DONNES POETRY

John Donn
Context

John Donne was born in 1572 to a London merchant and his wife. Donnes
parents were both Catholic at a time when England was deeply divided
over matters of religion; Queen Elizabeth persecuted the Catholics and
upheld the Church of England established by her father, Henry VIII. The
subsequent ruler, James I, tolerated Catholicism, but advised Donne that
he would achieve advancement only in the Church of England. Having
renounced his Catholic faith, Donne was ordained in the Church of England
in 1615. Donnes father died when he was very young, as did several of his
brothers and sisters, and his mother remarried twice during his lifetime.
Donne was educated at Harts Hall, Oxford, and Lincolns Inn; he became
prodigiously learned, speaking several languages and writing poems in
both English and Latin.
Donnes adult life was colorful, varied, and often dangerous; he sailed with
the royal fleet and served as both a Member of Parliament and a diplomat.
In 1601, he secretly married a woman named Ann More, and he was
imprisoned by her father, Sir George More; however, after the Court of
Audiences upheld his marriage several months later, he was released and
sent to live with his wifes cousin in Surrey, his fortunes now in tatters. For
the next several years, Donne moved his family throughout England,
traveled extensively in France and Italy, and attempted unsuccessfully to
gain positions that might improve his financial situation. In 1615, Donne
was ordained a priest in the Anglican Church; in 1621, he became the
Dean of St. Pauls Cathedral, a post that he retained for the rest of his life.
A very successful priest, Donne preached several times before royalty; his
sermons were famous for their power and directness.
For the last decade of his life, before his death in 1630, Donne
concentrated more on writing sermons than on writing poems, and today he
is admired for the former as well as the latter. (One of his most famous
sermons contains the passage beginning, No man is an island and
ending, Therefore ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.)
However, it is for his extraordinary poems that Donne is primarily
remembered; and it was on the basis of his poems that led to the revival of
his reputation at the beginning of the 20th century, following years of
obscurity. (The renewed interest in Donne was led by a new generation of
writers at the turn of the century, including T.S. Eliot.) Donne was the
leading exponent of a style of poetry called metaphysical poetry, which
flourished in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
Metaphysical poetry features elaborate conceits and surprising symbols,
wrapped up in original, challenging language structures, with learned
themes that draw heavily on eccentric chains of reasoning. Donnes verse,
like that of George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, and many of their
contemporaries, exemplifies these traits. But Donne is also a highly
individual poet, and his consistently ingenious treatment of his great
themethe conflict between spiritual piety and physical carnality, as
embodied in religion and loveremains unparalleled.
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. Donnes 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 / Whateer 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.
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 Donnes 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
the Symposium (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 activitya 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 Christs 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
Donnes speakers frequently wonder which religion to choose when
confronted with so many churches that claim to be the one true religion.
In 1517, 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
Donnes 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 beloveds 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 beloveds 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 Donnes 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 Donnes 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 beloveds
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 beloveds
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 speakers 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 anothers eyes and see
themselves contained there, whole and perfect and present. The act of
staring into each others eyes leads to a profound mingling of souls in The
Ecstasy, as if reflections alone provided the gateway into a persons
innermost being.
Symbols
Angels
Angels symbolize the almost-divine status attained by beloveds in Donnes
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 Donnes
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 draftsmans 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 Christs blood. Donnes
religious poetry also underscores the Christian relationship between
violence, or bloodshed, and purity. For instance, the speaker of Holy
Sonnet 9 (1633) pleads that Christs blood might wash away the memory of
his sin and render him pure again.
The good morrow by John Donne is considered to be one of the
best poems belonging to the metaphysical school of poetry. This
poem is the poets words to his beloved after a night of love
making. This will help the readers unravel the beautiful meaning
behind the complex metaphysical conceit in this poem and once
that barrier is done away with; this poem will come across as one
of the most powerful love poetry of all times. I hope youll enjoy
going through the good morrow summary by John Donne. Links
for the good morrow analysis, theme, question&answer are
provided at the end of the summary.
The Good Morrow Summary with
Text:
I wonder, by my truth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved; were we not weaned till then,
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the 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.
In the beginning of the Good morrow poem, the poet asks his
beloved how they used to spend their lives before they had met
each other. With his beloved in arms, the poet realizes how empty
his life was before. He considers that phase of their lives to be as
meaningless as the ones spent in slumber by the
seven sleepers of Ephesus in the den when they were trying to
escape the wrath of the tyrant Emperor Decius. Being without his
beloved was as insignificant as those years which the
seven sleepers had spent sleeping. It means that those years
bore no importance in his life anymore. During those days when
he was yet to discover true love, he would make up for that
emptiness by indulging in other pleasures of life but now after
understanding the meaning of love he realizes that those
pleasures were very artificial. Now it seems to the poet as if he
was a small child during those days who was being weaned on
these materialistic pleasures of the world in the absence of true
love which was like mothers milk to that child. During those days
all objects of beauty that he came across were nothing but her
beloveds reflection. To the poet her beloved was like a beautiful
dream which was turned into reality. In the good
morrow summary, it is worth mentioning that through false
pleasures the poet might be indicating towards his various
liaisons with other women which were just a reflection of the
beauty which his true lover filled him with.
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.
Let sea discoveries to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to others, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess our world; each hath one and is one.
In the second stanza of The good morrow poem summary the
poet sheds light upon the bliss which envelops the lovers. He
says that their souls rise in the light of the new morning of love in
their lives. Their hearts are devoid of any kind of fear of
commitment, misunderstanding or losing the one they love. Their
presence in the each others life means so much to them that
nothing catches their attention anymore. Donne proposes his
loved one to turn their tiny room in which they make love into their
only world. He says that he does not care about how much the
sea discoverers expand the boundaries of the world with their
discoveries. During those times when maritime discoveries were
given utmost importance, the new inclusions to the map of the
world meant nothing to the poet since his world only comprised of
his beloved and him. Their respective worlds have now been
fused into one. This drawing of an intellectual parallel from
astronomy and geography strengthens the metaphysics of the
poem.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces 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.
Next the poet talks about the unique beauty of the love which he
and his beloved share. Donne says that that sometimes he and
his beloved stare into each others eyes so longingly that they can
see their faces in the others eyes. This refection of faces in the
eyes reveals the true hearts of the lovers. Their hearts are true
and spotless in love. This means that their love for each other
enables the lovers to get rid of all their bad traits and harsh
feelings towards the world which helps them become better
people. The poet further adds that unlike the world which is
divided in hemispheres, their world of love knows no boundaries.
It does not have a sharp cold northern hemisphere. Nor does it
have a western hemisphere which has to bid farewell to the sun.
By drawing this reference to Geography again, the poet tries to
give us an insight into the unparalleled bliss of his world of love
where it is always warm and sunny.
The Good Morrow summary will help the readers in
understanding the link which Donne draws from medieval
alchemy towards the end of the poem to explain the immortality of
the love which he shares with his beloved. The poet says to his
loved one that their love is indestructible since it is pure. It is the
hardest to relax the bonds of pure substances. The mixing of two
things causes impurity which threatens the longevity of
substances. The lovers do not feel this threat since their love is
not mixed with any selfish demands or intentions of any kind and
is perfectly pure. With such a strong bond of love between
them the poet is convinced that nothing can ever decrease or stop
the stream of love which flows between his beloved and him. We
recommend you to skim through the following links to have a
better idea of the poem The Good Morrow
Song [Go and Catch a Falling Star]
John Donne [1572-1631]
Relevant Background
John Donne wrote poetry in the years around 1600.
Donne is classed as a humorous poet. He liked to entertain his readers with
an amusing style of argument.
He often focused on love. In Song [Go and Catch a Falling Star] he offers
clever arguments and examples about how impossible it is to find a faithful
and honest woman.
Around 1600 many male poets wrote comical poems pretending that women
were not loyal to their husbands or lovers.
Donne in his early days was a young man about town and a great visitor of
ladies in high society according to the social gossip of his day. Perhaps he
himself was a bit of a playboy. Yet in this poem he complains that women
behaved in just the same way that he was gossiped about.
Donnes personal record is not trustworthy on matters of love. In 1601
Donne secretly married his bosss 16 year-old niece, Anne More; a reckless
romance that led to jail and then poverty
Summary
This is a poem by John Donne in which he argues that it is impossible to find a
woman who is both attractive and faithful to the one man.
In the first stanza Donne states a number of impossible tasks. He compares finding
an honest woman to these tasks. He cleverly states that to find a woman who is
honest in love is as difficult as it is to catch a falling star. The impossible tasks also
include conceiving a child with a mandrake plant, gaining full knowledge of the
past, solving the mystery of the Devils cloven hoof and learning the knack of
hearing mermaids singing. In a sarcastic comment Donne says that finding an
honest woman is as difficult as living without the pain of envy. Envy is the greed
and lust of other people who would secretly long for his woman. He adds
sarcastically to the list of impossible tasks the task of finding the wind that brings
prosperity to those who are of honest mind. He means that only dishonest people
do well, that to have an honest mind is to fail.
In the second stanza the subject matter is an imaginary journey of ten thousand
days. Donne imagines a seeker spending a lifetime, until he has grey hairs, looking
for an honest woman. Donne believes that despite all the strange sights the
traveller will see, he wont come across an honest woman.
In the third stanza the thought changes to the more positive idea of finding an
honest woman. If the traveller finds one, he is to report her immediately. Donne
says such a journey, pilgrimage, would be sweet. But then Donne changes his
mind and says he wouldnt travel next door to meet her as by the time he arrives
even that far she will have slept with two or three other men. He says a woman
would only remain honest at most for as long as it takes to write the letter saying
you have found her.

