Metaphysical Poetry

Metaphysical Poetry

• Characterized by intellectual displays
• Concerned with metaphysical, philosophical, issues
• Uses metaphysical conceits and paradoxes

Metaphysical Conceit

• Extended (several lines or stanzas) metaphors that link objects or ideas not commonly associated, such as a lover and an elegant building

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Paradox

• Images or descriptions that appear self-contradictory but that reveal a deeper truth: “Death, though shalt die.”

John Donne

• Raised Catholic in Elizabeth I’s protestant England
• Did not receive degrees he earned due to refusal to acknowledge the supremacy of king over church
• Later, he abandoned Catholicism and joined the Church of England
• Became dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London

Personal Life

• Private Secretary to one of the queen’s highest-ranking officials, Sir Thomas Egerton
• Secretly wed Egerton’s niece, Anne More and was briefly imprisoned for it

• Donne’s shortest poem, sent to Anne from prison:

John Donne. � Anne Donne. � Undone.

• He was soon released and eventually reconciled with his father-in-law
• John and Anne had twelve children
• Anne died in their 16^th year of marriage, five days after delivering a stillborn child (their second)

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say

The breath goes now, and some say, No;

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So let us melt, and make no noise,

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,

‘Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

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(profanation – act showing disrespect for something sacred)

Moving of th’earth brings harms and fears,

Men reckon what it did and meant;

But trepidation of the spheres,

Though greater far, is innocent.

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Dull sublunary lovers’ love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love, so much refined,

That our selves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

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Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

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 th’other do.

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And though it in the center sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must

Like th’other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end where I begun.

from “Meditation 17” (p. 488)

Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, Morieris

(Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.)

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PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him. And perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me;

all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another; as therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come; so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.

No man is an island,  entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were;  any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.