because no matter what the outcome, Donne is still happy with the situation because he can write a poem describing various ways in which he can convince his lover to do what he wants. 

Donne's personality changed with every new experience. His poetry reflects these changing roles by taking on a different form each time. Perhaps "Elegy XIX" can be seen as a time in Donne's life when he wanted to establish himself as a poet in his own mind, but there certainly was a significant event in Donne's life that changed his attitude toward women and himself. "Elegy XIX" shows us a person who thinks only of his own gratification, the woman is there so he can invent. In "The Good Morrow" Donne shows another side of himself, a man in love and finding his own identity inside another person, along with a new and fully developed style. There is still that egocentric attitude and the use of extended metaphors, but also an element of rebirth. 

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I 

Did till we loved? were we not weaned till then, 

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? 

Or snorted we in seven sleepers' den? 

'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be. 

If ever any beauty I did see, 

Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee. 

And now good-morrow to our waking souls, 

Which watch not one another out of fear; 

For love all love of other sights controls, 

And makes one little room an everywhere. [lines 1-11] 

  

These lines suggest that his past attitudes, past mistresses were somehow outside himself, or merely dreams of the woman he is now in love with. The lovers are separate worlds, they maintain their own identities, but at the same time they are mixed together forming a unit. 

Let us posses one world; each hath one, and is one. 

My face in thine, thine in mine appears, 

And true plain hearts do in fact rest; 

Where can we find two better hemispheres 

Without sharp north, without declining west? 

Whatever dies was not mixed equally; 

If our two loves be one, or thou and I 

Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die. [lines 14-21] 

  

The lovers are cut off from the outside, they live in their own world. Donne sees himself in the reflection of his lovers eyes, obtaining an identity through her. He ceased to exist before he woke up in love with this woman. 

Time disapproves of their love and Donne later finds his unit disturbed by the outside world. In "The Sun Rising," the sun intrudes and reminds him that it is not just he and his lover that exist: 

Busy old fool, unruly sun, 

Why dost thou thus 

Through windows and through curtains call on us? 

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run? 

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide 

Late school boys and sour prentices, 

Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride, 

Call country ants to harvest offices; 

Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, 

Nor hours, days, months, which are rags of time. [lines 1-10] 

  

This poem can be seen as a sort of dramatic monologue, a complaint to the sun. The sun reminds Donne of the outside world, one that he is aware of, but wants no part in. He would rather exist outside of time, alone with his love inside the unit they form. The couple's hands are firmly cemented, their eye beams twisted together to become one, as in "The Ecstasy." In "The Sun Rising" Donne contrasts his relationship to the sun, the sun is aged and has worldly things to do, while Donne and his lover appear timeless, immortal, able to disregard the sun with a wink of an eye. Eventually the couple contain the sun and the world. The poet no longer contrasts his unit with the sun, because the lovers become the world: 

She is all states, and all princes I; 

Nothing else is. 

Princes do but play us; compared to this, 

All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy. 

Thou, sun, art half as happy as we, 

In that the world's contracted thus; 

Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be 

To warm the world, that's done in warming us. 

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; 

This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere. [lines 21-30] 

  

Perhaps the most dramatic of Donne's poems is "The Canonization." This poem expresses Donne's anger at the criticism of others and their opinions about how he chooses to live his life. The poem begins as a plea to be left alone, a demand for the people bothering him to mind their own business: 

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love; 

Or chide my palsy, or my gout, 

My five grey hairs, or ruined fortune flout; 

With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, 

Take you a course, get you a place, 

Observe his Honour, or his Grace, 

Or the king's real, or his stamped face 

Contemplate; what you will, approve, 

So you will let me love. [lines 1-9] 

  

Donne is defending his choices, he chooses to remain set off from the outside world, alone in a relationship that hurts no one save for their lack of understanding: The phoenix riddle hath more wit/ By us; we two being one, are it. This poem was written most likely after his elopement with Ann More and the stress and disapprovement that went with his marriage. The beginning of the poem brings the reader into a debate between Donne and his friend, and then he turns inward and examines his love, the opponent is lost, and we get Donne's feelings on the matter of love: 

We can die by it, if not live by love, 

And if unfit for tombs and hearse 

Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; 

And if no piece of chronicle we prove, 

We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms; 

As well a well-wrought urn becomes 

The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs, 

And by these hymns all shall approve 

Us canonized for love... [lines 28-36] 

  

Their love will become a legend inscribed on their tomb stones, immortalized in verse, building shelter through the poet's words. He turns his love into the written Word, a law to live by, while others take to their courtly duties. 