Themes
The poet claims it is impossible to find an honest wife or female partner:
No where lives a woman true, and fair.
The poet argues that those who lust after a mans beautiful partner will envy him
and torment him with their rivalry for her:
Teach me to to keep off envy's stinging.

In this poem from John Donne's Songs and Sonnets, first published
posthumously in 1633, Donne playfully consoles his lover as he prepares to
depart on some kind of journey. The reason for the parting is not a pressing
engagement, but rather a kind of practice run for the parting that they must
eventually suffer when one of them dies. Since death is inevitable, he
argues, they had best get used to it by enduring the parting that is a fake
death:
Thus to use myself in jest / By feigned deaths to die.
In the second stanza, Donne consoles his lover by developing an analogy
between his own journey and the movement of the sun. Just as the sun
went down "yesternight" and returned today, so she may count on his
inevitable return. In fact, he is even more to be relied upon because, unlike
the sun, he has "desire" and "sense," and he takes "more wings and
spurs." Donne is thus impelled by love to return as quickly as he can.
The remaining stanzas mourn humanity's powerlessness either to prolong
good fortune or to repel the bad. Donne, however, concludes how he and
his lover may triumph over the adversity of parting. When she sighs in her
sorrow, he says, she "sigh'st not wind, / But sigh'st my soul away" (a
characteristic hyperbole, which demonstrates Donne's debt to, and
reinvention of, Petrarchan tradition). The couple's dependence on one
another is reinforced by a succession of pronouns: "thou," "me," "thine,"
and "my." Donne concludes that she "art the best of me." Destiny may
indeed fulfill her fears for him, but they can preserve each other by viewing
their parting as nothing more than a turning aside from one another, as
would occur naturally in sleep. Their interdependence means that each
keeps the other alive and so, by Donne's neat quasi-logic, they "ne'er
parted be."

range sightsthings invisible to see strange wonders

(vi)
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 lovers 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
Donnes 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 Donnes 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 poems 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 drafters 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 Donnes most famous metaphors, and it is the perfect image to
encapsulate the values of Donnes spiritual love, which is balanced,
symmetrical, intellectual, serious, and beautiful in its polished simplicity.
Like many of Donnes 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 Donnes writing, the membership of this
elite never includes more than the speaker and his loveror at the most,
the speaker, his lover, and the reader of the poem, who is called upon to
sympathize with Donnes romantic plight.

