John Donne Quotes - LC English

A sinne, nor shame, nor losse of maidenhead

Flea: Speaker is trying to convince his lover that if they sleep together, it will not be a sin - she will not lose her virginity or reputation.

Pamper’d swells with blood made of two / is more than wee could doe

Flea: The flea drank their blood – Donne compares the blood mixing in the flea to the pair sleeping together

This flea is you and I, and this / marriage bed and marriage temple

Flea: They are united in the flea (marriage); he takes it as far to say the flea *is* them.

Kill mee / selfe murder / three sinnes in killing three

Flea: He says if she kills the flea, she kills all three of them

Purpled thy \[her\] nail

Flea: The lover kills the flea

Thou triumph’st now / \[however\] thy self, nor mee the weaker now

Flea: He changes his argument – the flea is dead, but they did not die, nor did their love. Sleeping together would not kill them either.

Goe / Get / Tell / Teach / finde

GCFS: The poet reciting a series of terse, impossible instructions

Catche a falling starre / Who cleft the Devils foot / heare Mermades singing

GCFS: Things the speaker believes he will find or learn before a faithful woman

Pilgrimage / Ride ten thousand daies and nights / No where / Lives a woman true, and faire

GCFS: Even if you travel everywhere, you’ll never find a loyal woman

Though shee were true, when you met her / shee / Will bee / False

GCFS: Even if a woman is loyal, one day she will be disloyal

All kings / All glory of honors, beauty, wits / The sun it selfe / Is elder by a year / One another saw

TA: It’s been a year since he met his lover

Only our love hath no decay / first, last, everlasting day

TA: Their love will last forever

Death were no divorce / souls where nothing dwells but love

TA: Death will not separate them - their spirituality saves the love from dying with them

When bodies to their graves, soules from their graves remove

TA: Removed from the prison of a body / the speaker twists theology to make their love eternal

Let us love nobily / Yeares and yeares unto yeares / this is the second of our raigne

TA: Love like royals do, forever and with each other, they are together for 2 years so far

Busie old foole

TSR: The sun is waking the couple - surprising opening

Love all alike, no season knows, nor clyme, nor houres, dayes, moneths

TSR: Their love is above their ordinary activities, doesn’t obey the ordinary rules or concern itself with fragments of time - indifferent to the time of year or weather

But that I would not lose her sight so long

TSR: If he closes his eyes, he loses sight of his lover, which he doesn’t want to do

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere / this bed, thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere

TSR: Speaker is inviting the sun in, making the bedroom the entire world, as if the sun orbits around them

Bend / Your force to break, blowe, burn and make me new / That I may rise and stand

BMH: Requesting spiritual assault - God is being too kind. Violent opening - alliteration of “B” creates vocal equivalent to this brutality. In order to rise up, he must be knocked down

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d vain / But am betroth'd unto your enemy

BMH: Change in mood to a frustrated lover. He has been captured by the devil and can’t escape or defend against the devil’s attacks. He needs god to save him

Imprison / Except you ravish me

BMH: In order to be released from his relationship with the Devil, he wants God to imprison him. He cannot be free until God has made him his slave' and ravished him.