Donne’s Poetry

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John Donne is a poet, philosopher and essayist who was born in 1952 in London. He mostly employed metaphysical methods in composing his poems. His metaphysical demeanor offered him the ability to arouse the reader’s interest to start and continues reading his piece of work. He manipulated the reader’s minds by employing new dimensions of styles such as skillful arguments, religion, philosophy, paradoxical images using a scope of metaphor called conceit. In 1590’s he made two volumes of work including Satires and Sonnets and songs containing love lyrics, Sacred poems and erotic verses. The paper describes two of Donne’s work on Poetry, “The Flea” and “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” both of which handles the theme of Love.
The cunning short poem “The Flea” cleverly shows Donne’s metaphysical ability in love poem mode. The poem employs the use of the small parasitic insect the flea, that has bitten the speaker and his beloved lady to show if the duo will practice premarital sex. The speaker has the urge to engage in love with his lover, but she resists the act (FILO & GINA, 21). He tries using the flea to put sense in the lady, by telling her that the insect has bitten both of them and their blood has mingled, which he deems not a sin. Therefore, if they had both come together through the walls of the flea and they were both innocent, then if they go ahead engaging in sex, they will remain innocent with no sin attached on them for both the acts are the same.

It is shown in the second stanza, as the speaker claims that the flea is their marriage bed and temple, to symbolize that the flea constitutes all of them and if the lady kills it, then she’ll have killed both of them. The lady having killed the speaker still maintains that their love still maintains and nothing has really, showing the theme of love dominating the poem.
The second poem “Valediction: forbidding mourning” speaks about love between two people. In the onset, the speaker explains that circumstances forced him to spend away from his lover but everything maintains. Before he leaves, he convinces the lover that the farewell ought not to be a situation of mourning or sorrow (Mintz & Susannah, 577). He goes ahead by convincing the lover that just how righteous men dies easily without complaint so should they remain in love without fear. He says that though the spheres face trepidation, they should stay strong however hard. It is difficult for true lovers to survive separation but when the situation calls, they will be apart, but the love remains refined, clearly, it shows how innocent the two lovers were. He uses the expansion capacity of gold when heated and a pair of the compass. He says that though they will be apart, the soul they share will expand to fill the space between them.
In conclusion, the poet John Donne is too selective on the words he uses to express his feelings. He selectively and in a resourceful way uses his words to develop themes. His lines and stanzas flow systematically and accurately achieving all the styles needed for a poem. The choice of characters and the setting is also well calculated. The two poems of Donne described above significantly uses his prowess of the metaphysical ability to expound on the theme of love, in a hidden way. Therefore, the readers need to read through the work to derive the deeper meaning of the poem.

Work citations
FILO, GINA Spermatique Issue of Ripe Monstrous Boils’: Gender Play in Donne’s Secular Lyrics.” Philological Quarterly, vol. 95, no. 1, Winter 2016, pp. 1–23. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&db=aph&AN=118903014&site=ehost-live.
Mintz, Susannah B. “‘Forget the Hee and Shee’: Gender and Play in John Donne.” Modern Philology, vol. 98, no. 4, May 2001, p. 577. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&db=aph&AN=4765542&site=ehost-live.