Hymn to God, my God, in my Sickness

Summary
The speaker says that since he will soon die and come to that holy room
where he will be made into the music of God as sung by a choir of saints,
he tunes the instrument now and thinks what he will do when the final
moment comes. He likens his doctors to cosmographers and himself to a
map, lying flat on the bed to be shown that this is my south-west discovery
/ Per fretum febris, by these straits to die. He rejoices, for in those straits
he sees his west, his death, whose currents yield return to none, yet
which will not harm him. West and east meet and join in all flat maps (the
speaker says again that he is a flat map), and in the same way, death is
one with the resurrection.
The speaker asks whether his home is the Pacific Sea, or the eastern
riches, or Jerusalem. He lists the straights of Anyan, Magellan, and
Gibraltar, and says that only straits can offer access to paradise, whether it
lies where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem. The speaker says that
Paradise and Calvary, / Christs Cross, and Adams tree stood in the
same place. He asks God to look and to note that both Adams (Christ
being the second Adam) are unified in him; as the first Adams sweat
surrounds his face, he says, may the second Adams blood embrace his
soul. He asks God to receive him wrapped in the purple of Christ, and, by
these his thorns, to give him Christs other crown. As he preached the
word of God to others souls, he says, let this be his sermon to his own
soul: Therefore that he may raise the Lord throws down.
Form
Like many of Donnes religious poems, the Hymn to God my God is
formally somewhat simpler than many of his metaphysical secular poems.
Each of the six five-line stanzas follows an ABABB rhyme scheme, and the
poem is metered throughout in iambic pentameter.
Commentary
Scholars are divided over the question of whether this poem was written on
Donnes deathbed in 1630 or during the life-threatening fever he contracted
in1623. In either case, the Hymn to God my God was certainly written at a
time when Donne believed he was likely to die. This beautiful, lyrical, and
complicated poem represents his minds attempt to summarize itself, and
his attempt to offer, as he says, a sermon to his soul. In the first stanza, the
speaker looks forward to the time when he will be in that holy room where
he will be made into Gods musican extraordinary imagewith His choir
of saints. In preparation for that time, he says, he will tune the instrument
(his soul) by writing this poem.
The next several stanzas, devoted to the striking image of Donnes body as
a map looked over by his navigator-doctors, develop an elaborate
geographical symbolism with which to explain his condition. He is entering,
he says, his south-west discoverythe south being, traditionally, the
region of heat (or fever) and the west being the site of the sunset and, thus,
in this poem, the region of death. (A key to this geographical symbolism
can be found in A.J. Smiths concise notation in the Penguin Classics
edition of Donnes Complete English Poems.) The speaker says that his
discovery is made Per fretum febris, or by the strait of fever, and that he will
die by these straits.
Donne employs an elaborate pun on the idea of straits, a word that
denotes the narrow passages of water that connect oceans, yet which also
refers to grim personal difficulties (as in dire straights): Donnes personal
struggles with his illness are like the straits that will connect him to the
paradise of the Pacific Sea, Jerusalem, and the eastern riches; no matter
where one is in the worldin the region of Japhet, Cham, or Shemsuch
treasures can only be reached through straits. (Japhet, Cham, and Shem
were the sons of Noah, who divided the world between them after the ark
came to rest: Japhet lived in Europe, Cham lived in Africa, and Shem lived
in Asia.) Essentially, all of this word play and allusion is merely another way
of saying that Donne expects his fever to lead him to heaven (even on his
deathbed, his mind delighted in spinning metaphysical complexities). The
speaker says that on maps, west and east are oneif one travels far
enough in either direction, one ends up on the other side of the mapand,
therefore, his death in the west will lead to his eastern resurrection.
He then shifts to a dramatically different set of images, claiming that
Christs Cross and Adams tree stood physically on the same place, and
that by the same token, both the characteristics of Adam (sin and toil) and
of Christ (resurrection and purity) are present in Donne himself: The phrase
Look Lord, and find both Adams met in me is Donnes most perfect
statement of the contrary strains of spirituality and carnality that run through
his poems and ran through his life. As the sweat of the first Adam (who was
cursed to work after expulsion from Eden) surrounds his face in his fever,
he hopes the blood of Christ, the second Adam, will embrace and purify his
soul.
Donne concludes by charting his actual entry into heaven, saying that he
hopes to be received by God wrapped in the purple garment of Christ
purple with blood and with triumphand to obtain his crown. As his final
poetic act, he writes a sermon for his own soul, just as he preached
sermons to the souls of others during his years as a priest. The Lord, he
says, throws down that he may raise up; Donne, thrown down by the fever,
will be lifted up to heaven, where his soul, having been tuned now on
Earth, may be used to make the music of God.
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 sunthe Saucy pedantic wretchto 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 sunif
the suns eyes have not been blinded by his lovers eyesto 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 suns job much easierin 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 4255445555lines 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 Donnes most charming and successful metaphysical love poems,
The Sun Rising is built around a few hyperbolic assertionsfirst, 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
speakers 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
