Metaphysical Poetry

John Donne, along with similar but distinct poets such as George Herbert, Andrew
Marvell, and Henry Vaughn, developed a poetic style in which philosophical and spiritual
subjects were approached with reason and often concluded in paradox. These groups of
writers were together known as Metaphysical poets. Metaphysical concerns are the
common subject of their poetry, which investigates the world by rational discussion of its
phenomena rather than by intuition or mysticism. DRYDEN was the first to apply the
term to 17th-century poetry when, in 1693, he criticized Donne: 'He affects the
Metaphysics...'  He disapproved of Donne's stylistic excesses, particularly his
extravagant conceits. JOHNSON consolidated the argument in THE LIVES OF THE POETS,
where he noted (with reference to Cowley) that 'about the beginning of the seventeenth
century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets'.

The Main characteristics of the metaphysical school of poetry are:

1. Novelty in thought and expression, 2. Union of feeling and intellect, 3. Display

of learning and Scholarship, 4. Using far fetched images (conceits)

The Metaphysical Poets rejects the conventions of Elizabethan love poetry, especially
the Petrarchan conceits that, by 1600, had become clichés. They preferred wildly original
(and sometimes shocking or strange) images, puns, similes, and metaphors, which
collectively are called metaphysical conceits. The metaphysical poet often describes a
dramatic event rather than simple meditation, daydreams, or passing thoughts. The
metaphysical poets employed inconsistent or striking verse--often imitating the rhythmic
patterns of everyday speech, rather than attempting to create perfect meter in the manner later
favored by neoclassical poets. Basically, the metaphysical poets would not let metrical form
interfere with the development of a line of thought. The poem often expresses an argument--
often using wild flights of logic and unusual comparisons. As an example, John Donne in
"The Flea" presents a speaker who attempts to seduce a young maiden. The basis of his
argument is the comparison between sex and a flea-bite. In "Holy Sonnet 14," Donne
fashions a prayer in which he compares God to a rapist and himself to a besieged city.

Metaphysical Conceit is an elaborate or unusual comparison--especially one using

unlikely metaphors, simile, hyperbole, and contradiction. Before the beginning of the
seventeenth century, the term conceit was a synonym for "thought" and roughly
equivalent to "idea" or "concept." It gradually came to denote a fanciful idea or a
particularly clever remark. In literary terms, the word denotes a fairly elaborate figure of
speech, especially an extended comparison involving
unlikely metaphors, similes,imagery, hyperbole, and oxymora. One of the most
famous conceits is John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," a poem in
which Donne compares two souls in love to the points on a geometer's compass.
 John Donne (1572 – 1631)

THE CANONIZATION.
by John Donne

FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ;         By us ; we two being one, are it ;
    Or chide my palsy, or my gout ; So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit. 
    My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout ;     We die and rise the same, and prove 
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ;     Mysterious by this love.
        Take you a course, get you a place, 
        Observe his Honour, or his Grace ; We can die by it, if not live by love, 
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face      And if unfit for tomb or hearse
    Contemplate ; what you will, approve,      Our legend be, it will be fit for verse ; 
    So you will let me love. And if no piece of chronicle we prove, 
        We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms ; 
Alas ! alas ! who's injured by my love?          As well a well-wrought urn becomes
    What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd? The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs, 
    Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?      And by these hymns, all shall approve 
When did my colds a forward spring remove?      Us canonized for love ;
        When did the heats which my veins fill 
        Add one more to the plaguy bill? And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love 
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still      Made one another's hermitage ;
    Litigious men, which quarrels move,      You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage ;
    Though she and I do love. Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove 
        Into the glasses of your eyes ;
Call's what you will, we are made such by love ;          So made such mirrors, and such spies,
    Call her one, me another fly, That they did all to you epitomize—
    We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,      Countries, towns, courts beg from above 
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.      A pattern of your love."
        The phoenix riddle hath more wit 

This is one of the famous love poems of Donne in which he canonizes the lovers. The lovers
reach sainthood through love. Here, Donne rejects worldly arguments against love which in its
otherworldliness is compared to religious experience and leads eventually to the lovers canonization
as saints.

The poet asks the world to stop advising him against love. The poet wants to be left alone so
that he may love in peace. The world may blame him for other shortcomings (other than his
tendency to love): his palsy, his gout, his "five grey hairs," or his ruined fortune. He admonishes the
addressee to look to his own mind and his own wealth and to think of his position and copy the
other nobles ("Observe his Honour, or his Grace, / Or the King's real, or his stamped face /
Contemplate.") The speaker does not care what the addressee says or does, as long as he lets him
love.

