John Donne Poems
The Indifferent
This poem advocates for sleeping around and uses a 3 act
structure to move through the argument. The first stanza shows that Donne can
love any woman, no matter what she look like or act like, so long as she’s not
true. The second stanza addresses a person, questioning them, asking them if
truth and honesty are really necessary because he can’t be bound by being
constant. The third stanza addresses Venus herself and he claims that Venus
says constancy is the minority and only those who are constant themselves will
feel the sting of inconstancy. This seems to follow the line of familiarity
breeds contempt.
The Apparition
This is one of Donne’s “love” poems, if you can call it
that. The apparition figure is himself, after he’s been killed by the scorn of
a would-be lover. There’s a threat of rape, or at least, of harassment, when
Donne says his ghost will visit her by her bed-side while she sleeps. He calls
her a “feigned vestal” or pretend virgin, which is then borne out in the plot
of the poem as Donne, in his imagination, sees her with another man. There’s a
double entendre surrounding “thy sick taper” which, in the poem could mean the
light of her life, or, the man next to her who begins to “wink”. This man next
to her will not come to her aid, and instead pretends to be asleep as she tries
to wake him, and Donne harasses the woman with words that he does not include
in the poem. 17 line poem, sets itself up to be a sonnet with abba rhyme, but
the fifth line comes as another b. Rhyme scheme follows: abbabcdcdceffeggg.
The Bait
Another of Donne’s love poems, but this time the threat is
against himself, although this isn’t clear until the very end of the poem.
There are numerous references to nature in the poem, the first half show how
nature palls in comparison to his love. The sun and moon are dark compared to
her, the fish are metaphors for all the men who love this woman. He wants to be
the only fish that’s caught though, and the second half of the poem is Donne’s
wish that nature will work against his fellow fish. The woman is the bait, and
Donne is caught, but he claims that the fish that isn’t caught by her is
“wiser” than him. This means that being caught is somehow unpleasant, but the
beginning of the poem starts with pleasant experiences, which leaves tension in
the poem. Somewhere, in the middle, as Donne starts listing out the dangers of
nature to his fellow fish, he’s become caught himself. There’s a clue in the
second stanza, that the fish stay “begging themselves they may betray”, but
what is the betrayal? Falling in love? Staying with one woman? It’s unclear,
but the poem has to be re-read in order to understand that the threat is there
the whole time. It’s a 35 line poem in 4 line couplet stanzas.
The Canonization
Here, Donne mixes love poetry with religious poetry, perhaps
blaspheming in his “canonization” of him and his love. The first line of the
poem, “For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love” is unclear as to who
needs to be quiet. It seems as though it’s all of society itself, as the poem
rails against people who question their love. Of course, Donne does not make it
clear that they are not married, and their “love” is their sexual relationship,
but its implied in stanza three, when he writes, “We are tapers too, and at our
own cost die” harkening back to the notion of sexual exploits costing
lifeforce. The analogy in this stanza with the phoenix is great too, because
here, not only does sex cost them a “little death” but it seems to bring about
a rebirth too. The poem indicates that those who have shunned them or
questioned them will in the end, after their deaths and reading this poem of
canonization, ask for a “pattern of their love”. Donne sees himself as a trend
setter then, as someone who can love freely and then write poems to justify his
sexual exploits. The poem is a justification in a religious sense, following an
argument that this love is worthy of saintliness. Rhyme scheme abbacccaa
The Ecstasy
This poem is also one that is sexually based, but it
contains many references to natural features such as banks of rivers, plants,
and springs. These natural features are used to refer to the bodies, and the
joining of those bodies as a necessity or the joining of souls. Love is a
mixture, something that he’ll refer to again and again in his poems, and like
alchemy, at times giving you something expected, at other times something
unexpected. Donne talks about heaven’s influence and how it has to work through
the body first before it can reach the soul and makes the same claim about
love. The love connection between two souls also seems to reach to a higher
soul, a universal, like God. Sex, then, becomes a way of prayer or devotion.
