A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning: Summary

Lines 1-6 Summary

Lines 1-4: The beginning of the poem causes some readers difficulty because the
first two stanzas consist of a metaphysical conceit, but we do not know that until
the second stanza. We should not read the word "as," which begins the poem, to
mean "while," although that might be our instinct. Instead, "as" here means "in the
way that"; it introduces an extended simile comparing the death of virtuous men to
the separation of the two lovers. This first stanza describes how virtuous men die.
Because they have led good lives, death does not terrify them, and so they die
"mildly," even encouraging their souls to depart their bodies. In fact their death is
so quiet that their friends gathered around the deathbed disagree on whether they
are still alive and breathing.
Lines 5-6: The speaker now reveals that he is addressing his love, from whom he
must separate. The poem itself will prove to be the "Valediction"the farewellof
the title. He also reveals that he has been using a simile, and that the lovers'
separation should resemble the quiet way virtuous men die. This example of
metaphysical conceit might seem a bizarre comparison to makedying men with
the separation of loversbut A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning: Text of the Poem
3the key comparison is the quietness of the two events. He might also be
suggesting that their separation, though only temporary, will be like a small death
to him. Still, he asks his love that they part quietly and "melt" instead of split: the
image of melting together suggests they might still be connected in liquified form,
an idea the poem returns to later. He also asks her not to indulge in the
overdramatic and clichd anguish of conventional separating lovers.
Lines 7-12 Summary
Lines 7-8: These lines suggest why he wants a quiet separation: the joys the two of
them share, both spiritual and sexual, are holy to him. To complain loudly with tears
or sighs would be to broadcast their love to those he calls the "laity." Through this
metaphor, he suggests that ordinary people resemble "laypeople" who do not
understand the holiness and mystery of their love. The speaker thus implies that the
two of them are like priests in a "religion of love." Therefore, for her to make loud
protests about his departure would be to "profane" the joy of their holy union by
revealing it to the uninitiated and unworthy. The wish to be let alone, to be able to
love privately, is especially characteristic of Donne. Several other of his poems
similarly cover privacy, such as "The Canonization" and "The Sun Rising." This
celebration of the private world of two lovers contrasts strongly with the
conventions of Renaissance love poetry, in which the lover wishes to broadcast his
love to the world.
Lines 9-12: This stanza contrasts dramatic upheavals on earth with those in heaven.
Earthquakes cause great destruction and create great wonder and confusion among

human beings. In contrast, "trepidation of the spheres," a trembling or vibration of

the whole universe, is far more significant in its scope, but also"innocent"we
cannot see or feel it because it is a heavenly event. Donne here uses the oldfashioned Ptolemaic model of the cosmos, in which each planet, the sun, the fixed
stars, and a primum mobile, or "prime mover," occupied a crystalline sphere
surrounding the earth, at the center. The contrast between heavenly and earthly
vibrations anticipates a contrast to be developed in lines 13-20, between earthly
lovers directed by sex and lovers who, like them, depend on their spiritual union.
Line 11: In ancient and medieval astronomy, trepidation of the spheres referred to
the vibration of the outermost sphere of the Ptolemaic universe, causing each
sphere within to move accordingly.
Lines 13-16: The speaker moves from his contrast of earthly with heavenly events
to a contrast of earthly love with the experience he and his lover share. In this
stanza he develops why earthly lovers cannot endure separation from each other.
The "soul" or essence of such ordinary, "sublunary" lovers is "sense": that is, their
love is based on the five senses and so consists of sexual attraction. Therefore,
when such lovers separate, they remove from each other the very basis of their
love, which changes and fades like the moon.
Lines 17-20: The speaker continues to reassure his love by developing the qualities
that make the love they share capable of enduring a separation. In contrast with
sublunary lovers, their love is not based solely on sensual gratification. In fact, it is a
love so pure that even they themselves cannot define it. But because they feel
confident in each's feelings for the other, their physical separationthe absence of
eyes, lips, and handscauses them less anxiety.
Lines 21-24: The speaker begins drawing conclusions about the relationship
between his soul and his love's.
The "therefore" sounds like the conclusion of a logical argument, and he has in fact
been attempting to
Lines 1-6 Summary 4persuade his love not to mourn during his absence. Because
they are "inter-assured of the mind," he suggests their closeness by saying their two
souls actually have combined to form one soul. When he leaves on his journey, that
one soul will not tear in two; instead, it is flexible enough that it will actually
expand. He uses gold as a simile to clarify this expansion. Although the
preciousness of gold suggests the preciousness of their love, the key property of
gold here is its malleability. Gold can be made to expand greatly because it can be
hammered into an extraordinarily thin, "airy" sheet. Donne therefore uses a simile
that works emotionally, since gold is valuable, but also scientifically, since the
malleability of gold corresponds to the flexibility and expansiveness of their love.
Their love will not snap but expand, keeping them bound together during their
separation.

