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 p
edantic wretch to go and bother late schoolboys and sour apprentices, to tell the c
ourt-huntsmen that the King will ride, and to call the country ants to their har
vesting.
Why should the sun think that his beams are strong? The speaker says that he cou
ld 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 no
t been blinded by his lover s eyes to tell him by late tomorrow whether the treasure
s of India are in the same place they occupied yesterday or if they are now in b
ed with the speaker. He says that if the sun asks about the kings he shined on y
esterday, 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 p
lay at having countries; compared to what he has, all honor is mimicry and all w
ealth is alchemy. The sun, the speaker says, is half as happy as he and his love
r are, for the fact that the world is contracted into their bed makes the sun s jo
b much easier in its old age, it desires ease, and now all it has to do is shine o
n 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 l
ine-stress pattern of 4255445555 lines one, five, and six are metered in iambic te
trameter, line two is in dimeter, and lines three, four, and seven through ten a
re 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 h
as the watchful personality of an old busybody; second, that love, as the speake
r puts it, no season knows, nor clime, / Nor hours, days, months, which are the r
ags 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 wit
hin their bedroom. Of course, each of these assertions simply describes figurati
vely a state of feeling to the wakeful lover, the rising sun does seem like an int
ruder, 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 t
o 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 i
n his head is primary over the world outside it; for instance, in the second sta
nza, 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 arro
gance is perfectly tuned to the consciousness of a new lover, and the speaker ap
propriately claims to have all the world s riches in his bed (India, he says, is n
ot where the sun left it; it is in bed with him). The speaker captures the essen
ce of his feeling in the final stanza, when, after taking pity on the sun and de
ciding 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 b
efore 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 c
omplaint, he says, so they should leave without tear-floods and sigh-tempests, for t
o publicly announce their feelings in such a way would profane their love. The s
peaker says that when the earth moves, it brings harms and fears, but when the sph
eres experience trepidation, though the impact is greater, it is also innocent. Th
e love of dull sublunary lovers cannot survive separation, but it removes that whi
ch constitutes the love itself; but the love he shares with his beloved is so re
fined and Inter-assured of the mind that they need not worry about missing eyes, li
ps, and hands.
Though he must go, their souls are still one, and, therefore, they are not endur
ing 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, th
ey are like the feet of a compass: His lover s soul is the fixed foot in the cente
r, and his is the foot that moves around it. The firmness of the center foot mak
es the circle that the outer foot draws perfect: Thy firmness makes my circle jus
t, / 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 rhy
me schemes. Here, each four-line stanza is quite unadorned, with an ABAB rhyme s
cheme 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, anticipati
ng a physical separation from his beloved, he invokes the nature of that spiritu
al 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 av
oid the mourning forbidden by the poem s title.
First, the speaker says that their farewell should be as mild as the uncomplaini
ng 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, I
nter-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 comp
rises and sustains their love. But the spiritual lovers Care less, eyes, lips, an
d hands to miss, because, like the trepidation (vibration) of the spheres (the co
ncentric globes that surrounded the earth in ancient astronomy), their love is n
ot wholly physical. Also, like the trepidation of the spheres, their movement wi
ll 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 bet
ween 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 u
sed for drawing circles) is one of Donne s most famous metaphors, and it is the pe
rfect 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 Val
diction: forbidding Mourning creates a dichotomy between the common love of the e
veryday world and the uncommon love of the speaker. Here, the speaker claims tha
t to tell the laity, or the common people, of his love would be to profane its sac
red nature, and he is clearly contemptuous of the dull sublunary love of other l
overs. 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 p
ainfully 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 politic
al one but utterly opposed to it in spirit. Few in number are the emotional aris
tocrats who have access to the spiritual love of the spheres and the compass; th
roughout 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 rea
der of the poem, who is called upon to sympathize with Donne s romantic plight.

