"The Good-Morrow" is an exquisite piece of metaphysical poetry.

Donne wrote it at a comparatively

early age and the poem was published in a collection entitled as "Songs and Sonnets".

The poem is a short lyric of three stanzas, each stanza consisting of seven lines. The rhyme scheme of
each of the stanzas is ababccc. The poem opens with a surprise, which has been promoted to
dependence in love in the middle part of the poem. In the end of the poem, the love has been given
immortality. Arguments have been used to develop the theme. The poem conforms to the tradition of
metaphysical poetry in its development of thought. It opens dramatically.

John Donne in this poem is not only a poet but also a lover. As a lover, he
expresses his gratitude towards the life, which he currently is spending. He along with his
beloved laments his previous life. Before falling in love, they were leading a tasteless life. They
were unaware about the beauty of life, which is only possible if they have the power of love in
their hands. Past days of their lives were rustic and childish. Donne then quotes the incident of
“seaven sleepers [of] den?”. It is an incident from the myth but is also mentioned in the Bible
that seven persons took shelter in a cave. They slept there for more than two hundred years
but when they woke up, they did not realize the duration of their sleep. Thus, they could not
understand what happened to them.

The poet and his beloved have also spent a life like the seven sleepers of den. They had no
knowledge about life and love. They were in a long sleep. Donne is putting his life and the life
of seven sleepers in juxtaposition. He compares his life with theirs and finds no dissimilarity in
them. In his previous life, Donne may have find beauty in woman but he does not consider it
truth; it was a fancy; “twas but a dreame of thee.”; their beauty was just the reflection of his
beloved. Thus, in first stanza of “The Good Morrow”, John Donne has begun his love analysis
along with scrutiny of his past life.

Analysis of “The Good Morrow” remains successful in presenting contrast

between the two worlds; the world of love and the world of materiality. Many people are
attached to material things of life but in Donne’s eyes, true happiness lies within love. A room,
where the poet and his beloved live, is enough for them to lead a peaceful and happy life. They
do not need anything else; the poet and his beloved do not want to discover new worlds. It is
the duty of “sea-discoverers” not the poet to find “new worlds”. Poet and his beloved are
happy with their lives. ONE can also witness development of thought in this poem. The poet
has changed his thinking. He has wasted his previous life. Although it is painful, yet the poet
wants to forget it completely as finally, he sees no more darkness in his life. Poet’s life is far
away from irrationality, jealousy and suspicion. If anything is present in his life then that thing
is love. John Donne in this stanza has shown that the world of love is far superior to every other
world. Hence, in “The Good Morrow”, there is an excellent analysis and sharp contrast
between the two worlds.

There is an enhancement in Stanza-III of the poem. While appreciating the beauty of his world,
the poet talks about unity. His face shines in the eyes of his beloved. Similarly, his beloved’s
face shines in his eyes. “My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares”. The poet and his
beloved have created a complete world from their love but there is no possibility of decay in it.
Geographical world is temporary and it has “sharpe North” and “declining West”, whereas the
poet’s world is eternal; their love is immortal and there is oneness in their love. Here, in last
stanza of “The Good Morrow”, the poet is making a clear analysis of equality and unity.

The images of the poem are vivid. There are pictures of breast fed babies, snorting seven sleepers and
hemispheres. All these images have been used to suggest the unique nature of the love in the poem.
The images, no doubt, reveal the poet's capacity of making scholarly images.

The poem is free from bitterness, grief and cynicism. There is neither disappointment nor disgust. A
note of contentment runs through the poem. In the beginning the tone is of surprise, then it shifts to
contentment, and finally, to spirituality. Moreover, its theme has been developed through passionate
arguments, and here it differs from a dramatic monologue.

The Sun Rising, originally spelled as The Sunne Rising, is a metaphysical love
poem by John Donne where the sun is personified as the ‘busy old fool’. It was
first published in 1633. As this poem is a metaphysical poem, it is loaded with
witty conceits and unbeatable logics of John Donne.

