As a writer concerned with both the intensely spiritual and the intensely physical, death was a natural focus of Donne's thought and work throughout his life; as a Christian, convinced of the reality of resurrection and salvation, death was in a sense the fixed point around which his world-view revolved. Donne's fixation with the body, with its physical substance, its relationship to the outside world and its role as an expression of the divine, relates powerfully and inevitably to his conception of the significance of the body's physical dissolution in death and the consequences of this for the soul (Selleck 150-1)
His satires dealt with human instincts, corruption in the legal system and the problems of true religion. (Honig, 37) Hence most of these satires dealt with secular problems
The act is seen as not being sinful. This is seen the verse "Thou know'st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead" (Donne)
While on the surface it seems similar, this is a very different purpose. The male makes fun of the female coyness and shyness noting that it is a pretense and that men can play this game as well (Marvell)
The first stanza sets up the comparison, while the second actually reveals precisely what is being compared. Donne first describes the love he shares with the object of his affection is biological, and thus sexual, terms when he asks: Alas ! alas ! who's injured by my love? What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd? Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground? When did my colds a forward spring remove? When did the heats which my veins fill Add one more to the plaguy bill? (Donne 1633) Donne uses these lines to ridicule the notion that his socially unacceptable relationship could cause any real harm while simultaneously using these hyperbolic images to relate the intense emotional importance of his love
Although the second stanza is the first time Donne actually describes the kind of love he is talking about, one must return to the first stanza in order to fully understand the extent of his argument, because it is in the first stanza that he proposes any number of other things people could do other than care about what he is doing, thus setting up the comparison of romantic love to the love of religion and the supposed love returned to his followers by the Christian god. Examining this stanza reveals some of what Judith Herz calls "Donne's syntax of desire […] of love, of God, of self," or put another way, the notion that love, whether physical, emotional, mental, or religious, is different for different people, and furthermore, than given iteration of love is no more or less legitimate than any other (at least within the usual cognitive and imaginative constraints placed upon someone living in 17th century England, making it somewhat more difficult to read Donne's poem as a defense of homosexuality in addition to his clearly robust defense of unmarried heterosexual relationships despite those critics arguing that "that in order to make Donne a figure for heterosexuality or emergent heterosexuality [one must] argue against Donne's poetry and prose to an unjustifiable extent") (Herz 2001, Bach 2005)
Should he fail to dissuade society from harping on about his relationship, Donne and his beloved will die, and even if their "sin" renders them "unfit for tomb or hearse," the usual memorials granted to the dead, then at least they will be "be fit for verse." Although in some ways this may be read "as a consolation for what the poet cannot do -- although the speaker cannot make history or build a monument, the small beauty of a sonnet or an urn can be as good as a tomb or chronicle," Donne is ultimately saying that recording their love in poem and song will actually be better than a physical monument because it will serve to canonize them twice over (West 2008)
As Michael Winkelman notes, "because [sighs, tears, and other outward expressions of emotion] reflect universal states of mind, rather than originating as some arbitrary, socially-constructed literary device [….] sighs and tears [are] fundamental to love poetry" (Winkelman 2009)
Metaphysical Wit Donne's metaphysical wit was most often displayed in his love poetry. This is brilliantly meshed with the paradoxical element in his poem "Canonization" (Brooks 48)
Sometimes this connection is so absurd that it is perceived as "violent." comparison is carried to the furthest boundaries, only limited by the imagination of the poet (Eliot 282)
In fact, throughout Donne's Holy Sonnets, there is a lack of the spontaneous passion found in his love poetry. Instead his religious poems are filled with a paradigm of effort (Gardner 133)
In fact, throughout Donne's Holy Sonnets, there is a lack of the spontaneous passion found in his love poetry. Instead his religious poems are filled with a paradigm of effort (Gardner 133)
Donne also loses his powerful political position as a result of this and years of financial hardship follow. The couple is however extremely happy together and the death of Donne's wife in 1617 left him with seven surviving children from a total of twelve (Winny 35)