John Donne's Holy Sonnets reveal his relationship with God, his thoughts on religion, and his hope for salvation. Leaving the Catholic Church left Donne alone, worried about his after-life, almost helpless. For a while Donne survived with his various lovers and later his wife, but perhaps these sonnets bring us to the time after Ann More's death, when Donne did not have the identity he found in the eyes of his lovers. Donne found himself alone with God and his religious beliefs. Writing poetry has always been a private experience for Donne. His dramatic self-presentation remains in his writings. Professor Crofts asserts: 

And so, later in life, though the stuff of his meditations changes, this inability to lose himself remains. It is not of God that he thinks so often or so deeply as of his relation to God; of the torturing drama of his sin and its expiation, the sowing and the reaping, the wheat and the tares. The great commonplace of his sermons, it has been said, is death: but in truth it is not death that inspires his frightful eloquence so much as the image of himself dying; and the pre-occupation culminates in that ghastly charade of his last hours, described by Walton, when he lay contemplating the portrait of himself in his winding-sheet like a grim and mortified Narcissus. 

  

Again, the reader is thrust into the action of the poem in "Sonnet 14." Donne calls on God in a frenzied demanding tone: Batter my heart, three-personed God; for You/ As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend..., in a sense Donne wants God to beat sin out of him because he feels tempted by it. Donne does not feel part of a unit at this moment and calls on God to imprison him because he feels so distant and helpless. 

The poet fears his own mortality and believes he is running towards death, that death is meeting him half-way. Many of the Divine Poems describe Donne's sickness and loneliness. He asks God to act, to repair his illness and prevent aging. In "Holy Sonnet 1" Donne appears to be helpless: 

Thou hast made me, and shall Thy work decay? 

Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste; 

I run to death, and death meets me as fast... [lines 1-3] 

  

He begs God to be a magnet for his hardened heart, to tear him away from sin. In "Sonnet 2" Donne wants God to fight for him. Poetry now becomes the model for his own salvation. Donne, in a sense, is an active participant by calling on God to save him. In "Sonnet 5," the poet sees himself as a little world, his body similar to the entire world, his eyes swelled with tears like the sea. These images parallel his first Meditation: 

Is this the honour which man hath by being a little world that he hath these earth quakes in himself, sudden shakings; these lightnings, sudden flashes; these thunders, sudden noises; these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of his senses; these blazing stars, sudden fiery exhalations; these rivers of blood, sudden red waters? 

Donne refers to biblical stories of the Old Testament flood and the New Testament Apocalypse as he calls for God to drown and burn his sin contained within himself as a microcosm. In his sickness, he believes the biblical experience is being fulfilled in him, as was the Old Testament in the New. The Meditations and the Holy Sonnets have some differences. In the Meditations, Donne seems alone in his sickness, scorning the weakness of man; but in the Divine poems he seems to embrace sickness and death believing that this is how God is saving him from sin. 

The "Hymn to God, My God, In My Sickness" was intended to be Donne's death-bed poem, the final acceptance of his sickness that he believes was in preparation for his salvation: 

Since I am coming to that holy room 

Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore 

I shall be made Thy Music, as I come 

I tune the instrument here at the door, 

And what I must do then, think here before. [lines 1-5] 

The Hymn is a kind of personal release. The feeling of helplessness in his former poems are abandoned, and Donne seems confident that his bodily illnesses tuned his soul so it can enter heaven. This tuning of instruments refers to the writing of the Hymn itself, and the instrument, an image for Donne's soul, will become the music in Heaven. 

John Donne takes a journey through his life and uses poetry in order to find his own identity. The poems take the reader through dramatic situations, confrontations, and debates between the poet and a person whose voice is not heard. In the poems Donne is acting out different personas-- characters like the womanizer, the monogamist lover, a man sick and dying calling on God to save his soul, and finally a man accepting his death to the point of obsession. This is a journey through the poet's vulnerability, his pleas for sex, isolation, and finally salvation. Donne's writing reveals his attitudes about sex and religion, experiences he believes should be private and cut off from the outside and reality. By using elaborate conceits, Donne is not only trying to be witty and show his great learning as Samuel Johnson might suspect. The paradoxes and strange comparisons are written as an attempt to understand what is happening to him. The poetry portrays a man obsessed with himself, and obsessed with finding a place or a person so he can exist.