IT is a 30-line poem in three stanzas.The meter is irregular, ranging from two to

six stresses per line in no fixed pattern. The longest lines are generally at the end
of the three stanzas, but Donne’s focus here is not on perfect regularity. The
rhyme, however, never varies, each stanza running abbacdcdee. The poet’s tone is
mocking and railing as it addresses the sun, covering an undercurrent of
desperate, perhaps even obsessive love and grandiose ideas of what his lover is.

The poet personifies the sun as a “busy old fool” (. He asks why it is shining in and
disturbing “us” , who appear to be two lovers in bed. The sun is peeking through
the curtains of the window of their bedroom.The speaker is annoyed, wishing that
the day has not yet come. The poet then suggests that the sun go off and do
other things rather than disturb them, such as going to tell the court huntsman
that it is a day for the king to hunt, or to wake up ants, or to rush late schoolboys
and apprentices to their duties. The poet wants to know why it is that “to thy
motions lovers’ seasons run” . He imagines a world, or desires one, where the
embraces of lovers are not relegated only to the night, but that lovers can make
their own time as they see fit.
In the second stanza the poet continues to mock the sun, saying that its “beams
so reverend and strong” are nothing compared to the power and glory of their
love. He boasts that he “could eclipse and cloud the with a wink.” In a way this is
true; he can cut out the sun from his view by closing his eyes. Yet, the lover
doesn’t want to “lose her sight so long” as a wink would take. The poet is
emphasizing that the sun has no real power over what he and his lover do, while
he is the one who chooses to allow the sun in because by it he can see his lover’s
beauty.

The lover then moves on to loftier claims. “If her eyes have not blinded thine”
implies that his beloved’s eyes are more brilliant than sunlight. Indeed, the sun
should “tell me/Whether both th’Indias of spice and mine/Be where thou lef’st
them, or lie here with me.” Here, Donne lists wondrous and exotic places (the
Indias are the West and East Indies, well known in Donne’s time for their spices
and precious metals) and says that his mistress is all of those things: “All here in
one bed lay” (20). “She’s all states, and all princes I”(21). That is, all the beautiful
and sovereign things in the world, which the sun meets as it travels the world each
day, are combined in his mistress.

John Donne compares himself to the kings of world and comes to the conclusion that he is
superior to them. To kings, it is only money and power that matters but John Donne has the
greatest power; he has love and a beloved; therefore, he is the richest person on the earth.
Glory of kings and princes is just ridiculous and their “honor’s mimique”. The poet also points
out weaknesses of the sun. It is alone and has no beloved. Moreover, it does not have the
feelings of love; it also does not have emotions. Sun, thus, is also inferior to him.

Duty of the sun is to give light to the world, says Donne but the sun has grown old now. The
poet, his beloved and their room is the whole world; therefore, the sun can fulfill his duty by
giving light only to their room. After doing so, the sun can do rest as he needs it in this age;
“thine age askes ease”. As mentioned above, bedroom of the poet is the whole world. The sun
should revolve around the bedroom of poet. The poet is saying so, because it was believed
that the sun revolved around the earth. Bedroom of the poet is whole earth. The poet ends the
poem while expressing his world of love in following lines:

“This bed thy center is, these walls, they spheare.”

The word 'Canonization' means the act or process of changing an ordinary religious person into a saint in
Catholic Christian religion. This title suggests that the poet and his beloved will become 'saints of love' in the
future: and they will be regarded as saints of true love in the whole world in the future.

The poem is written again in a defiant and frustrating tone. He starts the poem aggressively with imperative
sentence, “For God’s sake hold your tongue and let us live.” The poem is written in first person plural pronoun.
But the speaker remains only the lover; beloved hardly utters a word in the whole poem. The poem is written in
monologue form. The first stanza makes the tempo and it seems that the whole poem needs to be finished in
one breathe.

The poem is perfect example of metaphysical poetry, he makes his arguments hyperbolically and that his sighs
have not drowned any ship, nor has his tears flooded any ground, why should people not allow them to love. The
stanza is similar to the stanza from the poem ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,’ the words like tears, flood,
sighs and tempest are repeated in both the stanzas.