feelingto 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 worlds 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.
John Donne: A Valediction: of Weeping
Reality and representation mix in this classic poem.
BY JOEL BROUWER
John Donne probably wrote A Valediction: of Weeping
after he met his future wife, Ann More, and before he took
holy orders and turned most of his authorial energies to
sermons and spiritual meditations. We cant be sure about
the timing, though; while we have Donnes biography and
his poems, aligning the two is tricky. We know that Donne
wrote poems only for himself and a close circle of friends
and patrons, never for fame and seldom for publication. It
would seem reasonable to guess that A Valediction: of
Weepingwhich, like a number of Donnes love poems,
dramatizes a scene of lovers partingmight have been
written during the early years of his marriage, when
Donne was often obliged to be away from home, leaving
his young wife and children alone. But we cant be sure
that the poem isnt wholly an act of imagination with no
connection to Donnes personal experience.
This uncertainty has permitted some of Donnes readers to
regard his poems not as acts of self-expression, but as the
abstracted, cerebral constructions of a fierce wit. Yes, the
poems may be autobiographical, but Donnes predilection
for intricate rhetorical figures, paradoxes, surprising
swerves in tone, associative leaps, and
ingenious conceitscan make them feel artificial, or made of
artifice. Donnes reputation as merely a wit made his work
deeply unpopular for many years after his death. Probably
the most famous condemnation came from Samuel
Johnson, who labeled Donnes style metaphysicalhe
didnt intend the term as a compliment.
In the early 20th century, incipient Modernists, most
notably T.S. Eliot, found new layers of value in Donne. His
perceived cool intellectualism seemed fresh and vigorous
to poets grown weary of Romanticisms emotionalism and
emphasis on the self. Donne soon became a favorite of
the New Critics as well. That schools emphasis on reading
poems as autonomous systemsdiscounting extra-textual
considerations such as the authors intentions and
historical situationwas well suited to Donnes poetry; his
intentions are difficult or impossible to determine, and
each poem he wrote seemed designed to function as, to use
a phrase from one of Donnes Holy Sonnets, a little world
made cunningly.
Donnes poems in general, and A Valediction: of
Weeping in particular, are certainly cunning. But it would
be a mistake to think of them as nothing more than
exercises in cleverness. Well find in this poem, as in many
others by Donne, that his wit often serves as a means to a
larger end rather than as an end in itself. The poem may be
a highly organized little world, but it consistently
gestures toward a larger world: the actual, chaotic,
emotional one in which we live.
A Valediction: of Weeping begins with a scene of two
lovers parting:
Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth
The poet is asking for his lovers indulgence. If he cries
now, while hes still with her, her face will be reflected in
his tears, transforming them from ordinary waste into
objects of valuecoins. The poet isnt asking for a
physical connection here; he doesnt say embrace me
before I go. Instead he seeks to reflect and be reflected by
the beloved, at once emphasizing their connection and the
fact that they are alreadyeven now before his departure
undeniably separate. This dynamic might be similar to the
one we enter into while reading Donnes poem. On the one
hand, the clever figures and rhyme scheme remind us that
the poem is an artificial construct of symbols and sounds.
But at the same time, the poems dramatic situation
encourages us to identify with the speakers authentic
human grief. Lets look at the entire first stanza:
Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth,
For thus they be
Pregnant of thee;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more,
When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.
The financial metaphor of lines 3 and 4 suggests that
theres a transaction involved here, and we see already an
example of the kind of hall-of-mirrors paradox Donne so
relished, and will soon use again, in this very poem.
Perhaps the speaker is departing to earn actual coins to
support the beloved. If so, that would be a gesture of
unification and shared purpose, but at the same time one
ironically requiring separation. In order to be with you,
Donne seems to imply, I must leave you.
In line 7 Donne suggests that his tears are both fruits of
his present grief at parting and emblems of his future
grief, when he will be away. (Of course, this grief might
also be understood not as the grief of parting from the
beloved, but as the grief of having to undertake the journey
in the first place.) So the tears are literal and metaphorical,
physical and symbolic, at the same time. Similarly, the
poem as a whole can be seen both as a sincere expression
of grief and as an emblema representation, that isof
grief.
The next two lines feature a tricky metaphor for the
speakers future sorrow:
When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.
As his own tear falls, his beloveds reflection falls with it.
He and she both become nothing; her reflection falls and
thus vanishes, and he, like his tear, departs. If he is
departing on a sea voyageas divers shore might
suggestthen we may add another dimension to this
already crowded conceit. Both tears and the sea are salty
water, and here tears figuratively signify the impending
separation, just as the sea will literally enforce it. Keeping
in mind that a fall in a relationship can refer to
unfaithfulness, this line could even be read as a
premonition of adultery: the tears provoked by my
sorrow at leaving you fall, just as you will fall into
unfaithfulness when Im gone. Following this line of
thinking, So thou and I are nothing then, when on a
divers shore turns to pure bitterness: when were apart,
were nothing to each other.
So while we could read this first stanza as the heartfelt cry
of a lover in anguish, devastated to be separated from his
