John Donne
John Donne
John Donnewas an English poet and a cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations...
rejection body
To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.
almost blood body eloquent might pure spoke
Her pure and eloquent blood / Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, / That one might almost say, her body thought.
bodies body call chastity honest inhumane integrity itself keeping kept lawful less modest purpose reason until virginity virtue willing yield
I call not that virginity a virtue, which resideth only in the bodies integrity; much less if it be with a purpose of perpetually keeping it: for then it is a most inhumane vice. - But I call that Virginity a virtue which is willing and desirous to yield itself upon honest and lawful terms, when just reason requireth; and until then, is kept with a modest chastity of body and mind.
joy soul body
Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys.
heaven soul body
Verse hath a middle nature: heaven keeps souls, The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrols.
again broke grave guest second
When my grave is broke up again / Some second guest to entertain.
love beauty sarcastic
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
call ghosts life
Yet call not this long life; but think that IAm, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die?
call ghosts
Yet call not this long life; but think that I Am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die?
met though till
Though she were true, when you met her,/ And last, till you write your letter, / Yet she / Will be / False, ere I come, to two, or three.
affect angels face knew loved thy twice worshipped
Twice or thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name; So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be
cute-love face knew loved sweet-love thy twice
Twice or thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name.
Be your own palace, or the world is your jail.
bodies far though
But O alas, so long, so far / Our bodies why do we forbear? / They're ours, though they're not we, we are / The intelligences, they the sphere.