The metaphysical conceits are again used freely by Donne in this poem, he compares himself and his beloved
with fly and says that they are parasites to, for they are made so by their love,” Call her one, me another fly,/
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,/ And we in us find the eagle and the dove.” This stanza makes
contrasting imagery of peace and violence, Dove is an image of peace, where as fly and eagle represent the
violent imagery. He compares his love with legends and says even if it be not fit for canonization; it will be fit for
the verse, like those of Romeo and Juliet. The poet concludes the poem on a high note with a lot of optimism
and says after their death there love will be revered and they will be invoked and everybody will like love like
them.

Fusion of emotion and intellect is another important feature of the poem. The fusion is observed in the
comparison of the lovers to the mysterious phoenix and the divine saints. The speaker assumes that like the
phoenix, the lovers would 'die and rise at the same time' and prove 'mysterious by their love'. Reference to this
mythical being well sums up Donne's theory of sexual metaphysics; a real and complete relation between a man
and a woman fuses their soul into one whole. The poet is both sensuous and realistic in his treatment of love.
The romantic affair and the moral status of the worldly lovers are compared to the ascetic life of unworldly saints.
Thus, 'canonization' is in many ways a typical metaphysical poem where the complexity of substance is
expressed with simplicity of expression. The general argument and its development are clear like its dramatic
situations. The allusions are sometimes too forced, but that is a part of such poetry.

The poem is written in five stanzas, metered in iambic lines ranging from trimeter to pentameter; in each of the
nine-line stanzas, the first, third, fourth, and seventh lines are in pentameter, the second, fifth, sixth, and eighth in
tetrameter, and the ninth in trimeter. (The stress pattern in each stanza is 545544543.) The rhyme scheme in
each stanza is ABBACCCDD.

The poem was used by Cleanth Brooks in his “Well wrought Urn: The Study of Poetry” as an example to show
the readers how the poems be studied from formalistic point of view.

or

The word 'Canonization' means the act or process of changing an ordinary religious person into a saint in
Catholic Christian religion. This title suggests that the poet and his beloved will become 'saints of love' in the
future: and they will be regarded as saints of true love in the whole world in the future.

The speaker of the poem is an old man who has just got the good luck of having a young beloved! But, unluckily,
he is being disturbed by a man who comes to a place where he is making love. This intruder (one who disturbs)
seems to have told him not to do like this. The old lover gives energy to reply to him. Donne's "Canonization" is
an example of metaphysical poetry. It uses conceits, allusions from the medieval philosophy of metaphysics, a
dramatic situation and an impassioned monologue, a speech-like rhythm, and colloquial language, all of which
make it a typical "metaphysical" poem.

The personal in the poem speaks about the transformation of worldly lovers into holy saints as in the Catholic
Christian custom of 'canonization'. The speaker in the poem claims that he and his beloved will be canonized
when the poet immortalizes their love, and that lovers of the future will invoke to them to give them the strength
of spiritual love. The physical passion is to unite them into one soul and transform them into saints of love.

The poem takes the form of a drama where the speaker is speaking back with angry arguments against a third
person who seems to have told him not to indulge in such love affair in old age! The speaker argues with the
intruding stranger so as to justify his metaphysical logic of love. As the argument develops, the comparison of
the relation between lovers develops with other metaphors of myth, religion and so on. The speaker equates
worldly human love with the ascetic life of unworldly saints. The whole poem can be seen as an extension of the
central unusual comparison of the canonization of a lover! The poem makes an impressive beginning with an
abrupt jump into the situation: 'Hold your tongue and let me love.' The lines are highly dramatic. They illustrate
the shock tactic used in most of Donne's metaphysical poems.

The argument in the poem is forceful, suggestive and witty. The speaker uses colloquial words, rough idioms
and broken rhythm, all of which characterize metaphysical poems. The very beginning "For God's sake....." is a
good example. The whole poem is in such shockingly new language and rhythm. Though the rhythm is rough
and conversational, the poem is written mainly in iambic pentameter. Each of five stanzas is of nine lines, and a
rhyming scheme such as: abbacccaa. But the word loves is, for some reason, always used in slant rhyming as in
love/ approve, love/ improve, etc.

