John Donne

[selina]

Hello.

I was wondering if anyone could tell me where I could find some analysis on the following Donne poems:
To His Mistress Going to Bed
The Relic
The Anniversary
His Picture
At the round earth's imagined corners.

I'm having difficultly finding anything on these poems on the web, as they don't seem to be some of his most common ones. I have my Literature exam in three days, so if anyone could help me, I'd be very grateful. Thank you.

[ShoutGrace]

You will find resources on The Luminarium (http://www.luminarium.org/lumina.htm), a wonderful website, and one of my favourites.

I personally have read only The Relic and To His Mistress Going to Bed, so I may be able to give you rudimentary (and questionable) help as far as those two are concerned.

There are some other Donne fans lurking on these forums, I'm sure.

[selina]

Thank you for the quick reply and for the link. :)

I might add to the list 'A Hymn to Christ' and 'The Good Morrow' I seemed to have forgotten those.

Any assistance would be helpful. Mainly what I'm having difficulty with is not with understanding what the poems mean, but how they work in terms of language/imagery/metaphor. Yes.. leaving it to the last moment was not a good idea.. lol.

[Sumaya]

sparknotes should have some - if not here's some analysis on the good morrow.

‘The Good Morrow’ basically means ‘the good morning’ - it is a poem organised around 2 main metaphors: lovers ‘waking’ to a new life together, and of a new ‘world’ made by their mutual love. Rhyme: ababddd. Note the use of rhetorical questions.

The first stanza finds the poet wondering what they had done ‘till we loved’. Look at the words ‘sucked and ‘country’ – replace the ‘s’ with an ‘f’ (the letters s and f looked similar in those day)and listen to the sound of ‘country’ (‘cont-ry’) – a tad obscene, but a clever pun. ‘Seven sleepers den’ is a religious connotation (the cave in which 7 Christians were trapped in, alive, as they tried to escape persecution – they woke up many years alter and found Christianity was the accepted religion). The stanza concludes that if the poet ever saw a beauty it was ‘but a dream of thee’ – cute! It means any woman he wanted was but a shadow of the reality of her.

The 2nd stanza is set in the present, where the lover’s are waking. It introduces the idea that love removes the need to see other people, other places; love ‘controls’, so one room becomes ‘everywhere’. The lovers profess that they are not interested in the newfound lands, they are only interested in the world of mutual love they share – it’s a complex idea, but very pretty idea.

The third stanza describes the reflection of their eyes in each others eyes – ‘true plaine hearts’ are shown in each others faces, reinforcing the idea they are looking at one another. The poet then describes their world – him one hemisphere and her the other, containing no ‘sharp north’ nor a ‘declining west’, making one whole, perfect world of mutual love. Very strong imagery. ‘Whatever dies, was not mixed equally’ alluding to medieval idea of Hippocrates theory of balance. The poem concludes that their love is ‘so alike’ that their love cannot die.

Hope this was helpful!

[Eels]

Here's what I know about 2 poems ;)

-The anniversary-
This baroque poem really shows what the people in those centuries felt and thought. This is a really pessimistic view on life. During the baroque, there were lots of new disoveries, like those of Galilei and Newton, but instead of making people more optimistic, they were frightened and insecure, because their old securities were swept away. The style is also baroque because he used special words and a special style.

-To his mistress going to bed-
This poem is a traditional "blazon" (description of the body of a woman). A mistress in those days was just a woman you loved, it could also be your wife. Donne describes her and uses a lot of "conceits" (typical for metaphysical poets like John Donne: they search a difficult metaphor and then try to prove that the metaphor is justified). When he compares his wife to America for instance ("Oh America, my newfound land") he uses knowledge of overseas explorations to make a comparison. What he means, is that he wants to uncover his wife (he is describing uncovering all her clothes) like the travellers uncovered/discovered America. The last sentence "What needs't thou have more covering than a men" also is an allusion on this theme of uncovering, but also means other things (e.g. the only thing you need on top of you is a man ;))

Hope this helps you. I know To his mistress going to bed relatively well, so don't hesitate to ask further questions!

Eels