beloved, its also possible to take these lines as the cynical
complaint of a husband who feels persecuted in his role as
breadwinner and, even worse, unsure of his wifes fidelity.
Which of these is the correct reading? Its a natural
question to ask, but also a misleading one, because the
great pleasure in reading Donne lies in just this kind of
ambiguity. His poems are incredibly detailed, specific, and
intricate, but at the same time mysterious, vague, and
elusive. Here again, were led to consider the ways in
which the poem both invites us to identify with the
speakers emotions, and reminds us that what were
looking at here is not a person but a poem. Well see this
dynamic continue throughout the rest of the poem, as
Donne oscillates between the tangible and the conceptual,
the literal and the metaphorical. By the time we get to the
final lines, it may even seem that the poem is more
concerned with the gap between reality and imagination
than it is with its ostensible subject of two lovers parting.
The next stanza introduces a new metaphor that is
relatedappropriately, given the occasion of the poemto
the idea of travel.
On a round ball
A workman that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, all,
So doth each tear,
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mixed with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved
so.
This stanzas transformation of a nothing into an all is
similar to an idea expressed near the end of another
Donne poem, The Canonization. Both poems use the
figure of a world contained in a reflection, and in each case
great stress is put on the metaphysical nature of that
containment: the physical object is captured in a
reflection, but so is the objects essence. In The
Canonization it isnt just the world that is contained in
the glasses of your eyes, but the whole worlds soul.
The distinction is important. Donne is alluding to the
Christian theory of transubstantiation, where the base
physical representations of bread and wine are
transformed, by the intercession of the Holy Ghost, into
holy reality: the body and blood of Christ. Analogous
processes occur in A Valediction: of Weeping. Much as
the tears in line 7 were shown to be both physical fruits
and metaphysical emblems, here Donne conflates reality
(the world in which we actually live) and representation
(the globe we use as an icon of that world). A blank ball
is nothing until its overlaid with maps to become an all.
A tear is nothing until it reflects the face of the beloved and
becomes an all. And perhaps the poem itself is both a
nothinga mere collection of sounds and symbolsand
yet also an all, a container for the poets genuine
emotions.
The final lines of the second stanza may contain the most
knotty ideas in a very knotty poem:
Till thy tears mixed with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved
so.
How are we to understand the phrase This world here?
There are several possible readings, and as elsewhere in
the poem, they range from the simple and concrete to the
complex and abstract. This world could be the real world
the lovers see around them:If we both cry, our eyes will
fill with tears, and we literally wont be able to see each
other anymore. But of course the figure also works as a
metaphor for the characters emotional states: Our mutual
sorrow at parting destroys the heaven-on-earth we make
when were together. Finally, keep in mind the maps
Donne showed us earlier in the stanza. The speakers tears
might also be obscuring his vision of that globe, a little
world made cunningly that in turn represents the literal
earth. Again Donne succeeds in mixing the real and the
figurative.
Mixed might not refer to a literal mixing of the two
lovers tears, but instead to the process of reproduction
the oscillation of reality and representationthat is
gradually manifesting itself as the poems central concern.
The two lines might suggest that watery reflections of the
lovers are being created and destroyed endlessly: in
reflecting, or mixing with, each others tears, the lovers
overflow and destroy those reflections, the faces-within-
tears from the first stanza. We see the lovers (real) tears as
images within images, endlessly generative and endlessly
in decay.
Immediately following his sequence of globe and water
imagery, Donne compares his beloved to the moon, the
sphere that controls the flow of tides.
O more than moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,
Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear
To teach the sea, what it may do too soon;
Let not the wind
Example find,
To do me more harm, than it purposeth;
Since thou and I sigh one anothers breath,
Whoeer sighs most, is cruelest, and hastes the others
death.
The beloved is more than the moon: not only can she can
draw tears from herself, but she can pull those tears all the
way up into her own sphere, or presence, where the poet
is as well. Donne exhorts her not to use her power to draw
up seas, that is, to weep, because it could drown him
in at least three ways. His reflection would be drowned
when caught in her tears; seeing her cry would figuratively
drown him in sorrow; and if her tears inadvertently teach
the sea and give an example to the wind, he might
literally be drowned when he sets sail on his voyage.
The poems closing breath metaphor, which
appropriately follows the wind image, once again asserts
the union of the lovers: Because we breathe as one when
were together, our sighs of sorrow use up each others
breath, and so hasten each others death. As we might
have expected, Donne ends the poem with a paradox. We
tend to associate breath with life, but here an excess of
breath leads to death. This metaphor, like the earlier
tear/reflection conceit, warns the beloved that her physical
expressions of griefcrying, sighingcause emotional
harm. When she cries she drowns his reflection in her
tears; when she sighs she steals his life-breath. Once again,
the metaphorical and the real appear to be so closely
aligned as to become indistinguishable.
This breath figure also has an echo in The Canonization,
where we find similar images of the lovers as a single
being:
Call her one, me another fly,