Use of surprising registers (words) is another feature of the poem. The speaker uses words from the register of
trade, commerce, medicine and myth so as to elaborate his concept of metaphysical love. 'Palsy' and 'gout' for
instance belong to the register of medicine while 'merchant' and 'ship' signify the realm of trade and commerce.
While 'Phoenix' relates to myth, 'hymns' concerns religion and 'chronicles' means 'history'.

'Canonization' links together disharmonious images. In other words, there is 'a yoking together of heterogeneous
images by violence'. As the speaker faces an intruder and argues with him, he links 'lover's sigh' with 'merchant's
ships', 'colds' with 'spring', 'heat' with 'plague' and 'love songs' with divine hymns. As the argument proceeds, the
comparison of the relation between lovers moves from the register of trade and myth to a climax where true
lovers are equated with canonized saints.

Fusion of emotion and intellect is another important feature of the poem. The fusion is observed in the
comparison of the lovers to the mysterious phoenix and the divine saints. The speaker assumes that like the
phoenix, the lovers would 'die and rise at the same time' and prove 'mysterious by their love'. Reference to this
mythical being well sums up Donne's theory of sexual metaphysics; a real and complete relation between a man
and a woman fuses their soul into one whole. The poet is both sensuous and realistic in his treatment of love.
The romantic affair and the moral status of the worldly lovers are compared to the ascetic life of unworldly saints.

The poem uses an elaborate conceit. In the beginning the speaker expresses his commitment to love. He
addresses an intruding stranger and warns him to keep out of the lover's way. Next, he discusses love in terms
of 'sighs', 'cold' and 'heat'. In the lines that follow, the poet uses more and more of disharmonious associations.
He equates lovers to 'flies' and 'tapers', 'Eagle' and 'Dove', 'Phoenix' and 'saints'.

Thus, 'canonization' is in many ways a typical metaphysical poem where the complexity of substance is
eaxpressed with simplicity of expression. The general argument and its development are clear like its dramatic
situations. The allusions are sometimes too forced, but that is a part of such poetry.

The Anniversaries by John Donne is a dramatic lyric in which the poet celebrates his love which is
now one year old. The poet is the speaker and his beloved is the listener. The central theme is the
immortality of true love which transcends death itself. The opposites of immortality and death are
here juxtaposed and reconciled.

Diction & Language

As regards the language of the lyric, it is simple, much simpler than that of other poems of Donne.
There are no difficult allusions and references. He writes in a simple and direct manner. The lyric
acquires force and energy, as the poet has succeeded in capturing the very rhythms and accents
of spoken speech, as in the line, “When thou and I first one another saw” and the concluding lines
of the poem.

The poem caters the lovers' sense of the agelessness of their world of love. The speaker states that even the
king and the sun have grown older and reach a year near to the death. But he, along with his beloved is ageless
and death cannot kill them because their love is pure and they are connected with the hearts.
So, they will remain alive through their love even after death. Thus, they are immortal. He rejoice-fully invites
his beloved to be noble and loyal in love so that life becomes charming and lasting. The claim is that their love
is protected from the pressure of time.

The paradox of the poem lies here when the speaker says their day is an 'everlasting day' of love which takes
them beyond any concern with 'yesterday' or 'to morrow'. But the real motive of the poem is sooner revealed
clearly; which is, firstly, to celebrate the fact that they have now enjoyed a whole year of yesterday together, and
secondly; to anticipate a series of equally happy tomorrows — a series which, Donne is later to admit, that there
is no sufficient amount of good faith or good fortune which can possibly make 'everlasting'. In short, to celebrate
an anniversary is also to admit that even lovers have to submit to the world of time.