Lines 25-28: The speaker now admits that he and his love may have two separate
souls rather than one. He then develops the connectedness of their two souls in one
of Donne's most famous and most ingenious metaphysical conceits, an extended
simile in which the speaker compares the lovers' two souls to the feet of a drafting
compass. He compares her soul to the compass' "fixed foot" and his to the other
foot. Like the compass, their two souls are joined at the top, reminding us that their
love is a spiritual union "interassured of the mind."
Lines 29-32: The speaker now develops the compass conceit. Although his love's
soul is the fixed foot and his soul will roam in his travels, her soul will continually
incline faithfully towards him, since their two souls are joined, and will return to its
proper, upright position when his foot of the compass returns home to her. At this
point in the poem, Donne engages in a number of puns that suggest the
completeness of the love of these two people. Although the speaker has been
emphasizing the spiritual purity of their love, his assertion that the compass "grows
erect" reminds us that their union is important and satisfying to them sexually as
well as spiritually. Line 26, with its earlier description of the "stiff twin compasses,"
may also hint at the man's erection. The speaker may be indulging in further
punning by describing how the compass, when closing, "comes home," a common
expression for "reaching the target," which might suggest sexual intercourse.
Lines 33-36 Summary
Lines 33-36: The speaker concludes the conceitand the poemby reasserting that
his love's fidelity and spiritual firmness will allow him to carry out his journey and
return home happily. His running "obliquely" literally describes the angle of the open
compass and also suggests the indirect, circuitous route of his journeys. In this final
stanza, Donne may have included additional sexual puns to underscore the happy
future reunion of the lovers. In the spiritual terms of the compass conceit her
firmness enables him to complete his circle, or journey; in sexual terms, his firmness
would make her circle just. And in making the speaker "end where I begun," Donne
may be suggesting that the speaker will finish his journey by returning to her womb
as her lover, just as he originally began his life by leaving his mother's womb. The
possibility of Donne's having included these sexual puns shows the richness of his
language and the muliplicity of meanings available to readers of his work. It also
suggests a vision of human love as healthily integrating both the spiritual and
sexual aspects of our nature.

POEM: 3
Holly Sonnets: Batter my Heart, Three person
God
My paraphrase:
1.
Break down the barriers to ruling my heart completely, God, because

2.

so far you have only politely knocked, gently breathed, lightly shined,
and patiently sought to fix me.
3.
But if I am ever to be a mature disciple, You will have to completely
overpower me. You will have to turn
4.
Your mighty power not just to knock, but to break down the door; not
just to breathe but to blow mightily; not just to shine a light, but to burn
with fire; and not just to fix me, but to make me brand new.
5.
I am like a town being ruled unjustly by someone elses authority and
owing whatever I have to someone else.
6.
I try to open the gate to my city and let you in, but I cannot overcome
the wrongful authority and so nothing changes. I continue to be ruled by
something other than You.
7.
My mind and the truth ought to be able to keep me safe from error,
8.
But even they are prisoners of my failed condition. So reason itself
falters or even fails, and I am still sins prisoner.
9.
Still, my deepest love is committed to You, and I would gladly be
completely consumed by Your love.
10. But my most abiding obligation is to the one I want to escape, your
enemy.
11. Break off my relationship with the deceiver. Either patiently untangle
me from him, or just cleanly cut the knot in one stroke, as you did when
you first drew me to You.
12. Then, take me with You. Make me Your prisoner. Because
13. Unless you dounless you mesmerize meI will never be free from this
enemy, from sin. Only in Your prison will I be free.
14. I am desperate because I realize I will not be clean and innocent unless
you violate my freedom and force me to be Yours.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Our bet is that these are the trickiest lines in the poem for you. Us too.
They're weird, but it helps to put them into simple English: "Reason,
my local ruler who works for you, should be defending me, but he was
captured, and revealed himself to be weak or unfaithful."

We assume that the "you" to whom Reason is supposed to report is

God.

The whole idea guiding these lines is that God gave us reason
(rationality) to defend ourselves from evil, but now the speaker's
reason seems to have turned on God (or is just incapable of warding off
evil), so the speaker is having trouble showing his faith in God.

As we discuss in the "Speaker" section, the sense of entitlement is

interesting. Check out the back-to-back "me's" and the "should" in
"Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend." It's all about the
speaker's self-interest, and he sounds like a spoiled little kid: "Me! Me!
You should defend me!"