Explication of John Donne's The Flea 

  

John Donne's, "The Flea," is a persuasive poem in which the speaker is attempting to establish a sexual union with his significant other.  However, based on the woman's rejection, the speaker twists his argument, making that which he requests seem insignificant.  John Donne brings out and shapes this meaning through his collaborative use of conceit, rhythm, and rhyme scheme.  In the beginning, Donne uses the flea as a conceit, to represent a sexual union with his significant other.  For instance, in the first stanza a flea bites thespeaker and woman.  He responds to this incident by saying, "And in this flea our bloods mingled be."  

  

He is suggesting that they are united in this flea and ,thus, would equally be united in intimacy.  In addition, he states, "This flea is you and I, and this our marriage bed, and marriage temple is."  The speaker is suggesting that through the flea the two are married.  Again, the flea represents marriage, union, and consummation through intimacy.  However, the woman crushes the flea, thus, refusing his request, and states that neither she nor he is weakened by its death.  

  

Based on her reaction, the speaker states, "Tis true...Just so much honor, when they yield'st to me, Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee."  In other words, he twists his argument to make the point that the woman will lose as much giving herself to him as she lost killing the flea - NOTHING!  Secondly, Donne's use of rhythm aids in shaping the poem's meaning.  The poem has alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and pentameter.  However, Donne varies this rhythm to create emphasis on particular words or phrases.  For instance, in the first stanza he states, "Mark but this flea, and mark in this." Instead of beginning with an unstressed word or syllable as in iambic, Donne stresses the word "Mark."  This is important in accentuating his argument.  In this same phrase, he uses a pyrrhic foot over "but" and "this" so stress can be placed over the word "flea."  Again, the flea is an important part of the speaker's argument and emphasis is placed accordingly.  

  

Finally, Donne's rhyme scheme plays an important part in the meaning.  All twenty-seven lines of the poem follow the aabbccddd rhyme scheme.  This consistency in pattern reflects the speaker's persistence as he proceeds with his request for intimacy throughout the poem.

The Flea The narrator in The Flea is a youthful man trying to convince a young woman to give her virginity to him. He tries to do this by comparing their relationship to a flea that is in the room. The flea bites them both and Donne explains to her that this is symbolic of both of their worlds combining into one. He says that the flea is now the realm of love, lust, and marriage. At first this poem seems to be just about love, commitment from a male to a female, who says no his lustful desires. However, a deeper look than just the superficial reveals that the male in this poem is actually revealing a valid point to his lady: that the loss of innocence, such as her virginity, does not constitute a loss of her honor. At first, this poem seems to be simply about a young, sexually hungry man who is trying to convince a girl to give into his sexual wishes. She denies the ?wanna be? lover because she believes that the act of intercourse before marriage is a dishonorable sin in the eyes of the church. The lady ends up killing the flea and symbolically killing the false world the man had constructed in the flea. She then says that neither of them are any worse by killing the flea, which the male agrees with. The man concludes his point by granting that the death of the flea does not really have any consequences, just like her fears to loose her respectability and honor. His main point in all his talk about the flea is to show her that her honor will not be ruined if she yields to him. John Donne?s poem connects flesh and spirit, worldly and religious ideas in a fascinating way between seemingly unrelated topics. He compares sexual intercourse to a bite of a flea and says that now their blood has mixed inside the flea. He also compares the inside of the tiny flea to the entire world, including the couple. It is a world where their love can become a reality and no shame will come to them. Donne makes the point that the woman will lose as much honor giving herself to him as she will loose killing the flea, which is nothing. However he realizes that the church does not see this adulteress act in the same way that they do. He always respects her throughout the poem. The Flea is a mixture of love, lust, and marriage, hitched by Donne. 

John Donne and an Analysis of "The Flea"

     John Donne was born on Bread Street, London, in 1572. His family was very rich but they were Roman Catholic, not the best group to be a part of at his time, in England. He studied three years at the University of Oxford and three years at Cambridge. He never got a degree because he refused to take the oath of supremacy at graduation time. He then studied law and was on his way to be a diplomat. He wrote a book of poems, Satires, after his brother died of fever in prison after offering sanctuary to a proscribed catholic priest. He then wrote a series of love poems in Songs and Sonnets. In 1596, he joined a naval campaign against Spain and when he came back, 2 years later, he became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. 