The tone in The Anniversarie is serious rather than jubilantly paradoxical. The poem begins as if John Donne is
preparing to acclaim the mighty ones of the earth — the kings and their favorites, the honored, the beautiful, the
clever — but the verse sweeps on, and it becomes clear that they are mentioned in order that he may record that
they, too, are moving on towards their graves. Even the sun, customarily the symbol of all that is glorious and
powerful, are presented not as the monarch of the temporal world, but as its chief victim, making times only to be
itself made older by them, 'as they passe'. The shortness of all things is acknowledged, with measured
calmness, as one of the central facts of human existence.

In the first stanza of the poem, Donne confirms the 'first, last, everlasting day' of their love. The 'first' and 'last',
were rejected and conquered by 'everlasting'. But 'first' and 'last' are not to be sacked so easily: there was a time
when they 'first one another saw', and there will come a time when they have to leave each other 'at last in
death'. The thought of death pushes itself forward in the second stanza:

The fact of death is stated with the extreme simplicity; they will both die, and be buried. The calm acceptance of
death, what is, after all, the common lot of mankind is put into words so easily:

Alas, as well as other Princes, wee, (Who Prince enough in one another bee,) Must leave
at last in death, these eyes, and eares, Oft fed with true oathes, and with sweet salt teares;

Donne admits that though their love is eternal, their physical bodies are not so privileged to be eternal. When
they die they are forced to be separated from their bodies; the same bodies from which they enjoy and share
their mutual love. They will end in a kind of earthly “divorce”. But, as a consolation, he immediately reminds his
beloved asserting that they will reunite in their souls after death. The religious view is brought in to support the
lovers' claims to an everlasting day of mutual love, but the effect of the stanza as a whole is to suggest once
again the intensity with which Donne fears the everlasting night of utter separateness.

In the third stanza, he says, they will be totally happy (`throughly blest') in the next world, but that will be 'then'
and 'there above'. The arguments in the second stanza make us clear that the lovers are unwilling to forget the
happiness available to them here and now, in this world. Moreover, 'there above' the lovers will be 'no more, than
all the rest'; they will have lost their sense of being peculiarly and supremely blessed with their love. It is not so in
this world.

The unavoidable boundaries of human life are ultimately accepted. They cannot be away from the fear of death,
but can keep the fear under control. For this, they need to 'love nobly'. “Nobly” here provides double meaning:
they should love in a grand manner, and they should love with noble hearts. He wants to add years and years in
his passage of love life and boldly states that they will go on celebrating sixty more anniversaries.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” is one of John Donne’s simplest poems written in 1611 or
1612 to Anne More, the wife of the poet, as the poet was making preparations to leave to
Continental Europe. It is a 36-line poem depicting what the poet feels about their separation.
The poet makes heavy use of imagery and metaphors not usually used to describe love: death,
gold and a compass.
John Donne related the death of his lover to the passing away of a virtuous man. Such
a separation cannot be superseded by their spiritual attachment. While love was,
generally, associated with physicality and sexual desire, John Donne’s love was
religious. Such an unlikely metaphor simply describes the sanctity of the bonding with
his wife. An alienation of perspective towards love and death could be read from the first
stanza, “And whisper to their souls to go, whilst some of their sad friends do say, yes ,
the breath goes now, and some say, “No”. John Donne was surrounded by a group of
mourners who thought that souls would be separated from human body and be
“whispered” to leave our world, bringing all the love away.

John Donne, claiming some other people say “no”, introduced his idea of the divine
and heavenly relationship with his lover, resembling that of a “virtuous man” to God. A
second conceit comes with the “trepidation of the sphere” in the third stanza. John Donne
continues to describe the sanctity his love with his lover by relating mundane perspective
to death to earthquakes The general people were scared of death as much as earthquake
and trembling of the Earth, able to bring away all their affections away from the world.
But John Donne’s love was mightier than such a powerful force that splits the Earth. A
dual application of contrary is applied here to assure his love: There is a comparison
between the public fear of earthquake and his indifference to such a disaster, signifying
other people’s ignorance of his love of purity.