We are tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find the eagle and the dove
In these lines, as in A Valediction: of Weeping, the poet
and his beloved form one being. Thats not an original
idea, but it becomes original when we note that in each
case this union is destructive as well as creative. In The
Canonization the lovers are both flies and the candles that
burn the flies, so they at [their] own cost die: the fact of
their union is also the cause of their destruction. The
eagle and the dove is a similarly murderous figure, since
eagles kill doves. So too in A Valediction: of Weeping the
lovers are unitedin teary reflections and in breathbut
those very unions threaten the lovers with ruin. As in the
lines about mixed tears overflowing this world, the
poems closing lines suggest the idea of love as a self-
perpetuating cycle of creation and destruction. The great
achievement of A Valediction: of Weeping is its powerful
evocation of this very paradoxnot only in terms of the
lovers, who appear to be simultaneously united and
divided, but in terms of the poem itself, which persistently
demands that we read it as both artificial and earnest, self-
contained and suggestive, a nothing and an all.
"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"
The poet begins by comparing the love between his beloved and
himself with the passing away of virtuous men. Such men expire
so peacefully that their friends cannot determine when they are
truly dead. Likewise, his beloved should let the two of them
depart in peace, not revealing their love to the laity.
Earthquakes bring harm and fear about the meaning of the
rupture, but such fears should not affect his beloved because of
the firm nature of their love. Other lovers become fearful when
distance separates thema much greater distance than the
cracks in the earth after a quakesince for them, love is based
on the physical presence or attractiveness of each other. Yet for
the poet and his beloved, such a split is innocent, like the
movements of the heavenly spheres, because their love
transcends mere physicality.
Indeed, the separation merely adds to the distance covered by
their love, like a sheet of gold, hammered so thin that it covers a
huge area and gilds so much more than a love concentrated in
one place ever could.
He finishes the poem with a longer comparison of himself and his
wife to the two legs of a compass. They are joined at the top, and
she is perfectly grounded at the center point. As he travels
farther from the center, she leans toward him, and as he travels
in his circles, she remains firm in the center, making his circles
perfect.
Analysis
The first two of the nine abab stanzas of A Valediction:
Forbidding Mourning make up a single sentence, developing the
simile of the passing of a virtuous man as compared to the love
between the poet and his beloved. It is thought that Donne was
in fact leaving for a long journey and wished to console and
encourage his beloved wife by identifying the true strength of
their bond. The point is that they are spiritually bound together
regardless of the earthly distance between them.
He begins by stating that the virtuous man leaves life behind so
delicately that even his friends cannot clearly tell the difference.
Likewise, Donne forbids his wife from openly mourning the
separation. For one thing, it is no real separation, like the
difference between a breath and the absence of a breath. For
another thing, mourning openly would be a profanation of their
love, as the spiritual mystery of a sacrament can be diminished
by revealing the details to the laity (line 8). Their love is sacred,
so the depth of meaning in his wifes tears would not be
understood by those outside their marriage bond, who do not
love so deeply. When Donne departs, observers should see no
sign from Donnes wife to suggest whether Donne is near or far
because she will be so steadfast in her love for him and will go
about her business all the same.
The third stanza suggests that the separation is like the innocent
movement of the heavenly spheres, many of which revolve
around the center. These huge movements, as the planets come
nearer to and go farther from one another, are innocent and do
not portend evil. How much less, then, would Donnes absence
portend. All of this is unlike the worldly fear that people have
after an earthquake, trying to determine what the motions and
cleavages mean.
In the fourth and fifth stanzas, Donne also compares their love to
that of sublunary (earth-bound) lovers and finds the latter
wanting. The love of others originates from physical proximity,
where they can see each others attractiveness. When distance
intervenes, their love wanes, but this is not so for Donne and his
beloved, whose spiritual love, assured in each ones mind,
cannot be reduced by physical distance like the love of those who
focus on lips, and hands.
The use of refined in the fifth stanza gives Donne a chance to
use a metaphor involving gold, a precious metal that is refined
through fire. In the sixth stanza, the separation is portrayed as
actually a bonus because it extends the territory of their love, like
gold being hammered into aery thinness without breaking (line
24). It thus can gild that much more territory.
The final three stanzas use an extended metaphor in which
Donne compares the two individuals in the marriage to the two
legs of a compass: though they each have their own purpose,
they are inextricably linked at the joint or pivot at the topthat
is, in their spiritual unity in God. Down on the paperthe earthly
realmone leg stays firm, just as Donnes wife will remain
steadfast in her love at home. Meanwhile the other leg describes
a perfect circle around this unmoving center, so long as the
center leg stays firmly grounded and does not stray. She will
always lean in his direction, just like the center leg of the
compass. So long as she does not stray, Thy firmness makes my
circle just, / And makes me end where I begun, back at home
(lines 35-36). They are a team, and so long as she is true to him,
he will be able to return to exactly the point where they left off
before his journey.

