Loves Deitie

  John Donne (1572-1631)
   
  Donne was the leading English poet of the Metaphysical school. This was a highly intellectual poetry, marked by bold and ingenious conceits, complexity and subtlety of thought, frequent use of paradox, and often deliberate harshness or rigidity of expression. John Dryden censured Donne for perplexing "the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy when he should engage their hearts……with the softness of love." The aim of the metaphysical poets, however, was to startle the reader out of complacency and force him or her to think through the argument of the poem. (In the quote from Dryden above, do not forget what the word 'nice' meant to an Elizabethan: we discussed this in one of our earliest pieces here!). Most of the poems of Donne that one sees quoted are rather more conventional in tone: I regard this one as a good example of what Metaphysical poetry was about. [Much of the above, but not the last couple of sentences, is drawn from Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature].
     
 
I long to talke with some old lovers ghost
    Who dyed before the god of Love was borne:
I cannot thinke that hee, who then lov'd most,
    Sunke so low, as to love one which did scorne.
But since this god produc'd a destinie,
And that vice-nature, custome, lets it be;
    I must love her, that loves not mee.

Sure, they which made him god, meant not so much,
    Nor he, in his young godhead practis'd it.
But when an even flame two hearts did touch,
    His office was indulgently to fit
Actives to passives. Correspondencie
Only his subject was; It cannot bee
    Love, till I love her, that loves mee.

But every moderne god will now extend
    His vast prerogative, as far as Jove.
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend,
    All is the purlewe of the God of Love.
Oh were wee wak'ned by this Tyrannie
To ungod this child againe, it could not bee
    I should love her, who loves not mee.

Rebell and Atheist too, why murmure I,
    As though I felt the worst that love could doe?
Love might make me leave loving, or might trie
    A deeper plague, to make her love me too,
Which, since she loves before, I'm loth to see;
Falshood is worse than hate; and that must bee,
    If shee whom I love, should love mee.

 

 
     
 
 
     

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