Just as he started doing well, he secretly married Egerton's niece, Anne More, and when discovered, he was thrown in jail along with the two friends who had helped in his secret relationship. Anne's family helped them and a few years later, Donne reconciliated with Sir Thomas and was finally given the dowry he was owed. He lived the next few years as a lawyer and lived a poor existence. He then wrote two anti-Catholic poems that got him the king's favor and started working Sir Robert Drury of Hawstead, who gave him an appartment in his castle for writing a beautiful eulogy for his 15 year old daughter. Donne and his wife had 12 children, 7 of which survived and in 1617, Anne died at age 33, while giving birth to a stillborn child. He wrote the Holy Sonnets. He was made vicar in 1625 but suffered from severe infections of the mouth which caused his death in 1931. He would've become a bishop in 1930. Before his death, he preached his own funeral sermon, Death's Duel. His last piece was The Hymn to God, my God, in my sicknesse. 

Donne is a very witty poet. In The Flea, like in many other poems, he tries to convince ayoung woman to sleep with him. He compares giving up her virginity her virginity to the size of a flea go show how "unimportant" it is. "It suck'd me first and now sucks thee" is used in the first stanza to argue that because their bloods are mixed inside the flea, they are married and therefore, making love would not be a sin. 

In the second stanza, the young woman wants to kill the flea but he stops her because in destroying the flea, she is really destroying three lives: his, hers and the flea's, "three sins in killing three". . He also says that their union is alive inside the flea and that killing the flea would destroy it. The woman doesn't listen and kills the flea anyway. 

Finally, in the third stanza, he argues that the flea didn't deserve to die and that she should feel ashamed and weak. He makes what she did see, like an evil deed and says thay sleeping with him is a similar sin, an unimportant one. 

Valediction     John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” is a poem written about a man who is explaining to his wife the state of their love and how it will be as he is preparing for a journey. The title illustrates a farewell to the speaker’s wife forbidding her to be unhappy and mournful at his depart. Donne compares the leaving to death of a man, but not as unfavorable because his absence is only temporary: “As virtuous men pass mildly away / and whisper to their souls to go... / Twere profanation of our joys / To tell the laity of our love” (1-8). The saying “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” parallels Donne’s words closely. The title of the poem uses the word mourning, suggesting that his leaving could cause similar actions that accompany death and grief. Perhaps the speaker does not want to see his wife mourning his leave of absence, because it will make his departure harder for both of them: “No tear-floods or sigh-tempest move” (6). The mere sight of his wife’s tears and the heartbreaking sound of her sigh could hinder his departure. Donne speaks of how earthquakes are very destructive, but their time apart will be a constructive activity that will inevitably strengthen their relationship. In addition to earthquakes, Donne also compares their feelings to the movement of the planets, in that they will know it is taking place: “But trepidation of spheres / Though greater for, is innocent” (11-12). Donne depicts the strengthening of the couple’s love by comparing it to someone hammering out gold. Their love may be stretched thin but it remains connected: “Not a breach, but an expansion / Like gold to airy thinness beat” (22-24). Near the end of the poem, Donne indicates that the couple’s love resembles a mathematicalcompass: “As stiff twin compasses are two / Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show / To move, but doth, of th’ other do” (26-28). The compass always makes a perfect circle. The circle, a universal sign for perfection denotes that as the man’s travels come to an end, he will always return to his wife: “Thy firmness makes my circle just / And makes me end, where I begun” (35-36).

John Donne's Unusual Conceits: Bizarre Imagery or Thoughtful Comparisons? 

      What exactly do a flea and the intense emotion of love have in common?  Does the sun ever intrude upon you and your lover while in bed?  To most people these questions would draw nothing but quizzical or blank stares followed by perhaps a referral to one psychologist or another.  However, if one asked a certain young minister from seventeenth century Londonthe same questions, he would have suddenly become inspired.  This exceptional personality was the metaphysical poet John Donne. 

  

Many people debate whether Donne's metaphysical style of verse is genuinely contemplative comparison or merely eccentric imagery.  However, if one looks deep enough into the witty his witty works such as, "The Sun Rising," or "The Flea," they will find evidence to support both views.  It has been said of Donne's love poetry that it was "losing itself at times in the fantastic and absurd" (Grierson 25).  By using his unusual conceits, or far-fetched metaphors, John Donne utilizes his remarkable ability to draw a wistful sigh of love from any reader while shocking and twisting brain cells at the same time.  It is this innovative method of combining such passion and great intellect that entices poets like T. S.  Eliot to imitate him and others like Samuel Johnson to criticize him. 