Meanwhile, by relating earth splits to the might of his love, the powerful earth splits
became harmless, into nothing as “trepidation of the sphere”. By taking earthquakes into
account, John Donne portrays the most powerful disaster that splits everything on Earth
and brings about fear. Such a portrait was reduced to such an ordinary natural
phenomenon. With the illustrated imagery of disaster, the invincibility of his love was
enhanced and intensified to a larger extent.

John Donne made use of two more conceits to portray his love till the end of the poem.
In the seventh stanza, the poet applied a metaphor of a compass to symbolize his
relationship with his lover. While there are two souls attached to each other, John Donne
created an imagery resembling the two souls to be two “stiff” legs of a compass. The two
legs are pointing to opposite directions, but permanently linked to one another. He
compares his wife with “the fix’d foot” around which the compass rotates. The poet
suggests that he would be separated from his lover as opposite directions naturally
diverse. But with the mighty power of love he possesses, his heart still leans towards his
lover. The two are linked together emotionally and even physically as the two legs of a
compass are. Compass serves as another metaphysical conceit in the poem, suggesting
the death and leaving of his wife was as irresistible as the magnetic force on Earth. But
the mightier force of their love was indifferent to such a force, keeping th e two souls
linked together.

The last conceit goes with the process of beating gold as the lovers leaving each
other. John Donne suggested that her wife’s death would only breach their relationship
to a higher degree. While other people consider death as the end of relationship, the
poet describes the leaving as the process of intensifying their relationship, as he writes,
“a breach, but an expansion,”. He resembles his lover’s death with airily beating gold, a
necessary process to make the material a thin and unbroken sheet. With the imagery of
gold, being graceful and valuable in nature, the poet’s love with her wife proceeds to a
higher stage after her death. The mighty force of their attachment supersedes not only
distance and magnetic force, but also life and death.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ by John Donne is a poem that makes the reader realise the
power of true love. It tells the reader that when two people are spiritually connected in such a way that
their souls become one, one is always present with the other in spirit and physical separation ceases to
matter.

The Relic is a poem in which Donne makes fun of the superstitions attached to the 'purely' platonic ideas of love;
he also manages to satirize the society's blind prohibition against the attachment between the sexes. The
persona addresses his beloved, with whom he has not yet been allowed to be intimate. They have only kissed
out of the courtesy at meeting and parting, but not yet otherwise.
He has taken a strand of hair from the lady out of love; and he has bound it around his wrist. Now he imagines
that after some centuries, when superstitious people dig up the grave in order to bury another dead body, they
will find this strand of hair around his wrist (still not decayed!) and begin to make myths about it. The digger will
interpret that the man (the speaker, when dead and dug up) had bound the strand of hair of his beloved so as to
make it magically possible for him to meet his beloved (whose hair is magical). He will take that the bone and
hair to the king and the bishop and request them to declare the two as saints of love.

It is funny that the two have done nothing of the sort in reality. The speaker implicitly requests the lady not to
worry because at least that kind of canonization might happen in the future. Those foolish people will regard the
hair and bones as things for doing miracle by the lovers; to the man, the miracle is a different one. He does
regard that his beloved is a real miracle, however. He is writing the present poem to tell the truth to those who
will read and know the reality of those future times when people will make nonsense myths out of such incidents.
In a sense, the poem is a satire on the superstitious ideas of love and magic, rather than believing in the actual
contact and attachment between man and woman. The 'relic' of the title refers to the hair and bone that people
will declare relic out of superstitious belief. A relic means 'a thing belonging to a person who is believed to
possess saintly or magical power preserved for its religious or magical value'. The poem is a pure product of
fancy.

The persona here comes close to being critical of the lady who seems to have allowed nothing more than formal
kisses and a strand of hair a keepsake. We know that, physical contact, in Donne's philosophy of love, is
essential even for spiritual love and physical contacts are not absent even from this admirable lyric. There is, to
the man, first the bracelet of the beloved's hair tied round the lover's wrist, and thus uniting him physically as well
as spiritually to her. Secondly, there are kisses which he could exchange. Further, the poet expressly states that
a love which is purely spiritual is a miracle of nature, and not an ordinary human being. The lyric is based on a
tension between spiritual and physical love and the tension is not resolved. The poem is perhaps one of the most
subtle and implicit in Donne's corpus.