Divine Meditation 10Summary

The speaker tells Death that it should not feel proud, for though some have call
ed it mighty and dreadful, it is not. Those whom Death thinks it kills do not trul
y die, nor, the speaker says, can st thou kill me. Rest and sleep are like little co
pies of Death, and they are pleasurable; thus, the speaker reasons, Death itself
must be even more so indeed, it is the best men who go soonest to Death, to rest
their bones and enjoy the delivery of their souls. Death, the speaker claims, is
a slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, and is forced to dwell with wa
r, poison, and sickness. The speaker says that poppies and magic charms can make
men sleep as well as, or better than, Death s stroke, so why should Death swell w
ith pride? Death is merely a short sleep, after which the dead awake into eterna
l life, where Death shall no longer exist: Death itself will die.
Form
This simple sonnet follows an ABBAABBACDCDEE rhyme scheme and is written in a lo
ose iambic pentameter. In its structural division of its subject, it is a Petrar
chan sonnet rather than a Shakespearean one, with an octet establishing the poem s
tension, and the subsequent sestet resolving it.
Commentary
This rather uncomplicated poem is probably Donne s most famous and most anthologiz
ed; Death be not proud seems to be, for some reason, the most famous phrase in Don
ne. The sonnet takes the oblique reasoning and topsy-turvy symbolism of Donne s me
taphysical love poems and applies them to a religious theme, treating the person
ified figure of Death as someone not worthy of awe or terror but of contempt. Do
nne charts a line of reasoning that explores a different idea in each quatrain.
First, Death is not powerful or mighty because he does not kill those he thinks
he kills; second, the experience of being dead must be more pleasurable than res
t and sleep, which are pleasurable, pale copies of death, and the best people di
e most readily to hurry to their soul s delivery ( delivery, a childbearing pun, introd
uces the idea that the death of the body is a birth for the soul).
In the third quatrain, the speaker mocks Death s position: It is inferior to drugs
and potions, a slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men (each of which d
eals out death), and lives in the gutter with poison and sickness. In the couple
t, the speaker rounds out the idea of the poem, by saying that, if the afterlife
is eternal, then upon the moment a person dies, it is really Death that dies to
that person and not vice-versa, for that person will never again be subject to
Death. This final idea represents the classic metaphysical moment, in which an e
stablished idea is turned completely on its head by a seemingly innocuous line o
f reasoning the idea that Death could die is startling and counterintuitive but co
mpletely sensible in light of Donne s reasoning. Of course, even in the seventeent
h century the idea would not have seemed as startling as many of Donne s other met
aphysical conceits it is an idea that appears not only in Shakespeare ( And death on
ce dead, there s no more dying then ) but also in the Bible itself ( The last enemy th
at shall be destroyed is death, from I Corinthians).
John Donne
A Valediction: of Weeping, and
A Valediction: forbidding mourning
by Ian Mackean
Our two soules therefore, which are one,
Though I must goe, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate.

A 'valediction' means a parting, leave-taking, and saying goodbye. In both 'A Va

lediction: of Weeping' and 'A Valediction: forbidding mourning' Donne is taking
leave of a lover, but while having many similarities characteristic of Metaphysi
cal poetry, the two poems convey very different moods. 'A Valediction: of Weepin
g' is a passionate plea, while 'A Valediction: forbidding mourning' is a gentle
confident persuasion.
On first reading 'A Valediction: of Weeping' one is struck by the numerous refer
ences to water made by the poet: 'powre . . . tears . . . shore . . . waters . .
. dissolves . . . seas . . . weepe . . . drowne'. This immediately gives the im
pression of weeping and an outpouring of emotion, and the opening line:
Let me powre forth
tells us that the poet intends to 'pour out' his feelings.
Typically for Metaphysical poetry, the poem is written in a colloquial manner, c
apturing the tone of everyday speech. The poet is talking to his mistress expres
sing regret that he must leave her, and, again in keeping with the manner of Met
aphysical poetry, he is presenting an argument, trying to persuade her to stop c
rying by conveying ideas in the form of logical reasoning.
In presenting his arguments Donne draws analogies from many sources, particularl
y from the industry of minting coins, and the craft of cartography. He introduce
s worldly analogies, even at times mundane ones, in order to make his reasoning
seem more logical and more real.
'A Valediction: forbidding mourning' opens with an idea of death:
As virtuous men passe mildly away
This idea of death is not associated with fear, but with peaceful acceptance and
mild sadness. As in 'A Valediction: of Weeping', the meaning is presented as a
reasoned argument, but here the argument is quieter and calmer.
In contrast to the passion-filled images of water and the outpouring of emotion
in 'A Valediction: of Weeping', the main image of 'A Valediction: forbidding mou
rning' is of the stable unity and wholeness of a circle, or sphere.
No teare-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
. . . Thy firmness makes my circle just
This poem also draws upon crafts and industries for analogies, in this case the
crafts of guilding and draughtsmanship. The meaning of 'Thy firmness makes my ci
rcle just' lies in it's allusion to drawing a circle with a pair of compasses, w
here the point of the compass remains fixed while the pencil draws a circle.
The poem has an ethereal quality to it, the poet describing their love as a spir
itual uniting of souls which is above the sensuality and emotion of love between
men and women.