  

One example of John Donne's words coming off as a thoughtful and indeed intriguing comparison is presented in "The Sun Rising. "  In this composition, Donne proclaims in a conceit, " She is all states, and all princes, I, Nothing else is" (Line 21-22).   By this he is so boldly declaring that he and his own love are the center of the universe and all that is important (Carey 109).  He goes on to tell the "unruly sun," "This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere" (Line 30).  By these lines we can see that Donne is portraying love as an all-empowering emotion.  He is telling us that being in love signifies a completeness, an obsession that makes all else negligible.  

  

When the speaker asserts to the sun, "If her eyes have not blinded thine; Look, and tomorrow late, tell me, Whether both the Indias of spice and mine Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me," (Line 15-18), he is masterfully showing both his loves' superiority and the sun's inferiority.  Interestingly, Donne actually uses a popular misconception of the time, namely that the sun revolved atound the Earth.  Although his science may have been wrong, the technique of incorporating it into his poetry was novel. 

  

If we wanted to argue that John Donne's prose were actually indeed shocking imagery, then we would use his poem, "The Flea" as the main piece of evidence.  During the seventeenth century one popular belief was that during sexual intercourse, the blood of two people actually mixed.  This inspires Donne in the poem. He compares love to this flea, and argues to his loved one, "It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea, our two bloods mingled be" (Lines 3-4).   He goes on to say, "This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is" (Lines 12-13).  Here he is pleading that since

this ugly little flea has stolen a drop of blood from both their bodies and joined them involuntarily, now they have become married in a sense. 

  

However, his plans for seduction are suddenly thwarted when his listener "purpled" her nail by squashing the insect.  Then comes Donne's absolute final appeal.  He cunningly declares to his love, "Just so much honor, when thou yield'st to me, Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee" (Lines 26-27).  In this last desperate attempt to sweep her off her feet, Donne in essence offers as his last point of persuasion the statement of, "Hey, I'm not all that bad.  Remember how you only lost a drop of blood when this flea died?  Well, you'll lose only that much honor when you finally decide to give me a chance!"  

  

It is also in this work that Donne presents a scene "that has the liveliness of the animal that plays there such a prominent part" (Legouis 47), thus giving his readers a third character in "The Flea" which falls out of line from his common portrayals of only two characters.  As the work draws to a close, the bug is dead, each person is at their wits' end, and the matter of Donne and this seemingly reluctant woman is left to our imagination as he ends the work, leaving even the audience in a perplexed and slightly frustrated state of mind. 

  

In retrospect, we now realize that the works of John Donne were both thoughtful and shocking at the same instance.  His ideas were probably too advanced for society at the time, but to most readers, Donne's meaningful lyric always unfolds logically.  It is with his unusual imagery tactics, basic everyday rhymes, and lively and witty pioneering spirit that John Donne became the front-runner in the metaphysical movement, building the path for other great poets to walk along for many years to come. 

  

Works Cited 

Carey, John.  John Donne: Life, Mind and Art. NY: Oxford University Press, 1981. 

Donne, John.  John Donne Selected Poems.  Shane Weller, ed.  New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1993. 

Grierson, J.C. "Donnes's Love Poetry." John Donne: A Collection of Critical Essays. Editor Helen Gardner. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1962.

Religious Renewal and Sexual Masochism in "Batter my heart, three person'd God"        

  

In Donne's Holy Sonnet, "Batter my heart, three person'd God," themes of religious renewal and sexual masochism are abundant. While religious renewal is clearly the front-most, and most clearly defined meaning of the poem, the poet's choice of words and subtle analogies leave the poem wide open for speculation in sexual meaning. 

That John Donne was a preacher, the fire and brimstone, evangelical ringings of religious renewal in this poem are well founded. A man's soul, invaded by Satan's sin, must be purged by whatever means necessary by God's force. Donne associates his corrupted soul with that of an "usurp'd towne," invaded by an enemy (Satan), but "to'another due," (the Trinity). He asks God to break the impurity by force and to beat his soul clean and into repentance. While this all makes sense on the first level, there are many dualities, and sexual undertones present in the poem. 

  

Several words in the poem contain multiple meanings, further promoting the mingling of the sacred and profane throughout the poem. Particularly towards the end of the poem, these words help to justify what the reader might have guessed at earlier in the poem. 'Enthrall,' for example, used in the sense of something God does to the poet, can mean 'to hold or capture, enslave', (having a negative connotation) or 'to hold spellbound by pleasing qualities' (having a positive connotation). This makes unclear, or at least arguable, Donne's attitudes toward the emotions involved in being taken by God, as well as the possibility of pleasure found in a sexual act being described. Another, 'betroth'd,' usually means 'to engage (frequently a woman) in the contract of marriage.' A second meaning, however, is the 'creation of the relationship between God and his church or people.' The irony lies in the word's use in the poem: "and would be lov'd faine, / But am betroth'd unto your

enemy," indicating that the poet's soul is married to Satan, while simultaneously twisting the second meaning of the word. 

