John Donne as a Metaphysical Poet

The term Metaphysical Poets was first coined by Samuel Johnson-a critic and poet of the 17 th
century. Metaphysical poets are a group of detached English lyric poets whose work is
characterized by ingenious use of conceits along with various theories regarding love and
religion. Being a Metaphysical, Donnes poetry is highly intellectual and in order to understand
his poetry one has to analyze metaphors, paradox and allusions, which are as under:
Busie, old foole, unruly Sunne,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtaines call on us? / are the lines, from
the poem The Sunne Rising that indicate the colloquial style of Donnes poetry. Expressions
such as saucy pedantic, wretch, go chide show his disgruntlement towards the sun which in
general symbolizes warmth but in the poets perspective depicts something quite contrary. For he
means to say that he and his beloved are over and above the clutches of time and that the sun
should render his vain services to the late school boys, the court-huntsmen and not to them.
While praising his beloveds eyes in bed, he, further warns the sun that he would eclipse its
beams than losing her sight. Because to him she is all states and all princes is he, everything else
is alchemy.
Thou sunne art halfe as happy as wee
All honors mimique; All wealth alchimie. ( The Sunne Rising)
These lines serve as an evidence that he had the ability of proving his arguments regarding the
ideas of oneness of love through argumentative, rhetoric reasoning and relevant point of views
whereby he concludes:
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere(argumentative- The
Sunne Rising)
what thou, and I Did, till we lovd? (rhetoric- The Good-Morrow)
Also he uses various conceits such as:

...Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?

Where can we finde two better hemispheares

Without sharpe North, without declining West?
(The Good-Morrow)
Lover and beloved are compared to sharp north and declining west which indicates that both of
them are two faces of the same coin i.e. They are soul mates. And together they substantiate such
a relationship that none do slacken, none can die.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do. (A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning)
Two legs of a compass are compared to the lover and the beloved whenas one of them is out of
station (obliquely running) the other remains loyal to it, melts, is careless, eyes, lips and hands to
miss, their love is unlike dull sublunary lovers love i.e. the laity. And their respective devotion
makes the circle just i.e. makes the long distance relationship sound, and so their mutual cooperation make the one that obliquely runs end where it had begun.
Like the other foot, obliquely run
Like gold to aery thinness beat
As betwixt two equal armies, Fate
Suspends uncertain victory
(A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning)
The poem A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning is as a whole an extended metaphor, it starts
off:

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
Now his breadth goes, and some say, No

There is imagery in one of his poems, The Ecatasy

Where, like a pillow on a bed,
A pregnant bank swelled up, to rest
The violets reclining head,
Sat we two, one anothers best
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.

There is spiritual enlightenment in the poem, The Ecstasy. The poets love is transformed into a
much refined form. According to the poet pure lovers connect to each other intuitively and there
is a small change if they depart and that love is an unconditional feeling which upon revealing
loses its touch.
Hence, it is then proved that John Donne is a Metaphsical poet who believes in an ideal love.
Neither he contradicts physicality nor spirituality. Instead he gives the imagery of a soul as a
great prince living in a prison i.e. the body and considers physical love as a medium through
which one attains not only the bliss of spiritual love but he regards it to be the very source of
continuity of human generation on planet earth since time immemorial.