Selected Poems Book

An interesting body of work. In the way many poets used (and still, somehow, use) their classical education as source of allusive plunder, Donne drew extensively from his training in scholastic philosophy and theology at a time when, as this book's introduction points out, these ideas were already a bit out of fashion. But he used them in surprising ways, as in the love poems of the "Songs and Sonnets" section of this book. They are frequently described as "sensual" but this doesn't really do them justice. In the famous poem "The Flea," for example, a flea bites the poet and his lover in succession, mingling their essences and providing the poet with ammunition for a highly metaphysical attempt at seduction.

But as anyone who was raised Catholic could predict, the boldest sensuality is found the devotional poems. Witness:

At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scatter'd bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there; here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou'hadst seal'd my pardon with thy blood.

The mounting crescendo of the lines addressed to the angels, and the sudden, uncertain calm as the speaker addresses God.