  

Several instances in the poem seem to indicate that the poet, or speaker, is a woman. Perhaps Donne means to relate that how God might treat a man who has betrayed him, is similar to how a man might treat his wife if she was unfaithful. Another possible analogy is that God's physical power (or analogous spiritual power) over man is similar to man's power over women. The phrase, "Labour to admit you," brings about sexual connotations, but (barring sodomy) would only be possible if the poet/speaker were a woman. That the poet is "betroth'd unto" Satan, hints at the common meaning of the word, as a woman is betrothed unto her husband. Again, the word "ravish" is defined as 'to commit rape upon a woman.' If the poem is read for sexual connotations, it is notable that many of the 'sexual' acts (mostly by God to the poet) are acts that would usually (especially in the 17th century) be done by the man to the woman. The man would usually divorce the wife, the man would betroth the woman, ravish her, be admitted by her, and defend her. 

  

The sexual undertones in this poem are blatant and masochistic. Most of the words used as actions of God to the poet (batter, o'erthrow, bend, force, breake, blowe, burn, etc.) describe violent acts, as well as acts of love and renewal. This mixing of violence and love, religion and sex, creates an intensity and tension in the poem. "Batter my heart, three person'd God," indicates a ganging up on and beating of the poet by God. "O'erthrow mee,'and bend / Your force to breake, blowe, burn and make me new," while again implying that the poet is a woman (God having to bend his force-phallic reference-to break the woman, an expression used in the taking of a woman's virginity), indicates an act of sexual violence. "Untie, or breake that knot againe" paints a picture of bondage, as does "imprison mee" and "enthrall mee." The last line, "Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee" implies the rape of the virgin, having chastity no more after being ravished, or raped. 

  

Either way you look at this poem, in the religious or sexual sense, it is powerful and controlling. Donne intertwines sexual connotations with religious renewal and the ridding of sins from the body. He has made sure not to support either reading too fully, leaving both open to speculation. 

A Comparison of Two Love Poems 

In this essay I am going to compare ‘To His Coy Mistress’, written around 1640 by Andrew Marvell, with ‘The Sun Rising’, written by John Donne around 1600. Although they are both love poems of a kind, they are different many ways, especially their attitudes to women, love and time. 

The speaker in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is a guy, trying to persuade a woman to have sex with him. She is being ‘coy’, which suggests she is being shy on a playful, teasing or provocative way. To try and persuade her, he uses a three-stage argument – If, But, Therefore. 

The ‘If’ section of the poem says that if they had forever, he would woo her slowly, and respect her honour by not hurrying her: 

“Had we but world enough, and time 

This coyness, Lady, were no crime” 

He feels she deserves to be wooed slowly, and be flattered and praised: 

“For, Lady, you deserve this state 

Nor would I love at lower rate” 

This section of the poem is praising and flattering, but joking and a bit nudge nudge. For example: 

“My vegetable love would grow, 

Vaster than empires and more slow” 

This means he would have lots of love for her, and it would be natural and organic. But it also implies that his ‘vegetable’ would grow very big, and he’s boasting to her about it. He’s trying to subconsciously get the lady to think in a sexual way. The same goes with: 

“Two thousand to adore each breast, 

But thirty thousand to the rest” 

He’s gradually praising her body; her forehead and eyes, then her breasts, and then ‘the rest’. Working his way downward, this would imply her groin area – again, trying to get her to think sexually. 

These phrases with more then one meaning are called ‘double ententres’ or double meanings. Marvell uses them all though the poem. 

The ‘But’ section of the poem says that they don’t have forever because everyone’s going to die eventually: 

“But at my back I always hear 

Times wingèd chariot hurrying near” 

The rhythm of this couplet is especially clever, as it mimics a galloping pace – ‘times wingèd chariot’. Another good example of rhythm is: 

“The grave’s a fine and private place, 

But none I think do there embrace” 

This one is bouncy and more joking, a bit sarcastic maybe. It says that the grave’s nice enough, and quiet, but that no one meets a lover there. 

This section of the poem also contains a nasty idea, possibly to scare the girl: 

“Then worms shall try 

That long preserved virginity” 

This means that if she dies a virgin, then no one will have sex with her after she’s dead, and the only things in that area will be worms. 

