No Man Is an Island

"Holy Sonnet 10" by John Donne (1633)

While academics believe that Donne wrote his poem in 1609, during the period when his writings took on a more religious overtone, the text wasn’t published until after Donne’s death. The poem is an apostrophe to Death, directly addressing this personified being and admonishing them for thinking they could ever win against the promise of salvation. Death is not the end for those who have gone before or those who are yet to fall to its clutches. In the end, “Death, thou shalt die.”

"The Flea" by John Donne (1681)

“The Flea” is another of Donne’s poems published posthumously in 1633. The poem is among Donne’s most famous for his outlandish, unprecedented symbolism and extended metaphor. Labeled as an “erotic metaphysical poem,” the poem’s speaker describes how a flea can freely roam his mistress’s body, sucking her blood and mixing it with his. The flea’s bite is portrayed as sensual, bringing the speaker and his love as close together as any sexual encounter would. The speaker uses this argument to reduce the sinfulness of extramarital sex and to advocate for intimacy with his beloved despite societal, religious, or familial restrictions. “The Flea” is included amongst the love poems from the first half of Donne’s writing career.

"A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne (1807)

Like the previous two examples of his poetry, Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” was published in 1633, though it was written in 1611 or 1612. The poem presents what is possibly Donne’s most famously creative, dynamic, expansive use of metaphor, as the concept of love finds comparisons ranging from a dying breath to a flood, to celestial bodies, to alchemical gold, to the spiral drawn by a drafting compass. One of Donne’s metaphysical poems, he wrote it for his wife before leaving on a trip to Europe. The poem describes the peaceful parting of lovers whose love is “so much refined” (like a precious element) that an ensuing absence will not diminish their love but increase it. They will return to one another, as always meant.