Matthew Herzog

Mrs. Ledman
AP Lit, Period 2
2 February 2015
The Broken Heart Imagery Analysis
In The Broken Heart, the speaker tells of how love does not last as one would think and
how it can swallow one whole. John Donne allows the speaker to explain his reasoning through a
very thorough argument. Through the speaker John Donne is grieving over his own heartache by
having a very bitter attitude towards the concept of eternal love. The speaker supports this
argument of love never lasting and creates a bitter attitude by using a variety of paradoxical
imagery and metaphysical conceits.
In the first stanza, the speaker abruptly begins his argument by stating that he is stark
mad, who ever says, / that he hath been in love an hour. He even furthers his initial argument by
declaring how he saw a flask of powder burn a day and that he had the plague a year. Since a
flask of gunpowder burns immediately and explodes, Donne uses this paradoxical image to show
how love takes longer than most fires to die down when it explodes. He also compares love to a
plague that can ten in less space devour but also can last a year in order to display how
intense a romantic relationship can become between two or more people and how consumed
some can become when in love.
Donne furthers his argument into the second stanza by stating how [love] swallows us,
and never chaws he is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry." This metaphysical conceit of a giant
fish that swallows smaller fish like a vacuum continues his declaration of loves behavior from
the previous stanza: love can swallow and devour ten people whole in an instant. The speaker
supports this pike imagery by comparing love to a soldier who by him, as by chaind shot,

whole ranks do die. Cannon-fire is instantaneous and most of the time very unpredictable. By
using the cannon balls, the speaker continues to preach of how love can take you by surprise and
strike down whole ranks of people at once.
However, in the third stanza, the speaker stops arguing directly at the subject of love and
adds an anecdote that suggest he is speaking to a former lover: what did become / of my heart,
when I first saw thee? He continues his heartbreak tale by describing how he brought a heart
into the room, / but from the room, [he] carried none with [him]. The use of this paradoxical
image of a false heart shows how his love was reciprocated by his lover. The heartbreak shown
from this paradox begins to explicitly show the speakers, and essentially Donnes, bitterness
towards love.
Beginning from the last line in the third stanza and continuing through the fourth stanza,
the speaker tells of how Love, alas, / at one first blow did shiver [his heart] as glass. He adds
on to this broken glasses imagery by stating that he think [his] breast hath all / those pieces
still, though they be not unite and that they show / a hundred lesser faces after being broken.
By using the paradoxical image of having all of the pieces to the mirror but not being able to put
it together, the speaker shows how thoroughly heartbroken his lover made him. He also displays
his bitterness towards love by stating how the pieces of his broken heart can no longer see others.
The speaker finally explicates his bitterness towards love by declaring that his rags of hear can
like, wish, and adore, / but after one such love, can love no more.
Through the use of metaphysical conceits and imagery, Donne successfully argues how
love never lasts, and if it does it is a brief time. However, he does not argue from pure logic but
from his own experiences and bitter attitude that derived from his heartbreak.