The therefore section of the poem says that they should have fun while they can: 

“Now let us sport us while we may” 

He thinks that they should have sex now, because who knows how long they’ll be around? He says it would be better to do what you wanted, and live for a short time, than to live for a long time not doing what you want: 

“Rather at once our time devour, 

Than languish in his slow-chapped power” 

Another good example of rhythm in this section is: 

“Thus, though we cannot make our sun, 

Stand still, yet we will make him run” 

The words ‘stand still’ make you slow down in your reading, giving a more ‘still’ effect. 

The poem is written with each line having eight syllables, with four beats. The poem is arranged in rhyming couplets. 

The tone of the poem is flattering to start with, but becomes scaring and ironic in the middle, and energetic towards the end. 

‘The Sun Rising’ is also narrated by a man, who is annoyed with the sun for waking him up when he’s in bed with his lover, who means everything to him. In the first stanza, the guy is annoyed, and telling the sun to go away, because lovers don’t need to get up when they’re told to: 

“Busy old fool, unruly Sun, 

Why dost thou thus, 

Though windows and through curtains call on us? 

Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?” 

Love is more important than time, and above all that: 

“Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, 

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.” 

In the second stanza, the guy says the suns not that brilliant: 

“Thy beams, so reverend and strong, 

Why shouldst thy think? 

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, 

But that I would not lose her sight so long” 

He says he would prove that he could shut the sun out by closing his eyes, but that then he wouldn’t be able to see his girl, who is so wonderful, as he says in the third stanza: 

“She’s all States, and all Princes, I: 

Nothing else is. 

Princes do but play us, compared to this. 

All honour’s mimic; all wealth alchemy.” 

He means nothing else is important because between him and his girl, they are everything. He goes on to say that the sun should be happy that the entire world is in one place. The sun is old, and has to warm the world. If the world’s all in one place, then the sun only has to warm place in one room. 

“Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be 

To warm the world, that’s done in warming us. 

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; 

This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere.” 

This poem is set out in three stanzas of ten lines, each with a very definite, set rhyming pattern – a, b, b, a, c, d, c, d, e, e – where a rhymes with a, b rhymes with b etc. 

The tone of voice the guy uses in this poem starts of angry and irritable, but becomes joking and ironic towards the second half of the poem. 

John Donne - Analysis

John Donne, whose poetic reputation languished before he was rediscovered in the early part of the twentieth century, is remembered today as the leading exponent of a style of verse known as "metaphysical poetry," which flourished in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. (Other great metaphysical poets include Andrew Marvell, Robert Herrick, and George Herbert.) Metaphysical poetry typically employs unusual verse forms, complex figures of speech applied to elaborate and surprising metaphorical conceits, and learned themes discussed according to eccentric and unexpected chains of reasoning. Donne's poetry exhibits each of these characteristics. His jarring, unusual meters; his proclivity for abstract puns and double entendres; his often bizarre metaphors (in one poem he compares love to a carnivorous fish; in another he pleads with God to make him pure by raping him); and his process of oblique reasoning are all characteristic traits of the metaphysicals, unified in Donne as in no other poet.Donne is valuable not simply as a representative writer but also as a highly unique one. He was a man of contradictions: As a minister in the Anglican Church, Donne possessed a deep spirituality that informed his writing throughout his life; but as a man, Donne possessed a carnal lust for life, sensation, and experience. He is both a great religious poet and a great erotic poet, and perhaps no other writer (with the possible exception of Herbert) strove as hard to unify and express such incongruous, mutually discordant passions. In his best poems, Donne mixes the discourses of the physical and the spiritual; over the course of his career, Donne gave sublime expression to both realms.His conflicting proclivities often cause Donne to contradict himself. (For example, in one poem he writes, "Death be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so." Yet in another, he writes, "Death I recant, and say, unsaid by me / Whate'er hath slipped, that might diminish thee.") However, his contradictions are representative of the powerful contrary forces at work in his poetry and in his soul, rather than of sloppy thinking or inconsistency. Donne, who lived a generation after Shakespeare, took advantage of his divided nature to become the greatest metaphysical poet of the seventeenth century; among the poets of inner conflict, he is one of the greatest of all time.