Oh my black soul’ is a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet, and is rhymed abbaabbacdcdee.

The poem sees Donne addressing his own blackened and degraded soul near the time
of his death.
This is another of the Holy Sonnets structured on the Jesuit method of mental prayer. Here he conjures up
the image of his deathbed and supports it with comparisons and then begins to pray. It is a true meditation.
The theme may be his fear of punishment that can only be avoided by his repentance which can only come
from God’s grace which can accomplish anything.

Many religious poems are important only to religious sympathisers. Some such works may arouse the
interest of historians and scholars once the writings are sufficiently dated. Others remain confined to a small
literary audience. Donne’s religious sonnets, however, have gained more attention than any other English
works in that genre, and while the interest in the poet himself accounts for a good deal of that popularity, it
is hardly the only reason for his being called “the greatest writer of religious verse in seventeenth-century
England.” Of particular interest is the fact that Donne’s religious sonnets have attracted the attention of
readers of different religious persuasions.

Part of the popularity of the religious sonnets rests on Donne’s ability to depict religious attitudes through
secular imagery and comparisons. An intensely secular excitement marks all his devotional works. He had
the power of experiencing keenly his own religious attitudes and of reviewing them against a wider
background. O, My Black Soul, explores the theme of the poet’s sinfulness with images gathered from different
sources. A literal reading of the first two lines reveals much of the nature and content of each sonnet. Here,
the poet returns to the idea of death and judgement, describing again his own lack of readiness to meet
God. Death and sickness are both personified: sickness is death’s “herald and champion”, this image
referring to a challenge or duel, and is also contained in the word “summoned”. Personification of abstract
ideas is an old device, common to many poets. Death and sickness take on human features and are invested
with specific powers, thus giving them a dramatic immediacy. Many seventeenth-century poets describe
their terror and fear at the approach of death, often using personification to heighten the effect. Hamlet,
for example, speaks the following line as he lies dying at the end of the play: “this fell (foul, evil) sergeant,
death,/Is strict in his arrest.” An important element in Donne’s personifications is a kind of poetic
aptness. In this context the reference to the poet’s two enemies, who summon him to engage in a trial of
strength, makes him turn in the sextet to Christ for courage and support. The two striking similes in the
octave are meant to create the idea of the poet’s terror, as well as of his isolation: he is wandering alone in an
unknown foreign land afraid to turn back to God because of the many sins (“treason”) he has
committed. Similarly, the next simile expresses an insoluble predicament: he has complained about his
sickness and wishes for death, but now that his moment of execution has arrived, he wants to cling to life for
a little while longer.
Until this point the tone of the sonnet is dramatic, and its statements command attention. As so often in
Donne’s poetry, however, the tone suddenly changes. The emphasis now shifts from fear to optimism: he is
not done after all. What he needs is the grace to repent for his sins, a grace which is only given by God after
certain conditions have been met. The poet must “mourn” for his transgressions, he must “blush” with
shame at what he has done. Only in this manner can he share in Christ’s plan of Redemption which is
powerfully evoked in the imagery of the last two lines: “wash thee in Christ’s blood, which hath this
might/That being red, it dyes red souls to white.” This conceit is part of the special language of the
period. Donne’s awareness of the mystical power of Christ’s blood is clearly evident in these lines which rest
upon a common alchemical concept, that of the tincture. This was an enormously strong colouring agent,
made during the chemical experiment, which had the power of transforming substances. Donne uses this
image of the tincture to describe the power of Christ to save both body and soul. Christ, he says, can turn
even a black sinful soul into a state of perfection. Indeed, this sonnet is notable for its colour symbols. The
black for mourning is conventional (as are the black blotches left on the soul by sin), but the use of red for
both repentance and sin is a conceit and is carried on in the idea of washing in Christ’s blood which by mixing
with the red of sin and shame paradoxically turns red to white.