The poet affirms that his love is perfectly harmless, so that no one in this world can object to
it. No one is injured by the poet’s love. He says that his sighs have not drowned ships, his tears have
not flooded land, his colds have not chilled spring, and the heat of his veins has not added to the list
of those killed by the plague. Soldiers still find wars and lawyers still find litigious men, regardless of
the emotions of the speaker and his lover

The poet says that he and his love have been made what they are by love. They may appear
insignificant in the world’s eyes. They may be called flies. At the same time, and that they are also
like candles ("tapers"), which burn by feeding upon their own selves ("and at our own
cost die"). In them, there is a combination of the Eagle (which symbolizes strength) and
the Dove (which symbolizes gentleness).

The two of them, being one are the phoenix. Their two sexes fit together so
perfectly as to form a being of no sex and after they die they come to life again and
become the same being that they were before, just as the phoenix rises from its own
ashes. Their sexual union elevates them to heights of spiritual happiness, creating a new
relationship between them which has been purged of all sensuality. Here Donne affirms
that he and his mistress are continually revived after being consumed in the flame of
passion. Thus their love makes them a mystery worth of reverence.

The poet says that they can die by love even if they cannot live by it. If the legend of their
love will not prove a fit subject for history, it will be fit for poetry Even if they do not find a place in
the chronicles; they will live in the substantial sonnets. Their love-songs will form the hymns of a
new religion of which they will be the saints and they will be worshipped as the patterns of perfect
love.
A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER.
by John Donne

I.
WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
    Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
    And do run still, though still I do deplore?
        When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
                    For I have more.
II.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
    Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
    A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
        When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
                    For I have more.
III.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
    My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
    Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
        And having done that, Thou hast done ;
                    I fear no more.

This religious poem was written by Donne during his convalescence after the serious illness
which attacked him in 1623. The illness was so serious that he was expected to die, but he
recovered. This poem is therefore a kind of thanks giving to God.
Donne begins the poem by praying to god to forgive him for the original sin which has
inherited. He begs God’s forgiveness for the sin which continues to corrupt him though he always
repents of it. When God has freed Donne form this sin, HE has not done His work, for there are many
more sins from which the poet has to be freed. Here Donne is punning on his own name: ‘done’ and
‘Donne’ have a similar sound. In Donne’s time such playing of words was not considered inconsistent
with the most solemn thoughts.
Donne confesses that he has provoked others to commit sin. For this sin of leading others
into sin, he earnestly begs God’s forgiveness. According to Helen Gardner, Donne is here referring to
his sin of writing licentious poetry in his earlier days. His poetic style was copied by many others.
Donne next refers to the sin which he avoided for a year or two, but committed on an extensive
scale for a period of 20 years. This may refer to his many short lived affairs with women during his
earlier days. For this sin also he appeals to God to forgive him. Even when God has done His work of
freeing the poet from this particular sin, He will not have done His work fully, for, Donne has more
sins for which he has to pray for God’s pardon.
In the concluding stanza, Donne refers to a cardinal sin of his, namely, the sin of fear. He
fears that when the thread of his life is cut, he will perish on the shore. From this, it is clear that
Donne’s faith in God is not yet assured. His fear is that in the pangs of death, ‘an horror of great
darkness’ may fall upon him as it fell upon Abraham and that his faith may fall and he himself may be
cast away by God. But he derives comfort from the thought that God’s son will shine upon him as he
has been doing till now. This will remove all fear from the poet’s heart. Donne constantly uses the
sun as a type of God’s mercy. That mercy is manifested in his son and a pun is intended here. Having
shown mercy to Donne, God had done His work fully and Donne has to no more fear in his heart.
Thus the last stanza contains an affirmation of the poet’s faith in God and his hope that he will
receive God’s mercy at the end of this life.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning 

By John Donne 

1 
As virtuous men pass mildly away, 
    And whisper to their souls to go,  
Whilst some of their sad friends do say 
    The breath goes now, and some say, No:
Good men die peacefully because they lived a life that pleased God. They accept death without complaining, saying it is
time for their souls to move on to eternity. Meanwhile, some of their sad friends at the bedside acknowledge death as
imminent, and some say, no, he may live awhile longer. 

2 
So let us melt, and make no noise, 
    No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,  
'Twere profanation of our joys 
    To tell the laity our love.
Well, Anne, because I will be in France and other countries for a time while you remain home in England, we must accept
our separation in the same way that virtuous dying men quietly accept the separation of their souls from their bodies.
While the physical bond that unites us melts, we must not cry storms of tears. To do so would be to debase our love,
making it depend entirely on flesh, as does the love of so many ordinary people (laity) for whom love does not extend
beyond physical attraction. 

3 
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears, 
    Men reckon what it did and meant,  
But trepidation of the spheres, 
    Though greater far, is innocent.
Earthquakes (moving of th' earth) frighten people, who wonder at the cause and the meaning of them. However, the
movements of the sun and other heavenly bodies (trepidation of the spheres) cause no fear, for such movements are
natural and harmless. They bring about the changes of the seasons. 

