Born into a Roman Catholic family in London in 1572, John Donne was born at the pinnacle of Renaissance poetry. At four years of age, his father, a well-to-do ironmonger died suddenly, leaving three children to be raised by their mother, taught by the Jesuits.

John Donne's literary career can be separated into three distinct periods of his life. The first period consisted of "Jack Donne" spending his considerable inheritance on womanizing, on books, at the theatre, and on travels. He spent time with fellow poets, Christopher Brooke and Ben Jonson. I have selected Go and Catch a Falling Star to represent this time in Donne's literary life. It was written before his writing gave way to more sober poetic expressions, during a time of rakish, amorous--and misogynistic--expressions. Misogyny can be found in almost all the poets of the time, but it is most caustic in Donne. In Go and Catch a Falling Star, Donne gives a catalogue of impossibilities, including finding, "a woman true, and fair." These highly ornate poems were probably the most important of Donne's career because they established him as the first Metaphysical poet.

Ben Jonson first coined the term when he complained of Donne's yoking together of incongruous ideas. The metaphorical analogies transcended apparent physical resemblance, thus they were unnecessarily Metaphysical. This label, intended to insult, became, like Methodism and Impressionism, the standard term.

John Donne's feelings about women changed after he fell in love with his employer's niece, seventeen-year-old Anne More. He loved her in secret, and in 1601 he married her in secret. Anne's father, Sir George More, Lieutenant of the Tower, had Donne thrown into Fleet Prison for some weeks. Donne summarized the experience, "John Donne, Anne Donne, undone." Donne sacrificed his own worldly hopes for the love of a woman. After this, he wrote some of the most sincere love poetry ever written. I have selected The Ecstasy to represent these poems.

In The Ecstasy, we see that love between a husband and wife is a blend of the spiritual and the physical. The first three stanzas describe a beginning that progresses slowly--the lacing of the lovers fingers, the gazes of longing--not a burning, lustful adultery that's end is, "a dull sublunary love which cannot admit absence, because it both remove those things which elemented it," (A Valediction Forbidding Mourning) The fourth stanza warns of the danger of a "battle of the sexes," but the souls never come to that state because they have chosen not to continue with the seduction until they are one "alber soul," having greater strength than the two separate souls combined. Instead of falling into passion, the lovers experience a marriage of the souls, described in the fourth through the twelfth stanzas. They are so relaxed, so peaceful, they do not even speak as they achieve a spiritual consummation of their union. They are now truly one soul; the marriage before the physical consummation. The lovers can safely proceed now, and only now, to physical intimacy without danger of a "dull, sublunary love," the danger of bodily attributes being the totality known of the "love object". The power of their spiritual union precludes that. The couple's bodies provide, like baptism, an outward demonstration of an inward change, hence, "Love's mysteries in souls do grow, but yet the body is his book."

In 1615, Donne entered the ministry. This career necessitated a change from his more than slightly frank amorous poems to his devout Holy Sonnets. His passion for the Lord seemed as all-consuming as his passion for his wife. He demonstrates a profound love of God. A consistent theme through many of his Holy Sonnets is we cannot will salvation through self-action, but through abandonment to the Lord. One of the most eloquent preachers of his day, Donne saw several of his sermons published in his lifetime. He was made a royal chaplain and eventually made the dean of St. Paul’s, a position he held until his death.

Tragically, Anne Donne died in 1617 after giving birth to their twelfth child, changing Donne's poetry for the last time. He became morbid, obsessed with death and suicide. In his despair, he wrote Holy Sonnet 17. We can still hear Donne's voice--but the voice is aged, experienced, saddened, and repentant.

Go and Catch a Falling Star
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

The Ecstasy
Where, like a pillow on a bed
A pregnant bank swell'd up to rest
The violet's reclining head,
Sat we two, one another's best.
Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm, which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;
So to'intergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As 'twixt two equal armies fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls (which to advance their state
Were gone out) hung 'twixt her and me.
And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.
If any, so by love refin'd
That the soul's language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,
He (though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same)
Might thence a new concoction take
And part far purer than he came.
This ecstasy doth unperplex,
We said, and tell us what we love;
We see by this it was not sex,
We see we saw not what did move;
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love these mix'd souls doth mix again
And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size,
(All which before was poor and scant)
Redoubles still, and multiplies.
When love with one another so
Interinanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are compos'd and made,
For th' atomies of which we grow
Are souls. whom no change can invade.
But oh alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They'are ours, though they'are not we; we are
The intelligences, they the spheres.
We owe them thanks, because they thus
Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses' force to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.
On man heaven's influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air;
So soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.
As our blood labors to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot which makes us man,
So must pure lovers' souls descend
T' affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.
To'our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love reveal'd may look;
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change, when we'are to bodies gone.

Holy Sonnet XVII
Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt
To nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravished,
Wholly in heavenly things my mind is set.
Here the admiring her my mind did whet
To seek thee, God; so streams do show the head;
But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.
But why should I beg more love, whenas thou
Dost woo my soul, for hers off'ring all thine,
And dost not only fear lest I allow
My love to saints and angels, things divine,
But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt
Lest the world, flesh, yea devil put thee out.

Amy Arden is the Dusty Shelf editor.