John Donne (1572-1631) is one of the most important and influential poets in the English language. He is widely regarded as the first metaphysical poet, whose work combined then-contemporary developments in astronomy and cosmology to create a new poetic language with which poets could describe love, relationships, and a host of emotions.
John Donne
A Summary and Analysis of John Donne’s ‘No Man Is an Island’ Meditation
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ is a phrase from one of John Donne’s most famous pieces of writing. Indeed, it’s the same piece of writing that also includes what is probably his other most famous phrase, ‘No Man Is an Island’.
A Summary and Analysis of John Donne’s ‘The Anniversary’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
What do you get your beloved for your one-year anniversary? John Donne wrote this poem, ‘The Anniversary’, to his beloved. As well as being a fine love poem, ‘The Anniversary’ is also an example of metaphysical poetry, so it’s worth summarising the content of the poem. And the best way to offer a summary of a John Donne poem is, perhaps, to provide a rough paraphrase of what Donne is saying. So, here goes.
‘The Dream’: A Poem by John Donne
What if you were dreaming about someone, only to be woken up by the very person you had been dreaming about? This scenario is the focus of this lesser-known John Donne poem, ‘The Dream’, which – as in a number of other John Donne poems – sees the poet trying to seduce the woman to sleeping with him…
‘The Dream’ by John Donne
Dear love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream;
It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for fantasy,
Therefore thou wak’d’st me wisely; yet
My dream thou brok’st not, but continued’st it.
Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice
To make dreams truths, and fables histories;
Enter these arms, for since thou thought’st it best,
Not to dream all my dream, let’s act the rest.
A Short Analysis of John Donne’s ‘Good Friday 1613. Riding Westward’
On Donne’s Good Friday poem – analysed by Dr Oliver Tearle
As Good Friday approaches, we thought we’d share this Good Friday poem by the metaphysical poet John Donne (1572-1631), and offer a few brief notes towards an analysis of this poem, written in rhyming couplets, which sees Donne meditating on the spiritual aspects of Easter and the Crucifixion.
Good Friday 1613. Riding Westward
Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is’t, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.