. . . But we by a love so much refined

. . . Dull sublunary lovers love
(whose soul is sense) . . .
. . . Our two soules, therefore, which are one
The essential idea of 'A Valediction: of Weeping' is the poet persuading his mis
tress to let him weep while they are together, for they are soon to part and thi
s causes him grief. Using the clever conceit of likening the outpouring of tears
to the minting of coins he conveys that his tears are as much a part of her as
of him, and they only have meaning because they are for her:
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they beare,
And by this mintage they are something worth
'and thy stamp they beare' suggests that just as a coin bears the stamp of a hea
d, her face is reflected in his tears.
He says that all they have together will be lost when they are parted:
so thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.
When she starts to weep with him he asks that they both stop crying because thei
r expression of emotion takes them closer to death:
Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,
Who e'r sighes most, is cruellest, and hasts the others death.
He is about to go on a voyage by ship, where he will be at the mercy of the elem
ents. He draws an analogy between her tears and the sea, and between her sighs a
nd the wind, fearing that the elements might take example from her and sink his
ship.
In 'A Valediction: forbidding mourning' he is also pleading for an unemotional p
arting, this time not because he feels the emotion is too much for him, but beca
use their love is spiritual and above the level of emotion. He argues that as th
eir love is of the spirit it can never be broken. Their souls are always united,
and that is all that is important.
Our two soules therefore, which are one,
Though I must goe, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion

In both poems the ideas the poet is trying to express are so abstract that he ne
eds extended metaphors from the worlds of practicalities in order to support the
m. In the opening stanza of 'A Valediction: of Weeping', as described above, he
compares his falling tears to coins being minted, saying that they would be wort
h nothing without her 'stamp' on them. In the second stanza he develops this ide
a by comparing his tears, and his world, with a geographer's globe. He argues th
at a globe without countries marked on it would be worthless.
On a round ball
A workman that has copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afrique, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, All.
He implies that together he and his lover become 'all', in keeping with one of t
he themes of metaphysical poetry: the 'all-sufficiency of lovers'. With her his
world is all that matters to him; it is his heaven.
Donne also refers to his tears as fruits, that is, perhaps, as the end product o
f unseen natural processes. He also refers to them as emblems, that is, as inter
pretable symbols, in this case symbols of more grief to come:
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more,
As well as saying that his heaven will be lost when they part, he makes a pictur
esque reference to the blurring of vision caused by tears in the eyes:
by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolves so.
His mistress is 'more than the moon'. In the same way the moon pulls the tides o
n Earth, so she is drawing tears from inside him.
O more than Moone,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy spheare
The first metaphor in 'A Valediction: forbidding mourning' compares the expressi
on of human emotion to the force and movement of the elements on Earth.
No teare-floods, nor sigh-tempests move
The emotions of other people are like floods and tempests, which were thought to
have repercussions in human life, but their love is above that, and portends no
evil, like the movement of heavenly bodies in space.
Moving of th'earth brings harmes and feares,
Men rekon what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheares,
Though greater farre, is innocent.
The physical love of the 'layetie' is far below their heavenly uniting of spirit
s.
Dull sublunary lovers love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence.
But we by a love, so much refin'd
. . . inter-assured of the mind.
He goes on to argue that their spirits cannot be separated but only extended, as
gold is extended when beaten into gold leaf.
Though I must goe, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate.
The couple in love, separated physically but united spiritually, are like a pair
of compasses, two separate points at on end, but joined at the other. She is li
ke the point which remains fixed, and he is like the pencil which draws a circle
. The fixed point leans in sympathy with the other when it is at a distance, and
 straightens up when they are closer.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiffe twin compasses are two
Yet when the other far doth rome
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as it comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me.
Typically of Metaphysical poetry, the poems have a similarity in style in that t
hey are both presented in the form of persuasive speech. In both the poet begins
by presenting his mistress, and us - the readers - with analogies to convey the
situation he is in. He progresses from there to state what should happen next i
n terms of the analogy and the dramatic situation, and he chooses his adjectives
and metaphors so well that his argument cannot be faulted.
Whether the arguments he is presenting relate to any real life situation or not
is beside the point. In these poems Donne is not trying to make any significant
or sincere statements, he is simply writing poetry for its own sake.
There is a significant contrast in the form of expression of the two poems, emot
ionally and in the verse form. 'A Valediction: of Weeping' expresses the idea of
great passion, and the versification is lively and varied. He regularly intermi
xes lines of five feet with lines of two, giving heightened feeling to the lines
of two, and adding vigour to the rhythm of the poem.
In 'A Valediction: forbidding mourning' the lines are all of four feet, giving t
he poem a confident peaceful rhythm. There are no urgent passions being expresse
d, more a feeling of calm serenity.
Finally, we can note that both poems adhere to a strict rhyming pattern, while a
gain the pattern of 'A Valediction: of Weeping' is lively: (ABBACCDDD), and that
of 'A Valediction: forbidding mourning' is steady: (ABAB).