And, if we zoom out a bit, why on earth is he treating his ability to

reason as if it were a real person? The answer may be: so that he can
pass the buck(strive with determination) and blame this other person
(who's really God's responsibility, according to the speaker).

If you think about it, the speaker actually blames God, through his
representative (Reason) for the speaker turning over to the enemy's
side.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

When you get to line 9 of a sonnet, you know that you have to do a little
extra work, since the ninth line of a sonnet traditionally marks the "turn" in
the poem.

To be honest, though, this line doesn't make for much of a turn at all, mainly
furthers the development of the speaker's desired relationship with God.

He hints at no solution, but the line does mark a shift in tone. The speaker
seems to be a bit more candid and personal here, and he abandons some of
the similes and metaphors that he uses before. "Yet dearly I love you" is the
most straightforward line we've had so far.

"And would be loved fain (in willing manner)," though, is a continuation of the
kind of self-centeredness we see in lines 7-8. He's saying "I'd be happy to be
loved," just like you'd tell a friend "I'd be happy to help" he makes it sound
a little like he's doing God a favor.

What's more, the speaker quickly drops the straight-talk, and goes back into
another metaphor: he says he's "betroth'd," or engaged to marry, the
"enemy."

This word "enemy" is troublesome, because we don't know who it is. There's
no one right answer here, but our speaker may be referring to Satan.

The question is, why did the speaker choose the metaphor of a wedding
engagement? Why didn't he just say, "I'm under the Devil's control, so help
free me?"

Perhaps an engagement implies that the speaker is cool with the whole thing
and isn't forced into this relationship with the enemy. Unlike in lines 5-8,
where the speaker blamed Reason for losing touch with God, here he seems
to suggest that it is actually kind of his fault, since he agrees to an
engagement with the "enemy."

Lines 11-12
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Line 11 continues the train of thought in line 10, asking God to help him get
out of this close engagement with the enemy. He wants God to help him
break the wedding "knot" he tied when he was "betroth'd," and take him
away from the enemy.

What's absolutely key here is the word "again" does it mean this isn't the
first time the speaker needed to ask God for help in getting away from the
Devil?

All of a sudden, we learn that these pleas to God may be a frequent

occurrence. This can have a major impact on our understanding of the poem.
The speaker begins to look less like a poor guy who's all-of-a-sudden blurting
out his love for God the only way he knows how.

But, instead of thinking that the speaker has wanted a wedding knot broken
before, we might read "again" as referring to another time when God had to
break a knot. (As if the speaker were saying, "Sorry, God, you have to go
through that whole knot-breaking thing again.")

In line 12 (and on into line 13), the speaker seems to bring back the castle
siege metaphor one last time with "imprison," and rekindles the earlier
debate about who had captured (or imprisoned) the town in the first place.

Here, again, the speaker refuses to make things clear, first asking God to
imprison him, but only so that he can be free. This all goes back to the
Christian idea that a human must to suffer in order to get to Heaven, and
reminds us again that violence and aggressive behavior aren't necessarily
bad things in this poem, so long as God is in the drivers seat.

Lines 13-14
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

These last two lines make it clear that the speaker loves those paradoxes
(statement that contradicts itself) and double meanings that we struggle with
all along. Both lines take the form of "If you don't ______, I can't be ______,"
but the speaker fills in that first blank with double extenders (words or
phrases with two possible meanings).

The first can be read as "If you don't excite me, I can't be free." If we read it
that way, it's possible that "excite" has sexual connotations (idea that is
implied), and this makes sense in light of the following line.

"If you don't enslave me, I can't be free." Back in the day, "enthrall" would
also mean "enslave," so we should be aware of that possibility.

As we see it, it seems that the speaker wants better access to God, and
having been unsuccessful in the past, demands that God reveal himself
forcefully and powerfully.

In other words, the only way the speaker and his stubborn "reason" will be
convinced of God's power is to see an epic example of it. What's more, the
speaker desperately wants to be convinced, so he can be saved.

Still, it's hard to make the last line fit, mainly because you can't
really becomechaste. Either the speaker is and always has been chaste, in
which case he wouldn't have to worry about it, or he's had sex but now wants
to abstain.

In the end, then, we might come to the conclusion that talking about God in
human terms and metaphors actually doesn't make sense. The kinds of
rewards and interactions that God can provide simply can't be described
properly in human language, and that's why the speaker gets so caught up in
paradox and mixed metaphors.

Poem: Holy Sonnets: Death be not proud

Lines 1-2
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;

Death has got a real attitude problem.