4 
Dull sublunary lovers' love 
    (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit  
Absence, because it doth remove 
    Those things which elemented it.
You and I are like the heavenly bodies; our movements–our temporary separations–cause no excitement. On the other
hand, those who unite themselves solely through the senses and not also through the soul are not like the heavenly bodies.
They inhabit regions that are sublunary (below the moon) and cannot endure movements that separate. 

5 
But we by a love so much refined 
    That our selves know not what it is,  
Inter-assurèd of the mind, 
    Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
By contrast, our love is so refined, so otherworldly, that it can still survive without the closeness of eyes, lips, and hands. 

6 
Our two souls therefore, which are one, 
    Though I must go, endure not yet  
A breach, but an expansion, 
    Like gold to aery thinness beat.
The point is this: Even though our bodies become separated and must live apart for a time in different parts of the world,
our souls remain united. In fact, the spiritual bond that unites us actually expands; it is like gold which, when beaten with a
hammer, widens and lengthens.  

7 
If they be two, they are two so 
    As stiff twin compasses are two;  
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show 
    To move, but doth, if th' other do.
Anne, you and I are like the pointed legs of a compass (pictured at right in a photograph
provided courtesy of Wikipedia), used to draw circles and arcs. 

8 
And though it in the centre sit, 
    Yet when the other far doth roam,  
It leans and hearkens after it, 
    And grows erect, as that comes home.
One pointed leg, yours, remains fixed at the center. But when the other pointed leg, mine, moves in a circle or an arc, your
leg also turns even though the point of it remains fixed at the center of my circle. Your position there helps me complete
my circle so that I end up where I began. 

9 
Such wilt thou be to me, who must 
    Like th' other foot, obliquely run;  
Thy firmness makes my circle just, 
    And makes me end where I begun.
Donne continues the metaphor begun in Stanza 7, in which he compares himself and his wife to the legs of a compass.
Because the leg of Anne's compass remains firmly set in the center of the circle, she enables the leg of her husband's
compass to trace a circle and return to the place from which he embarked.

Summary

The speaker explains that he is forced to spend time apart from his lover, but before he leaves, he tells
her that their farewell should not be the occasion for mourning and sorrow. In the same way that virtuous men die
mildly and without complaint, he says, so they should leave without “tear-floods” and “sigh-tempests,” for to
publicly announce their feelings in such a way would profane their love. The speaker says that when the earth
moves, it brings “harms and fears,” but when the spheres experience “trepidation,” though the impact is greater, it
is also innocent. The love of “dull sublunary lovers” cannot survive separation, but it removes that which
constitutes the love itself; but the love he shares with his beloved is so refined and “Inter-assured of the mind”
that they need not worry about missing “eyes, lips, and hands.”

Though he must go, their souls are still one, and, therefore, they are not enduring a breach, they are
experiencing an “expansion”; in the same way that gold can be stretched by beating it “to aery thinness,” the soul
they share will simply stretch to take in all the space between them. If their souls are separate, he says, they are
like the feet of a compass: His lover’s soul is the fixed foot in the center, and his is the foot that moves around it.
The firmness of the center foot makes the circle that the outer foot draws perfect: “Thy firmness makes my circle
just, / And makes me end, where I begun.”

Metaphor

.......Donne relies primarily on extended metaphors to convey his message. First, he compares his
separation from his wife to the separation of a man's soul from his body when he dies (first stanza).
The body represents physical love; the soul represents spiritual or intellectual love. While Donne and
his wife are apart, they cannot express physical love; thus, they are like the body of the dead man.
However, Donne says, they remain united spiritually and intellectually because their souls are one.
So, Donne continues, he and his wife should let their physical bond "melt" when they part (line 5).  
.......He follows that metaphor with others, saying they should not cry sentimental "tear-floods" or
indulge in "sigh-tempests" (line 6) when they say farewell. Such base sentimentality would cheapen
their relationship. He also compares himself and his wife to celestial spheres, such as the sun and
others stars, for their love is so profound that it exists in a higher plane than the love of  husbands and
wives whose relationship centers solely on physical pleasures which, to be enjoyed, require that the
man and woman always remain together, physically.  
.......Finally, Donne compares his relationship with his wife to that of the two legs of a drawing
compass. Although the legs are separate components of the compass, they are both part of the same
object. The legs operate in unison. If the outer leg traces a circle, the inner leg–though its point is
fixed at the center–must pivot in the direction of the outer leg. Thus, Donne says, though he and his
wife are separated, like the legs of the compass, they remain united because they are part of the
same soul.