The speaker of this poem is a man or a woman saying good-bye to his or her roman
tic partner. It cannot always be inferred that the speaker is John Dunne, even t
hough he is the poet; although often he is the speaker. In the first line, he as
ks his partner to allow him to "pour forth his tears" or cry before her. In sayi
ng the next line, he is using metaphor to say that his tears are like money (coi
ns) in which his lover's face, which reflects in them, is "stamped" and therefor
e her face gives his tears value, like money. "For thus they be pregnant of thee
" reinforces the fact that she is being imprinted/stamped in his tears. He expla
ins that his tears are "fruits of much grief" or results of his saddness, but al
so more in that since she is present in his tears, each time a tear falls their
relationship falls also, until it is less and less.
The next stanza shifts gears into another metaphor common in Dunne's poetry, tha
t of a map. He explains how a catographer (mapmaker) creates a replica of the en
tire world by lying continents on a ball/globe that was originally simply a ball
. Dunne goes on to apply this metaphor to his relationship saying that each of h
is tears, although small, combined with his lover's tears, are enough to overflo
w the world. In this line, Dunne uses hyperbole (exaggeration)/overstatement bec
ause this cannot actually happen. The last line of the stanza implies that "wate
rs sent from thee" or her tears, "dissolve his heaven" in that the lovers are pa
rting and therefore his heaven, which was his relationship with her, is being de
stroyed.
In the next line, Dunne mentions the moon, which pulls the current; another over
statement saying that the water produced from his lover's tears will drown him a
nd, like the moon, pull the current to drown him in as well. He asks her not to
kill him with her tears/sadness and to decline from "teaching the sea" to drown
him; another metaphor telling her not to make his leave worse by her growing sad
ness. The last line in a way threatens the lover saying, "if you kill me, becaus
e we are one and therefore breathe each other's breath, you, too, will die."
Basically, the tone of the poem is sorrowful in that neither lover wants to leav
e the other and Dunne/the speaker is trying to tell his/her lover not to make th
e good-bye more painful by crying excessively.ù