He thinks hes the biggest, baddest, meanest dude in town.

Hes "proud," arrogant, and thinks he can boss people around.

When he walks down the street, people avert (turn away) their eyes
and leap into alleyways (narrow streets with walls on both sides) to
escape him.

Everybody treats him like a king of the Underworld. They think that
he has the power ("might") to do terrible ("dreadful") things.

(And, by the way, were going to refer to Death as "he" because Donne
talks to death as if it is a person think of the hooded guy who carries
around a sickle (edge tool for cutting). Also, when poets address a
person or thing that isnt there or cant respond, its called an
"apostrophe."

But, the speaker isnt afraid.

He walks right up to Death and gives him a piece of his mind, just like
your mother told you to do with grade-school bullies.

Its downright gutsy for the speaker to be telling this guy who
frightens everyone what to do.

The speaker orders Death not to be proud, and then says that people
are mistaken in treating Death as some fearsome being.

Now, lets go off on a tangent for a second.

Now, we think its perfectly cool for modern editors to change the
punctuation to make it clearer that Donne addresses Death like a
person.

For one thing, in the modern version, we lose the possibility that the
speaker could describe Death, as well as address it.

That is, you could read "Death be not proud" to mean "Death is not
proud," which means Death isnt trying to be a tough guy, after all.

Lines 3-4
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

Death thinks that he has the power to kill people, but he actually
doesnt.

Donne uses the word "overthrow" instead of "kill" in line 3 an

interesting choice, because people usually use the word in the context
of "overthrowing" a ruler and taking control of his territory.

Notice how theres a nice dramatic pause created by the line break
between "overthrow" and "die," as if the speaker lets Death savor the
idea of killing people just before pulling the rug out from under him.

To make things more humiliating, the speaker starts to show his pity by
addressing "poor Death," as if Death just had his dreams crushed, and
now needs some cheering up.

But, hold on: it seems totally ridiculous to say that Death doesnt kill
people.

Thats what makes Death Death! What gives?

Donne uses the idea of Christian eternity to argue that death is

something that people pass through on their way to a new, eternal life.

A good Christian must experience death the end of life on earth but,
in the long run, he or she cant be "killed."

Lines 5-6
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

He compares death to "rest" and "sleep," two things that give us

"pleasure."

Therefore, death should give us pleasure, too, when we finally meet it.

He claims that rest and sleep are only "pictures" of death.

The difference these two things and death is like the difference
between a painting of an object and the real thing.

They are watered-down versions of death, so if they give us some

pleasure, then death will give "much more."

The pleasure of death will "flow like water or honey.

The comparison of death to sleep or eternal rest is a classic metaphor

in Christian writings one that goes back a long time.

The philosopher St. Augustine, for example, writes that he wont know
what rest is really like, until he rests with God in Heaven.

It is a way for people to talk themselves out of their fear of dying

compare it to an experience that they enjoy.

Kind of like how you might persuade someone to go skydiving by

comparing it to a super-fun rollercoaster ride.

Lines 7-8
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Billy Joel had it right, man: only the good die young.

The "best men [] soonest" follow this dude Death into the afterlife,
thinking that he will give the "rest of their bones," and free or "deliver"
their Christian souls from all the pain of earthly life.

(Note that "deliver" can also refer to childbirth, which adds to the whole
"new life" idea.)

They are the hardest-working and bravest people in society, so they get
to kick their feet back and enjoy eternal rest before everyone else.

(We think that, if Donne lived today, he would include women in this
group, as well.)

The speaker almost certainly refers to people like soldiers and martyrs,
who sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

After all, not that many soldiers are really thrilled to go off to war, and few
people go to war intending to die otherwise they wouldnt be very good
soldiers.

Donne makes it sound like the best men volunteer for death, when, in
most cases, they only volunteer to risk death in order to achieve
something else.

It is worth keeping in mind how downright sneaky this poem can be.

It almost makes you want to run out and take on one of the "Worlds Most
Dangerous Jobs."

Lines 9-10
Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

In Petrarchan sonnets like this, its standard for the poem to shift or "turn" at line 9.

This shift can be slight, or it can be a total U-turn.

We think this sonnet has more of a slight turn.

The speaker raises his intensity in these lines, and becomes more hostile towards Death, calling
him names and taunting him as a slave.

With the metaphor of the slave, the speaker suggests that Death doesnt act on his own free will,
and instead is controlled or manipulated by other things like "fate, chance, kings, and desperate
men."

Lets take these one by one.

Like Death, Fate is often treated as a person in literature.

Fate is thought to control everything that happens to people, including when they will die.

So, Death doesnt decide when people will die; he just carries out orders from Fate.