The Flea
Here, Donne shows that the intermingling of physical bodies
is nothing because their bodies blood has already been comingled in the flea
that his bit them both. Donne claims that the mingling of blood is already
worse than what they would do with their bodies, so there’s no harm in it. The
second stanza shows his surprise when his would-be lover threatens the flea
that contains their blood. He tries to convince her that the flea is their
marriage bed and temple because they’ve already been joined in the flea’s body.
The third stanza is the surprising turn, as Donne was not successful in his
attempts to woo the woman and she has killed the flea.
Love’s Alchemy
Donne starts by saying he hasn’t been able to find a “deep” love,
and that those who say they have must lie. Alchemy, a science that was based on
a theory that never came to fruition, is equated with love in the same way that
the elixir of life and the philosopher’s stone were. They were constantly
sought after and never found, just like love for Donne. And those who stay
together because of mores, marriage, or laws, get a cold night rather than a
summer’s day. Donne rails against constancy in this poem, arguing that the
wedding is a show, or a play and that marriage only makes women think of
babies. The double play of “mummy” at the end signifies this obsession with
being a mother, and with a dead thing, repossessed. Aabbacddccee
A Nocturnal upon S.
Lucy’s Day, being the shortest day
Donne’s depressive poem about the consequences of love. In
this poem Donne bemoans the darkness of the earth, but even as dead as the
earth is, those things all seem jovial compared to him, the author. Donne
compares the “light squibs” of the women wearing candle crowns as not being constant,
which contributes to his foul mood. In the second stanza, Donne claims that he
is “every dead thing” which would-be lovers should see and be cautious about
the draining effects of love. He’s been denied love, by love’s “limbeck”
[retort] and am now nothing. It’s only by the fourth stanza that we are
informed that his love has died, but whether this is a real person or Love as a
personification is unclear. The third stanza talks about “we” and so the fourth
can be interpreted as a singular person, but I think that Love as a feeling is
also true. Abbacccdd
The Sun Rising
This is an aubade, a poem or song for morning. This poem
starts with a great line that makes you question the nature of the poem—“busy
old fool, unruly sun,” which could indicate that the sun is the busy old fool,
but it could be self-referential. These two things, separated by a comma, do
not have to refer to the same thing, but can be almost like a list—“busy old
fool” Donne and “unruly sun”. In any event, though, the sun interrupts Donne’s
love-making. The first stanza tries to get the sun to go away to bother other
people, but the second stanza shows how the sun has no real power that Donne
doesn’t have. He seems to claim that his love can outshine the sun, and that
his love contains multitudes, everything seems to be in his bed. The third
stanza shifts gears then, and claims that the sun should only shine on his bed
because it’s the entire world. There’s nothing else that matters. Abbacdcdee
A Valediction:
Forbidding Mourning
In this poem, Donne is taking a trip and he forbids his love
to mourn. He uses the idea of the compass to refer to their constant
connection, no matter how far one leg gets from the other, but also as a sexual
innuendo in how “erect” one gets the closer the one leg moves to the other.
There’s also some sexism in how one foot must follow the other, obviously Donne
implies she should follow him, but she also cannot mourn. He dictates what she
can and cannot do. Abab cdcd efef etc.
Elegy 19 To his
Mistress Going to Bed
A poem that uses language to strip the woman before him, but
he is the one that ends up naked. There are moments in the poem that equate the
women to land and country, like America, which could be useful in thinking
about how colonialism is based in gender. As souls must leave the body in order
to enter heaven, bodies must become undressed. Clothing is just a distraction
that works on others, but for Donne it only makes him wish he were the articles
of clothing. Donne uses several rhetorical tricks to try and undress the woman
before him. First, he proclaims her beauty is fairer than the world, then that
she’s so clever to dress the way she does because it stops most men’s eyes,
then a promise of paradise, and then that if no one had sex there would be no
children. His ploys don’t work, however, because Donne is the only naked one at
the end of the poem. Aabbccddeeff etc.