Donne: Ecstasy
The poem, The Ecstasy deals with John Donne s metaphysic love poem. Ecstasy means to t
he trans-like state the lovers have entered into. Greek word, ekstasis means going
forth
The poet and his beloved meet near a heap of earth that has swelled up like a pi
llow on the bed to enable the reclining heads of violet flowers to rest on it. T
he two lovers, each thinks of the other as the best person in the world
They were holding firmly the hands of each other. Their eyes gaze fixed into eac
h others eye. It appeared as if their eyes were strung together on a double thre
ad.
Their hands were firmly clasped together and thereby they are mingled each other
. Their eyes reflected their images and this was the only fusion of their love.
When two equally powerful enemies fight each other their fate holds the victory
in a state of balance, undecided which way to turn the scale, in the same way, t
heir souls, which had left their bodies to sublimate to a state of bliss, hung b
etween the two of them uncertain of their future.
While their souls communicated with each other in this situation, they lay quiet
and motionless like statues built over the monument of the dead. Their bodies r
emain sitting in the same positions without movement or speech through out the d
ay.
If any stranger, whose soul had been purified by a similar process had stood bes
ide their souls, and had been capable of understanding the language of the souls
his purified mind would have forgotten the existence of the body and enlightene
d and sharpened the faculties of his mind, such a soul may not have understood t
he conversation of their souls because both their souls meant and spoke the same
thing, but that soul might have undergone a fresh process of purification and f
elt more refined than before.
Their souls have reached a state of ecstasy which revealed to them what they did
not know earlier. They realized that love was not sex-experience. They discover
ed the first time that love really is a matter of the soul and not of the body.
Souls are made of various elements of which they have no knowledge. It is love w
hich brings together two souls and makes them one, though, in reality, the two h
ave separate existence.
When a violet plant is transplanted (removed from one place and replanted in a b
etter soil) it shows a marked improvement in its color, size and strength, After
transplantation it almost doubles itself and also grows more rapidly.
In a similar manner when love brings two souls together it imparts to them a gre
at zeal and life. The stronger (or noble soul) supplements (or removes) the defi
ciencies of the lesser soul, Love also removes the feeling of loneliness felt by
single souls.
As a result of the union of two souls, so to say, a new soul comes into being. T
his new soul knows of what elements the two souls are composed. It makes us real
ize that the substances of which they are made are not subject to any change.
They have so far and so long ignored their bodies, The bodies are their, but the
y are distinct from the bodies. They are souls; they are of spiritual substance;
they are like heavenly planet while their bodies are the spheres in which they
move.
They are thankful to their bodies, because they brought them together in the fir
st instance. Their bodies surrendered their sense in order to enable their love
to be spiritual. Their bodies are not impure matter. But they are like an alloy
(an alloy when mixed with gold makes it tougher and brighter). The body is usefu
l agent for holy love.
The influence of heavenly bodies on man comes through the air. So when a soul wi
shes to love another soul, it can contact it through the medium of the body. Hen
ce a union of souls may need the contact of bodies as the first step.
Just as the blood which is an important constituent of their bodies labors to pr
oduce the essence (the semen) which helps in uniting two bodies, in the same way
a spiritual love produces a kind of ecstasy which binds the two souls together.
This subtle knot of love may not be fully understood.
Just as blood produces elements which bring about the union of sense and soul wh
ich constitute a man, in the same way the lover s soul leaves some linking element
s like the sense and the bodily faculties to express their love. The sense and f
aculty of the body come to the aid of the soul, which is like a prisoner. Just a
s a prince who is imprisoned cannot gain freedom unless somebody comes to his ai
d, in the same way the sense of the body go to the aid of the lover s soul and sec
ure freedom for it.
They must now turn to their bodies so that weak men may have a test of high love
. Love sublimates the soul but it is through the medium of the body that love is
first experienced. The body is an important as the soul in the matter of love.
If some lover like them has heard this discourse (made by two souls with one exp
erience) let him look carefully at them. After their pure love when they go back
to their bodies he will find no change in them because they will not revert to
physical sex again.