"Chance" is kind of the opposite of fate, so, again, its sneaky of Donne to put them side-by-side.

"Chance" is luck, the idea that things can happen for no particular rhyme or reason.

If you die when a meteor crashes through your house in the middle of the night, thats sheer bad
luck, and theres nothing you can do about it.

"Kings" are different from fate and chance because they are real people, but they have a similar
kind of control over when and how people die.

A king can send soldiers to die in battle or sentence people to execution.

"Desperate men," we think, refers to people who commit suicide or do stupid and reckless stuff,
which might as well be suicide.

If you decide to take your own life, it pretty much robs Death of the only card he has to play.

In line 10, the speaker brings another accusation against Death, claiming that he hangs out, or
"dwells," with those notorious thugs, "poison, war, and sickness."

In other words, Deaths friends are total losers.

It might be obvious by now, but well repeat it anyway: Donne treats these three things like
people.

What do poison, war, and sickness have in common?

Easy: they all kill lots and lots of people.

Moreover, they are all generally considered bad or painful ways to die.

Lines 11-12
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

In lines 5-6, the speaker argues that death will be just like sleep,
except even better.

But, now, hes all, "Who needs Death anyway? If I want to sleep really
well, I can just use drugs and magic charms!"

This seems to conflict with the idea that Death is supposed to be way
more pleasurable than sleep, but who cares?

The speakers on a roll, and doesnt have time to think about whether
his arguments make perfect sense.

When youre trying to insult someone, its more important to be clever

and think on your feet.

The "poppy" is a flower used to make opium, an old-fashioned drug

that makes people really happy, but also turns their skin yellow.

In fact, drugs and magic charms work even "better" than Death at
bringing on sleep.

(Were like: and you know this how?)

And, "stroke" is another interesting word.

It could refer to "stroking" someone, like one might stroke a childs

head to put him to sleep.

Or, it could refer to the "stroke" of a sword, which is obviously much

more violent.

Or, it could imply the "stroke" of a clock at the exact moment of death.

Totally demolishing Deaths claim to be the ultimate sleep aid, the

speaker puts Death in his place, telling him not to "swell" with pride.

This rhetorical question culminates (reach to highest point) the poems

entire argument up to this point.

Lines 13-14
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Donne, and the Metaphysical Poets in general, are masters of the

surprise ending, and this one is no exception.

First, he returns to the idea of death as "sleep," which gets a bit more
complicated here because he gives a time-frame: its a "short sleep."

In traditional Christian theology, it is thought that, when people died, it

is like they are asleep until the end of the world or Judgment Day.

At this point, Jesus wakes everyone up to lead them to Heaven, where

they will spend eternity.

Therefore, when the Apocalypse happens and the world ends, there
isnt any more death. All good Christians will have eternal life in
Heaven.

The poems final words seal the deal: "Death, thou shalt die."

If this is an action movie, this is be the witty line the hero says right
before wasting the villain, like Arnold Schwarzeneggers "Hasta la vista,
baby," in Terminator 2.

And, by the way, it also makes no sense on a literal level.

Assuming Death does not kill himself, whos going to kill him other
than, um, Death?

Clearly, the final "die" just means that he wont exist anymore.

Its a classic Metaphysical Poet move to end a poem on a line that

seems to contradict itself.

But, he sure got the better of that chump, Death.

John Donne as a Meta-physical Poet

In brief the term Metaphysical Poetry implies the characteristics of complexity, intellectual tone,
abundance of subtle wit, fusion of intellect and emotion, colloquial argumentative tone, conceits (always
witty and fantastic), scholarly allusions, dramatic tone, and philosophic or reflective element.
Fondness For Conceits
This is the major characteristic of metaphysical poetry. Donne often employs fantastic comparisons. The
most famous and striking one is the comparison of the lovers to a pair of compasses in A Valediction:
Forbidding Mourning. A clever, though obvious conceit is employed in The Fleawhere the insect is
called the marriage-bed and the marriage-temple of the lovers because it has bitten them and sucked their
blood.
Wit, Striking And Subtle
No doubt, the conceits especially display a formidable wit. So do the various allusions and images
relating to practically all areas of nature, art and learning. Allusions to medicine, cosmology, ancient
myth, contemporary discoveries, history, and art abound in Donnes poetry. In The Legacy the lover is
his own executor and legacy. Such paradoxical statements are to be found in several other poems.
In Death be not Proud, he says Death thou shalt die.Such is the display of Donnes wit.
Combination Of Passion And Thoughts
Combination of passions and thoughts is another form of wit. There is in Donnes poetry an intellectual
analysis of emotions. Every lyric arises out of some emotional situation, but the emotion is not merely
expressed; it is analyzed. A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning proves that lovers need not mourn at
parting. The Canonization establishes that lovers are saints of love.

