![]() ![]() The sexuality and passion that dominates his earlier poetry is matched in later work the passion however is no longer directed towards pursuing carnal fulfillment, and instead, moves towards divine fulfillment. This rather striking quotation represents the shift in Donne’s perception of himself his desire to be forgiven for his sins extends to wanting divinity to take full possession of him. “But I am betrothed unto Your enemy /Divorce me, untie me, or break that know again, Take me to You, imprison me, for I,/Except You enthrall me, never shall be free,/Nor ever chaste, except You ravish me.” Many of his later poems also focus on redemption, especially for the sins of his youth. The responsibilities of fatherhood to no less than twelve children, and his bereavement, led him to write poems rooted in mortality, and feelings towards God himself. Donne however abandoned Catholicism in favour of Protestantism in the early seventeenth century, and was ordained as an Anglican minister in 1615.ĭonne became much more contemplative after the death of his wife, Anne More, during childbirth, in 1617. ![]() The poem is playful, and most certainly defied the education he received as a child, growing up as a devout Catholic. As the above quotation states, Donne explicitly alludes to the pleasures of sensuality, and of female company. If there was ever such a thing as the Elizabethan striptease, then this was it the poem describes his mistress getting ready for bed, and undressing completely. “To teach thee, I am naked first why then,/What need’st thou have more covering than a man?” An example of the seductive poetry is “Elegy: To His Mistress Going to Bed”. However in the Elizabethan period, these boundaries formed the basis of social propriety, and to Donne in the earlier part of his life, were something to be rejected, in favour of sensuality. My favourite poems tend to be the secular ones they are playful, and imaginative, and continually toy with boundaries that no longer exist to the modern world. The former was written during Donne’s youth, when the man was an excellent example of Elizabethan sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. John Donne’s poetry is divided into two distinct categories: the secular, and the divine the latter was written in the later part of his life, during his time as a protestant minister. The poems are to some extent, simple representations of a world of love and sex, and of faith. John Donne represents an age in poetry before anxiety, and before modernity began to swallow up literature as a whole. I studied the man for A Level, and whilst at the time, I resented him somewhat, because he reminded me of a long and stressful examination that was coming up, I realised today, that I had rather missed his company. Sweet, there is nothing left to say But this, that love is never lost, Keen winter stabs the breasts of May Whose crimson roses burst his frost, Ships tempest-tossed Will find a harbor in some bay, And so we may.Īnd there is nothing left to do But to kiss once again, and part, Nay, there is nothing we should rue, I have my beauty,-you your Art, Nay, do not start, One world was not enough for two Like me and you.The other day, I received books from home that I’d forgotten about in particular, John Donne’s collection of selected poems. Look upward where the white gull screams, What does it see that we do not see? Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams On some outward voyaging argosy,- Ah! can it be We have lived our lives in a land of dreams! How sad it seems. ![]() ![]() Look upward where the poplar trees Sway in the summer air, Here n the valley never a breeze Scatters the thistledown, but there Great winds blow fair From the mighty murmuring mystical seas, And the wave-lashed leas. Swore that two lives should be like one As long as the sea-gull loved the sea, As long as the sunflower sought the sun,- It shall be, I said, for eternity ‘Twixt you and me! Dear friend, those times are over and done. Now in a lily-cup, and now Setting a jacinth bell a-swing, In his wandering Sit closer love: it was here I trow I made that vow, The wild bee reels from bough to bough With his furry coat and his gauzy wing. ![]()
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