Donne s PoetryJohn Donne

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Hymn to God, my God, in my Sickness Divine Meditation 14Summary
The speaker asks the three-personed God to batter his heart, for as yet God only kno
cks politely, breathes, shines, and seeks to mend. The speaker says that to rise
and stand, he needs God to overthrow him and bend his force to break, blow, and
burn him, and to make him new. Like a town that has been captured by the enemy,
which seeks unsuccessfully to admit the army of its allies and friends, the spe
aker works to admit God into his heart, but Reason, like God s viceroy, has been c
aptured by the enemy and proves weak or untrue. Yet the speaker says that he loves
God dearly and wants to be loved in return, but he is like a maiden who is betr
othed to God s enemy. The speaker asks God to divorce, untie, or break that knot ag
ain, to take him prisoner; for until he is God s prisoner, he says, he will never b
e free, and he will never be chaste until God ravishes him.
Form
This simple sonnet follows an ABBAABBACDDCEE rhyme scheme and is written in a lo
ose iambic pentameter. In its structural division, it is a Petrarchan sonnet rat
her than a Shakespearean one, with an octet followed by a sestet.
Commentary
This poem is an appeal to God, pleading with Him not for mercy or clemency or be
nevolent aid but for a violent, almost brutal overmastering; thus, it implores G
od to perform actions that would usually be considered extremely sinful from batte
ring the speaker to actually raping him, which, he says in the final line, is th
e only way he will ever be chaste. The poem s metaphors (the speaker s heart as a ca
ptured town, the speaker as a maiden betrothed to God s enemy) work with its extra
ordinary series of violent and powerful verbs (batter, o erthrow, bend, break, blo
w, burn, divorce, untie, break, take, imprison, enthrall, ravish) to create the
image of God as an overwhelming, violent conqueror. The bizarre nature of the sp
eaker s plea finds its apotheosis in the paradoxical final couplet, in which the s
peaker claims that only if God takes him prisoner can he be free, and only if Go
d ravishes him can he be chaste.
As is amply illustrated by the contrast between Donne s religious lyrics and his m
etaphysical love poems, Donne is a poet deeply divided between religious spiritu
ality and a kind of carnal lust for life. Many of his best poems, including Batte
r my heart, three-personed God, mix the discourse of the spiritual and the physic
al or of the holy and the secular. In this case, the speaker achieves that mix b
y claiming that he can only overcome sin and achieve spiritual purity if he is f
orced by God in the most physical, violent, and carnal terms imaginable.

John Donne : The Sunne Rising

Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windowes, and through curtaines call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?
Sawcy pedantique wretch, goe chide
Late school boyes, and sowre prentices,
Goe tell Court-huntsmen, that the King will
ride,
Call countrey ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knowes, nor clyme,
Nor houres, dayes, moneths, which are the rags of
time.
Thy beames, so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou thinke?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a winke,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Looke, and to morrow late, tell mee,
Whether both the India s of spice and Myne1
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with mee.
Aske for those Kings whom thou saw st yesterday,
And thou shalt heare, All here in one bed lay.
She is all States, and all Princes, I,
Nothing else is.
Princes doe but play us; compar d to this,
All honor s mimique; All wealth alchimie.
Thou sunne art halfe as happy as wee,
In that the worlds s contracted thus;
Thine age askes ease, and since thy duties bee
To warme the world, that s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.

John Donne (1572-1631) P. 1633

FOOTNOTES
1 India (spices) and the West Indies (mines, i.e. gold)
John Donne : A Valediction of Weeping
Let me powre forth
My teares before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coines them, and thy stampe they beare,
And by this Mintage they are something worth,
For thus they bee
Pregnant of thee;
Fruits of much griefe they are, emblemes of more,
When a teare falls, that thou falst1 which it bore,
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers2
shore.
On a round ball
A workeman that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afrique, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, All,
So doth each teare,
Which thee doth weare,
A globe, yea world by that impression grow,
Till thy teares mixt with mine doe overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven
dissolved so.
O more then Moone,
Draw not up seas to drowne me in thy spheare,
Weepe me not dead, in thine armes, but forbeare
To teach the sea, what it may doe too soone;
Let not the winde
Example finde,
To doe me more harme, then it purposeth;
Since thou and I sigh one anothers breath,
Who e er sighes most, is cruellest, and hasts the others
death.

John Donne (1572-1631) P. 1633

FOOTNOTES
1falls ; 2diverse

John Donne : A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men passe mildly away,
And whisper to their soules, to goe,
Whilst some of their sad friends doe say,
The breath goes now, and some say, no:
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No teare-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
T were prophanation of our joyes
To tell the layetie our love.
Moving of th earth1 brings harmes and feares,
Men reckon what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheares2,
Though greater farre, is innocent.
Dull sublunary3 lovers love
 (Whose soule is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love, so much refin d,
That our selves to know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care lesse, eyes, lips, and hands to misse.
Our two soules therefore, which are one,
Though I must goe, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiffe twin compasses4 are two,
Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other doe.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet, when the other far doth rome,
It leanes, and hearkens after it,
And growes erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to mee, who must
Like th other foot, obliquely runne;
Thy firmnes makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begunne.