Argumentation And Reasoning

Argumentation and reasoning balance the passion in Donnes poems. No one can deny the passion inThe
Sun Rising, but there is also a plenty of argumentation to prove that the sun has no power over the lovers,
as love knows no season or clime.
Colloquial Speech
Donnes colloquial style is especially apparent in the abrupt, conversational opening of many of his
poems.
Poem: Air and Angels
Verse 1: I loved you two or three times before I knew your face or name; so angels stir us,
appearing as a voice or a shapeless flame, and are worshipped so. And I still saw some lovely
glorious nothing when I came to where you were. But since my soul, of whom love is the child,
inhabits a body with limbs of flesh, and without that could achieve nothing on earth, love
cannot be more subtle than its own parent, and must also become material, and acquire a body.
And so I told love to find out what you were, and who, and I now allow it to assume your body
and settle itself on your lip, and brow, and in your eye.
Verse 2: While I thought to weight love with a body in this way, and so progress more smoothly
with its cargo of love that would overcome mere admiration, I saw I had overburdened loves
vessel, since it is too great a matter for love to try and work with all of your individual hairs at
once, and something more suitable must be sought. For, just as love cannot reside in
nothingness, it cannot reside either in things separate and brightly scattered. As an angel wears
wings and face of air, which are not as pure as itself, but are still pure, so your love can embody
my love. The same disparity as exists between air (material) and angels purity (immaterial)
will always exist between the love of women (of the body?!) and that of men (of the soul?!)
CRITICAL APPRECIATION
This is a poem of love and has little to do with air and angels. The poet is fed up
with the Platonic idea of lovelove as something holy and spiritual. He is also not
happy with the worship of the beloved and the admiration of her beauty which the
Petrarchan poets did. He realizes the hollowness and hypocrisy of the idealization of
love. Love demands something concrete. It must have a physical base. Love can
grow only by mutuality and co-operation.
DEVELOPMENT OF THOUGHT
The poet discusses the soul-body relationship. Just as the angels manifest
themselves in the air by a voice or light, in the same way love which is something
idealistic, must express itself through some concrete medium. In the beginning he
thought love was like a spirit or an angel, but subsequently he realised that love

must be expressed through a medium, namely the human body. The beloved is the
body of the soul of love. Love has now been concretized in the beloved and as such
she has become the cynosure of his eyes. He appreciates the beauty of her lips,
eyes and brow.
The steadiness of love
Love cannot exist in a vacuum. It must have a concrete expression. Just as a
ballast (heavy load) is necessary to steady the movement of a ship, in the same
way, something more important than the appreciation of the bodily beauty is
necessary to stabilise love. Mere admiration of her hair or some aspect of her
beamy is not enough. There must be a substantial and objective expression of love.
What Donne wants is physical union which can give both continuity and stability to
man-woman relationship.
Mans active love
Just as angels need the cover of air in order to be recognisable, so the lover
must have the love of the beloved as a sphere for his love. There is, however, a
difference between mans love, and womans love. Mans love may be compared to
an angel and womans love to air. This implies that man is generally more active
than woman in the game of love-making. The traditional concept of womans
coyness and modesty does make one feel that she plays the second fiddle in the
orchestra of love. But just as there is harmony in the angel-air relationship, there
should be mutuality and response in man-woman relationship.
Lines 1-3
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?

The poem grabs us by insulting us. Or someone. It's hard to tell. Donne is calling
someone a busy old fool, but he stalls for just a moment so that we are pulled in.

Fortunately the wait isn't too long; the next phrase tells us that he is talking to the
sun. Now you may have heard that talking to inanimate objects is crazy, but in the
wide world of poetry, we call that an apostrophe.

Take a closer look at those first two adjectives: "busy" and "old." Those aren't random
he's going to come back to these two ideas at the very end of the poem. John
Donne, like many of the people who originally read his poems, was a well-educated
lawyer. That means that his poems are carefully constructed arguments and he is
setting up his case right from the start.

He also sets up the condescending, brazen tone that is going to carry all the way
through the poem. The first half of the first line makes the sun sound like a cranky old

man, but then Donne immediately switches the image. He calls the sun unruly, as if it
were a child or a pet that misbehaved. This is some serious 17th-century smack talk.

The second line shows us that this is a question, but not one the sun is supposed to
answer. You can roughly translate "Why dost thou thus?" as "Why you gotta be like
that?"