George Herbert

The Collar

Henry Vaughan

The Retreat

Andrew Marvell

To his Coy Mistress

Mimesis and Fancy

MIMESIS: Mimesis is usually translated as "imitation" or "representation," though

the concept is much more complex than that and doesn't translate easily into English. It is an
imitation or representation of something else rather than an attempt to literally duplicate the
original. For instance, Aristotle in The Poetics defined tragedy as "the imitation [mimesis] of
an action." In his sense, both poetry and drama are attempts to take an instance of human
action and represent or re-present its essence while translating it into a new "medium" of
material. For example, a play about World War II is an attempt to take the essence of an
actual, complex historical event involving millions of people and thousands of square miles
over several years and recreate that event in a simplified representation involving a few dozen
people in a few thousand square feet over a few hours. The play would be a mimesis of that
historic event using stage props, lighting, and individual actors to convey the sense of what
World War II was to the audience. In the same way, the process of mimesis might involve
creating a film about World War II (translating the event into images projected onto a flat
screen or monitor using chemical images on a strip of photosynthetic film), or writing a poem
about World War II would constitute an attempt at distilling that meaning into syllables,
stress, verse, and diction. Picasso might attempt to embody warfare as a montage of
destruction--his painting Guernica is the result. The degree to which each form of art
accurately embodies the essence of its subject determines (for many classical theorists of art)
the degree of its success.

Additionally, mimesis may involve ecphrasis--the act of translating art from one type

of media into another. A classical musician or composer might be entranced by an earlier bit
of folkloric art, the legend of William Tell. He attempts to imitate or represent the stirring
emotions of that story by creating a stirring song that has the same effect; thus, the famous
"The William Tell Overture" results. A story has been translated into a musical score. It is
also possible to attempt mimesis of one medium into the same medium. For instance,
American musician Aaron Copland was inspired by the simplicity of Quaker music, so he
attempted to re-create that music mimetically in "Appalachian Spring," much like he earlier
attempted to mimetically capture the American spirit in "Fanfare for the Common

FANCY: Before the 19th Century, the word fancy meant roughly the same thing
as imagination as opposed to the mental processes of reason, logic, and memory. The
Romantic poets, however, made a pivotal distinction between the two terms that proved
integral in their theories of creativity. They used fancy to refer to the mental process in which
memories or sensory perceptions are jumbled together to create new chimerical ideas. This
process was similar but inferior to the higher mental faculty of imagination, which in its
highest form, would create completely new ideas and entirely novel images rather than
merely reassemble memories and sensory impressions in a different combination. Coleridge,
in chapter thirteen of Biographia Literaria (1817), suggests that "Fancy . . . has no other
counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of
Memory emancipated from the order of time and space." The fancy was limited to taking
already-assembled ideas, images, and memories, and then reassembling them without altering
or improving the components. Imagination, however, produced truly original work.
Imagination was seen as (as Coleridge says) "essentially vital," functioning less like the
Fancy's mechanical sorting and instead growing in a more organic manner. He claims
imagination "generates and produces forms of its own," and it is capable of merging
opposites together in a new synthesis. He claims: "imagination . . . reveals itself in the
balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities of sameness, with difference; of
the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image" [sic]. Hence, imagination assimilates
unlike things to create a new unity. This unity would be constituted of living, interdependent
parts that could not function in a literary manner independent from the organic form of the
whole, an idea that proved quite important to the New Critics of the early twentieth-century.

Many lesser critics of the late 19th Century misunderstood Coleridge, and they used
the word fancy in reference to the process of producing a light-hearted, simple, or fanciful
poetry and reserve the term imagination for more serious, passionate, or intense poetry.
However, for the original Romantic critics and poets, the distinction in terminology marked
two different types of creativity. They valued imaginative creativity more than fanciful
creativity regardless of whether the poetry was serious or light-hearted.

The Comedy of Humours

The comedy of humours refers to a genre of dramatic comedy that focuses on
a character or range of characters appear
as the embodiment of stereotypical "types" of people,
each character having the physiological and behavioral traits associated with a specific humor
in the human body. The majority of the cast consists of such stock characters.

In ancient Greece, Hippocrates postulated that four bodily humors or liquids - blood,
phlegm, black bile (or tears), and yellow bile (or choler) - existed in the body corresponding
to the four elements existing in matter. These four liquids determined a human's health and
psychology. After Hippocrates, Galen introduced a new aspect, that of four basic
temperaments reflecting the humors: the sanguine (buoyant type); the phlegmatic, (sluggish
type); the choleric, (angry and quick-tempered type); and the melancholic (depressed type).
The theory found its strongest advocates among the comedy writers, notably Ben Jonson and
his followers, who used humor characters to illustrate various modes of behavior.
Comedy of humours is a kind of comedy in which characters behave according to their
respective humours. (Humour means the four fluids of human body: 1.phlegm 2.blood 3.lymph
4.bile.) Example: Ben Jonson's 'Every Man in his Humour'.

Elizabethan Sonnets and Sonneteers

Shakespearian Sonnet

Petrarchan sonnet