John Donne (1572-1631) P. 1633

FOOTNOTES
1 earthquakes ; 2 the heavenly planets ; 3 beneath the moon, i.e. on the earth ;
4 as in a compass with two feet for drawing circles

WITCHCRAFT BY A PICTURE.
by John Donne

I FIX mine eye on thine, and there

Pity my picture burning in thine eye ;
My picture drown'd in a transparent tear,
When I look lower I espy ;
Hadst thou the wicked skill
By pictures made and marr'd, to kill,
How many ways mightst thou perform thy will?
But now I've drunk thy sweet salt tears,
And though thou pour more, I'll depart ;
My picture vanished, vanish all fears
That I can be endamaged by that art ;
Though thou retain of me
One picture more, yet that will be,
Being in thine own heart, from all malice free.
John Donne
14. The Extasie
WHERE, like a pillow on a bed,
A Pregnant banke swel'd up, to rest
The violets reclining head,
Sat we two, one anothers best.
Our hands were firmely cimented 5
With a fast balme, which thence did spring,
Our eye-beames twisted, and did thred
Our eyes, upon one double string;
So to'entergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the meanes to make us one, 10
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As 'twixt two equall Armies, Fate
Suspends uncertaine victorie,
Our soules, (which to advance their state, 15
Were gone out,) hung 'twixt her, and mee.
And whil'st our soules negotiate there,
Wee like sepulchrall statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And wee said nothing, all the day. 20
If any, so by love refin'd,
That he soules language understood,
And by good love were growen all minde,
Within convenient distance stood,
He (though he knew not which soule spake, 25
Because both meant, both spake the same)
Might thence a new concoction take,
And part farre purer then he came.
This Extasie doth unperplex
(We said) and tell us what we love, 30
Wee see by this, it was not sexe,
Wee see, we saw not what did move:
But as all severall soules containe
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love, these mixt soules, doth mixe againe, 35
And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size,
(All which before was poore, and scant,)
Redoubles still, and multiplies. 40
When love, with one another so
Interinanimates two soules,
That abler soule, which thence doth flow,
Defects of lonelinesse controules.
Wee then, who are this new soule, know, 45
Of what we are compos'd, and made,
For, th'Atomies of which we grow,
Are soules, whom no change can invade.
But O alas, so long, so farre
Our bodies why doe wee forbeare? 50
They are ours, though they are not wee, Wee are
The intelligences, they the spheare.
We owe them thankes, because they thus,
Did us, to us, at first convay,
Yeelded their forces, sense, to us, 55
Nor are drosse to us, but allay.
On man heavens influence workes not so,
But that it first imprints the ayre,
Soe soule into the soule may flow,
Though it to body first repaire. 60
As our blood labours to beget
Spirits, as like soules as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtile knot, which makes us man:
So must pure lovers soules descend 65
T'affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great Prince in prison lies.
To'our bodies turne wee then, that so
Weake men on love reveal'd may looke; 70
Loves mysteries in soules doe grow,
But yet the body is his booke.
And if some lover, such as wee,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still marke us, he shall see 75
Small change, when we'are to bodies gone.

John Donne

HOLY SONNETS.
V.

I am a little world made cunningly

Of elements, and an angelic sprite ;
But black sin hath betray'd to endless night
My world's both parts, and, O, both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new land can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it if it must be drown'd no more.
But O, it must be burnt ; alas ! the fire
Of lust and envy burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler ; let their flames retire,
And burn me, O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of Thee and Thy house, which doth in eating heal.

John Donne

HOLY SONNETS.
X.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so ;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more ; Death, thou shalt die.

John Donne

HOLY SONNETS.
XIII.

What if this present were the world's last night ?

Mark in my heart, O soul, where thou dost dwell,
The picture of Christ crucified, and tell
Whether His countenance can thee affright.
Tears in His eyes quench the amazing light ;
Blood fills his frowns, which from His pierced head fell ;
And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell,
Which pray'd forgiveness for His foes' fierce spite ?
No, no ; but as in my idolatry
I said to all my profane mistresses,
Beauty of pity, foulness only is
A sign of rigour ; so I say to thee,
To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assign'd ;
This beauteous form assures a piteous mind.

John Donne

HOLY SONNETS.
XIV.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you

As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.