We get some context in the next line, seeing the sunlight coming through windows
and curtains. That repetition of "through" is called parallelism and it works well with
the iambic meter to create a nice rhythm.

There's an obnoxious little grammar move that Donne pulls here in the first sentence.
He withholds that main verb"call"until the very end. He basically says, "Dumb
sun, why do you" and then seven syllables and a whole line pass before he finishes
his thought. And it is because he withheld the verb that it hits us so hard; we've been
waiting for it. Now we understand why he is so angrythe sun has interrupted his
blissful night.

There's also a rhyme. "Sun" doesn't have a rhyming buddy just yet, but "thus" and
"us" go together. So the rhyme scheme so far goes a little something like this: ABB.
Stay tune for more.

Lines 4-6
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys, and sour prentices,

Has your alarm ever gone off and you laid there in bed with this elaborate fantasy
that somehowjust for youthe sun wasn't really coming up? That you still had
hours and hours of glorious sleepy-dreamy time? Come on, be honest.

That's basically Donne's question here to the sun. Do lovers like us really have to get
up just because you started your daily routine? But of course it's a sarcastic question,
because Donne is way too good for the sun. So we could translate it more like this:
"Did you really expect my lady and I to get up just because you shined in here?
You've got to be joking."

Only two lines ago, the sun was an unruly child, but in line 5, Donne changes
themetaphor. The sun is now a "saucy, pedantic wretch." Picture the crabby,
sarcastic teacher that always had lipstick on her teeth. This new image extends that
question in line 4; it may have some power over some people, but definitely not over
us. We are way too awesome.

Notice that Donne uses an imperative verb. He isn't just chatting with the sun; he's
bossing it around. He commands it to go away and bother other, lesser people.

The next three lines give examples of the types of people the sun still has some
power over. Those lesser people move in ascending order from late schoolboys to
sullen apprentices making their way to work to servants of royalty to working class
folk.

The word "prentices" is short for apprentices. These would have been teenage kids
who were learning a craft from a skilled worker. Basically, they are interns in charge
of bringing the coffee and doing the dirty work.

Check out the rhymes in these lines. Okay, so there's just one. "Run" rhymes with
"sun" from line 1. So now our rhyme scheme goes ABBA.

Lines 7-8
Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;

The verb changes in line 7 from chiding the kids and teenagers to telling the adults.
This is another indication that he is moving up the scale of humanity. This deliberate
distinction between social classes has to do with the Renaissance belief in the Great
Chain of Being. That's the notion that everything in creation has a specific and
determined rank in the eyes of God. So you start down at the bottom with rocks and
move all the way up through people and kings and angels to God.

The reference to the king calling his huntsmen is a shout-out to the reigningKing
James I, who was known to love riding and hunting.

Let's be clear. John Donne never met a metaphor he didn't like. So even though we
are already in this elaborate metaphor about the sun telling people what to do, he
goes ahead and gives us a mini-metaphor in line 8, referring to peasant farmers as
"country ants." In doing so, he is reminding us that he and his lover are above such
people. They're higher up in the ranks.

By the way, in this context, "offices" doesn't just mean a cubicle; it means a duty or
responsibility.

And last but not least, the rhyme scheme continues: "ride" rhymes with "chide" from
line 5, and "offices" rhymes with "prentices" from line 6. That gives us ABBACDCD.
Things are gettin' fancy.

Lines 9-10
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

At the most basic level, Donne is saying that love doesn't change with the seasons
or climates. That little phrase, "all alike" modifies (describes) love and is probably
best taken to mean "always the same."

Donne is famous for his lists. When he starts getting ranty, he tends to turn to lists to
express his emotions. He does the same thing in two of his most famous
poems, "Death be not proud" and "Batter my heart, three-person'd God."Here, the list
"hours, days, months" reiterates the consistency, the steadfastness of his love. This
is in contrast to many traditional aubades (poems written to a lover at dawn), which
deal with the sun shedding light on an illicit relationship. The lovers are more often
aware of the fleetingness of passion, rather than of their everlasting bond.

We also get another little peek at that Great Chain of Being mentality here. Notice
that Donne orders the units of time from smallest to largest.

The final metaphor is very catchy; in fact, Donne used it elsewhere in a sermon. By
referring to hours, days, and months as "rags of time" he is contrasting them with
eternity and (we assume) his eternal love for his beloved. It's a clever way to brag:
hours and days and months may pass, baby, but my love for you will never die. (You
might write that one down, fellas

Lines 11-14
Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.