John Donne probably wrote this poem in 1623, after he had recovered from
a serious bout of the spotted fever which gripped London in an epidemic
that year. There is a confidence in this poems tone, which gives the reader
the impression that Donne has assurance of Gods favor to him." He has
been saved from a disease which was very often fatal, and the speaker of
the poem seems to be baiting God a bit in this song-like poem of eighteen
lines.
The poem is in three stanzas of six lines each, each ending with When
thou has done, though has not done / For I have more. In each stanza
the speaker holds up his sins to God (and these confessions, while
couched in this punning, sometimes daring tone, are nonetheless sincere),
and he hopes that God will forgive him for these things. But, with a dark
glee, the sinner assures God that he has more of these sins the sinner
is a collection of many sins, and God has his work cut out for him to do the
forgiving. He begins with original sin (the belief that certain Christian sects
have that Adam and Eves sin in the Garden of Eden were passed down to
all humanity), and then progresses on to sins that he has brought others to
(made my sin their door line 8), to a sin of fear (line 13). The
speaker is begging forgiveness of God, but he is like a difficult
child taunting his parent with ever increasing transgressions.
The puns in refrain lines at the end of each stanza have to do with names.
Done which is repeated six times, refers to Donnes own name, and
more, which ends each stanza, refers to his wife Anne Mores maiden
name. The meaning of these puns seems to be to add a certain levity to
this poem, and may mean either than his wife incites him to more sin, or,
perhaps, she is his consolation for his sins.
The reference is tinged with sadness, however, because Anne More Dunne
died in 1617, some six years before this poem was written. The final line
reads I fear no more, meaning after he dies his sins of fear will be erased
and he will once again be with his wife. This hymn was set to music by
John Hilton, during Donnes lifetime, and was probably sung in some
English churches during the seventeenth century.
John Donne's 'A Hymn to Christ'
Every time I think I know the canon of John Donne all through, I read
something that surprises me. I don't know how I missed this one, his 'A
Hymn to Christ', written "at the author's last going into Germany".

