Themes of John Donne Poems

                     Themes of John Donne Poems



The Good-morrow

The central theme in The Good-morrow is the nature and completeness of the lovers' world. Donne takes the everyday idea that lovers live in a world of their own with little sense of reality, and turns it right round, so that it is the outside world that is unreal. The intensity of their love is sufficient to create its own reality. When they watch each other, it is not, as in the outside world, out of fear, but to complete themselves, as each one is half of the world needing the other half.

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Song: Go and catch a falling starre…

This is a poem by John Donne in which he argues that it is impossible to find a woman who is both attractive and faithful to the one man.


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The Sun Rising

In his poem, "The Sun Rising," Donne immerses the reader into his transmuted reality with an apostrophe to the "busy old fool, unruly sun" that "through curtains" calls upon him, seizing him from the bliss which "no season knows." This bliss, a passionate love, stimulates him to reinvent reality within the confines of his own mind, a wishful thinking from which he does not readily depart, much like a sleepy child clings to the consequences of a dream.

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Lovers Infiniteness

This closely reasoned poem deals with ‘Love’s riddles’, especially the riddle of whether we can ever love another person completely.

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“Air and Angels”

Love is represented as being something higher than human thought and comprehension. In “Air and Angels’ love is something that transcends the flesh and the human body is merely a vessel for this potent emotion. Love in this poem is not represented as a feeling that is strictly based on outside or shallow perceptions of beauty but rather, it is projected onto the object of the affection in a pure and spiritual sense.

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The Anniversarie

Most of us use anniversaries to celebrate. This poem, too, is a celebratory one, on the completion of the first year of a relationship.

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The Twickham Garden

Twicknam Garden could be seen not so much as a love poem as a complaint that the Countess of Bedford has not welcomed his efforts at securing her patronage.

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A Valediction: forbidding Mourning

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne was written to express his feelings for his lover. The poem talks about the feelings of love being so intense that nothing will ever dull the bond between the two souls.

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The Extassie

The ecstasy of love is clearly the major theme of The Extasie. Donne looks at the outward manifestations of it and its inner meaning. In fact, the understanding he gains is that a revelation has come of what true love is, which is quite different from his perception before. There is a place for sex and the physical, but only as an expression of a union of souls.

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The Funerall

The poet's jilted lover is warned that her woven hair bracelet (a Renaissance tradition) will still be worn by the lover in his grave where, thereby, "I bury some of you" (24)--sweet

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