John Donne - "The Canonization" Summary The speaker asks his addressee to be quiet, and let him love. If the addressee cannot hold his tongue, the speaker tells him to criticize him for other shortcomings (other than his tendency to love): his palsy, his gout, his "five grey hairs," or his ruined fortune. He admonishes the addressee to look to his own mind and his own wealth and to think of his position and copy the other nobles ("Observe his Honour, or his Grace, / Or the King's real, or his stamped face / Contemplate.") The speaker does not care what the addressee says or does, as long as he lets him love.The speaker asks rhetorically, "Who's injured by my love?" He says that his sighs have not drowned ships, his tears have not flooded land, his colds have not chilled spring, and the heat of his veins has not added to the list of those killed by the plague. Soldiers still find wars and lawyers still find litigious men, regardless of the emotions of the speaker and his lover.The speaker tells his addressee to "Call us what you will," for it is love that makes them so. He says that the addressee can "Call her one, me another fly," and that they are also like candles ("tapers"), which burn by feeding upon their own selves ("and at our own cost die"). In each other, the lovers find the eagle and the dove, and together ("we two being one") they illuminate the riddle of the phoenix, for they "die and rise the same," just as the phoenix does--though unlike the phoenix, it is love that slays and resurrects them.He says that they can die by love if they are not able to live by it, and if their legend is not fit "for tombs and hearse," it will be fit for poetry, and "We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms." A well-wrought urn does as much justice to a dead man's ashes as does a gigantic tomb; and by the same token, the poems about the speaker and his lover will cause them to be "canonized," admitted to the sainthood of love. All those who hear their story will invoke the lovers, saying that countries, towns, and courts "beg from above / A pattern of your love!"

Form The five stanzas of "The Canonization" are metered in iambic lines ranging from trimeter to pentameter; in each of the nine-line stanzas, the first, third, fourth, and seventh lines are in pentameter, the second, fifth, sixth, and eighth in tetrameter, and the ninth in trimeter. (The stress pattern in each stanza is 545544543.) The rhyme scheme in each stanza is ABBACCCDD.

Commentary This complicated poem, spoken ostensibly to someone who disapproves of the speaker's love affair, is written in the voice of a world-wise, sardonic courtier who is nevertheless utterly caught up in his love. The poem simultaneously parodies old notions of love and coins elaborate new ones, eventually concluding that even if the love affair is impossible in the real world, it can become legendary through poetry, and the speaker and his lover will be like saints to later generations of lovers. (Hence the title: "The Canonization" refers to the process by which people are inducted into the canon of saints).In the first stanza, the speaker obliquely details his relationship to the world of politics, wealth, and nobility; by assuming that these are the concerns of his addressee, he indicates his own background amid such concerns, and he also indicates the extent to which he has moved beyond that background. He hopes that the listener will leave him alone and pursue a career in the court, toadying to aristocrats, preoccupied with favor (the King's real face) and money (the King's stamped face, as on a coin). In the second stanza, he parodies contemporary Petrarchan notions of love and continues to mock his addressee, making the point that his sighs have not drowned ships and his tears have not caused floods. (Petrarchan love-poems were full of claims like "My tears are rain, and my sighs storms.") He also mocks the operations of the everyday world, saying that his love will not keep soldiers from fighting wars or lawyers from finding court cases--as though war and legal wrangling were the sole concerns of world outside the confines of his love affair.

In the third stanza, the speaker begins spinning off metaphors that will help explain the intensity and uniqueness of his love. First, he says that he and his lover are like moths drawn to a candle ("her one, me another fly"), then that they are like the candle itself. They embody the elements of the eagle (strong and masculine) and the dove (peaceful and feminine) bound up in the image of the phoenix, dying and rising by love. In the fourth stanza, the speaker explores the possibility of canonization in verse, and in the final stanza, he explores his and his lover's roles as the saints of love, to whom generations of future lovers will appeal for help. Throughout, the tone of the poem is balanced between a kind of arch, sophisticated sensibility ("half-acre tombs") and passionate amorous abandon ("We die and rise the same, and prove / Mysterious by this love").

"The Canonization" is one of Donne's most famous and most written-about poems. Its criticism at the hands of Cleanth Brooks and others has made it a central topic in the argument between formalist critics and historicist critics; the former argue that the poem is what it seems to be, an anti-political love poem, while the latter argue, based on events in Donne's life at the time of the poem's composition, that it is actually a kind of coded, ironic rumination on the "ruined fortune" and dashed political hopes of the first stanza. The choice of which argument to follow is largely a matter of personal temperament. But unless one seeks a purely biographical understanding of Donne, it is probably best to understand the poem as the sort of droll, passionate speech-act it is, a highly sophisticated defense of love against the corrupting values of politics and privilege.