We promised ourselves we would hold off as long as we could, but it's time for a
lesson in medieval cosmology. Though there was a lively debate among intellectuals
of the time, the prevailing belief was the old Ptolemaic model of the earth at the
center of the universe. Then everything else in the sky rotated around the earth in its
own sphere. The bigger the sphere, the higher and more important it is in the chain
of being, and has control over the smaller spheres. It was also all mixed up with
religious beliefs, so that stars and planets were seen as holy, or at least closer to
God, the "prime mover" who set everything into motion. That's a lot of explanation
for the use of the word "reverend" in line 11 to describe sunbeams, but it will keep
coming up, so we thought we might as well.

Donne shows his knowledge of recent scientific discovery in talking of the sun's
beams. It was a recent idea that humans saw objects because of the light cast on
them. You can see in other poems by Donne references to "eye beams," the
metaphorical light our eyes cast on objects.

Seeing "beams" followed by "strong" gives a metaphorical sense of wooden beams,

making the reference feel less frilly and more solid.

But then Donne reverses our expectations to mock the sun again. It looked like he
was saying something nice there in line 11, but line 12 reveals the verb and the rest
of the question: "Why would anyone think that?" Once again, Donne withheld the
verb and changed the normal syntax to create an effect on the reader.

That question is like a hypothetical proposition that needs a proof. And like any good
attorney, Donne is ready to prove his case. Why do I dare to insult the sun? Well, says
line 13, because if I just close my eyes then all those sunbeams disappear.

His argument is really clever. He went out of his way to talk about how solid the sun's
beams are and now in one phrase we see that they are actually totally insubstantial.

He also keeps up the sun metaphor in his bragging. He makes himself greater than
the sun because his eyes can "eclipse" and "cloud" the sun's beams.

Line 13 also features some really lovely sound effects. Notice the alliterationwith hard
"c" sounds at the beginning of the line and softer "w" sounds at the end.

The fourteenth line reminds us that this is a love poem. It's like when a guy is trying
to defend a girl's honor by standing up to some tough guy. At some point, they
always forget about the girl and just start bragging and comparing their biceps.

But here in line 14, Donne leaves off his attack of the sun to say something sweet
and maybe a little cheesy. He says that he could eclipse the sun with a wink, but if he
did, he would have to take his eyes off his beloved and he just doesn't know if he
could stand it. (You might be able to see our eyes rolling just a little bit.)

Lines 15-18

If her eyes have not blinded thine,

Look, and tomorrow late tell me,
Whether both the Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.

Donne maybe stretches it a little in making a clever paradox in line 15. He tells the
sun that if the beauty of his lover's eyes has not blinded the sun's eyes, then the sun
should take a look around.

First, we aren't so sure about the sun having eyeskind of a weird metaphor. Second,
do you really want someone to take one look and your girlfriend and be stricken
blind? Yikes.

Let's give the guy some credit, though. He's saying that just as the sun is so bright
and radiant that one look can blind you, even the sun can be blinded by the
brightness and beauty of his lover's eyes.

Then things get even weirder. He is still commanding the sun: "Look, and tomorrow
late tell me," but he now claims that if the sun were to go look around the world, it
would find that everything now resided inside this one bedroom. This is the part when
we shake our heads like Scooby-Doo. The whole world has just collapsed into a single
room?

The Indias mentioned in line 17 are the East and West Indies. The East Indies was a
broad term for the entire Indian subcontinent and was a land prized in the eyes of
traders and poets for its valuable and exotic spices. The West Indies were the newly
discovered Caribbean Islands that were thought to be rich mining opportunities.

It is almost as if Donne is playing a trick on the sun, flaunting his power over it.
Remember, the sun has the divine right to rule over the earth, to take care of it.
Donne asserts the sun's control in line 18, saying that the sun is in charge of leaving
countries just as it finds them, but then he teases the sun: "you won't find them
there! I have taken them and now they are here with me."

Line 19-20
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

Line 19 is parallel to line 16the narrator commands the sun to check up on its
kingdom. In line 16, he told the sun to tell him tomorrow what he saw; in line 19 he
tells the sun to remember the kings he saw only yesterday. Basically, "Now you see
them, now you don't."

Donne has also switched senses. In the previous parallel example, Donne commands
the sun to look with its eyes. Here his command is for the sun to ask around and
"hear" what's going on. Poets like to shake up their sensory images.

Here's the weird part of the metaphor: he reiterates the same claim he made before
about the Indias, that all the kings of the world can now be found in his bed. That's a
pretty bizarre and not so pleasant image.

So Donne ends the stanza having made one strange claimthat he is even stronger
than the sunand backed it up with a logical argument. But he makes an even
stranger claim to close the stanzathe whole world is now located in my bed. In the
last stanza, Donne tells us how this is possible.