That journey was apparently in 1619. The editor in that link also calls
attention to the double meaning in the lines, "Thou lov'st not, till from
loving more, thou free / My soule" - Ann More being the name of Donne's
wife, who had died two years previously. Donne famously plays on her
name and his own in this poem.



The going overseas theme, and the tension between forced and self-sought
separations, rather reminds me of this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins,
though perhaps that's just me being literalistic. That poem is about
Hopkins' exile (as he felt it) in Ireland, the period in which he wrote the so-
called 'terrible sonnets'; and there's something terrible about this Donne
poem too, in the true sense of the word - he seeks to divorce himself from
all other loves in order to find the love of God, to sever himself from every
earthly attachment by voluntarily choosing a state he refers to as winter,
darkness, everlasting night. It's very bleak, really.


A Hymn to Christ, at the Author's last going into Germany

In what torne ship soever I embarke,
That ship shall be my embleme of thy Arke;
What sea soever swallow mee, that flood
Shall be to mee an embleme of thy blood;
Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise
Thy face; yet through that maske I know those eyes,
Which, though they turne away sometimes,
They never will despise.

I sacrifice this Iland unto thee,
And all whom I lov'd there, and who lov'd mee;
When I have put our seas twixt them and mee,
Put thou thy sea betwixt my sinnes and thee.
As the trees sap doth seeke the root below
In winter, in my winter now I goe,
Where none but thee, th'Eternall root
Of true Love I may know.

Nor thou nor thy religion dost controule,
The amorousnesse of an harmonious Soule,
But thou would'st have that love thy selfe: As thou
Art jealous, Lord, so I am jealous now,
Thou lov'st not, till from loving more, thou free
My soule: Who ever gives, takes libertie:
O, if thou car'st not whom I love
Alas, thou lov'st not mee.

Seale then this bill of my Divorce to All,
On whom those fainter beames of love did fall;
Marry those loves, which in youth scattered bee
On Fame, Wit, Hopes (false mistresses) to thee.
Churches are best for Prayer, that have least light:
To see God only, I goe out of sight:
And to scape stormy dayes, I chuse
An Everlasting night.


Posting this was not just an excuse to include pictures of 'churches with least light' - that was
just a bonus (from the top: Canterbury Cathedral,Doddington, Ickham).