JOHN DONNE

6th Year Poetry

Song: Go and catch a falling star

The poet argues that it is impossible to find a woman who is both beautiful and honest: “No where/Lives a woman true, and fair”. To demonstrate just how impossible it is to find such a woman, Donne lists a number of unusual tasks that are impossible to complete:

“Go and catch a falling star”Impregnate a mandrake rootTell him where time goesTell him who “cleft the Devil’s foot”Teach him to “hear mermaids singing”He asks to be made immune to envy, often represented by a

scorpionFind some benefit to being honest

The argument is that you are more likely to achieve any one of these impossible tasks than find a “woman true, and fair”

Song: Go and catch a falling star

In the second stanza the poet imagines someone with special powers (the ability to see invisible things and read people’s minds) travelling the world for “ten thousand days and nights”. Travelling until “snow white hairs on thee”.

Donne claims that such a person will see many strange and wonderful things on their travels and will have many takes to tell but they will not have found a “woman true, and fair”.

If the traveller does find such a woman he is to tell the poet and he would make the journey to see her: “Such a pilgrimage were sweet”. However, he only suggests the possibility of finding such a woman to collapse the hope again.

Song: Go and catch a falling star

Immediately he says he would not travel to see her even if she lived as close as next door: “I would not go; / Though at next door we might meet” because he is convinced even if she was “true” when the traveller found her and while he wrote to inform Donne, she will have been dishonest before the poet can count to three.

“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.

THEME: BEAUTY AND VIRTUE Donne states that it is impossible for a woman to be both beautiful and

trustworthy: “Nowhere lives a woman true, and fair”. Beautiful women by their nature are false and even if they appear to be honest, it is only a matter of time before their true nature is revealed.

The poem lists many strange and fantastical things in an effort to show how unlikely it is to find an honest and beautiful woman. Donne draws on folklore, tales of superstition and fantasy, when listing the series of impossible tasks in stanza one.

His reference to such tales suggests that the idea of a beautiful and honest woman is fantasy, something only found in fairy tales. The second stanza’s mention of “ten thousand days and nights” and “snow white” calls to mind fairy tales like ‘Snow White’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’.

LANGUAGE

Tone

The poet uses a cynical and disillusioned tone with its doubts about the possibility of ever finding a woman who is genuine and trustworthy.

The last stanza is particularly bitter and cynical as the poet first allows for the possibility of a woman being honest and beautiful only to say that she will prove false in no time at all.

Personification

In the second stanza “age” is personified. Age is said to “snow white hairs” on us as we age.

LANGUAGE

Imagery

The objects mentioned in the opening stanza appear to correspond with the treachery and beauty that the poet sees in women. The word “falling” in the opening lines suggests loss of faith in perfect love. The star, which Donne associates elsewhere with spiritual love, is here dropping from the heavens.

The word “falling” also calls to mind the biblical fall of man. The Bible tells how man fell from grace with God when Adam was persuaded by Eve to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge.

Mentions of the “Devil’s foot” suggests evil and treachery, as does the reference to “mermaid’s singing”. Mermaids are traditionally presented as beautiful creatures who use their charms to seduce men and destroy them.

The Flea

The poet is attempting to persuade a young lady into bed. The two of them, however, are not married.

The lady is concerned, therefore, that yielding to his advances will destroy her honour and virtue. This is especially true because she still has her “maidenhead”, or virginity.

Donne is writing at a time when women were all too often branded as dishonourable or immoral if they slept with a man outside of marriage.

The Flea The lady, then, resists the poet’s advances in order to preserve her honour, denying him

the pleasures of a sexual encounter.

The poet attempts to convince her how harmless or unimportant (“How little”) such an encounter would be. He does so by asking her to “mark” or consider a flea buzzing around the room:

The flea has sucked blood from the poet. Now it is sucking blood from the woman: “It sucked me first, and now sucks thee”.

Their blood has therefore been mixed together inside the flea’s body: “And in this flea our two bloods mingled be”. The flea is now filled with “one blood made of two”.

Their bodily fluids have been “mingled” just as they would be in sexual intercourse. And yet no sin or shameful act has been committed. The mistress’ honour is still intact: “Thou

knows’t this cannot be said / A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead”

The mistress, therefore, has no reason to resist the poet’s advances. Sleeping with him will prove no more sinful than being bitten by the flea. In fact, because their blood has been combined it’s as if they’ve already slept together.

The Flea

The poet’s envy of the flea:

The flea delighted in its physicality, pampering itself by feasting on blood until it’s bloated and swollen: “And pampered swells with one blood made of two”

It indulges in physical pleasure without feeling the need for long-term commitment like that of marriage: “Yet this enjoys before it woo”. The poet wishes he and his mistress could be more like the flea, that they too could enjoy the pleasures of the flesh before they are married: “And this, alas, is more than we would do”

The Flea

The flea as a marriage temple

The poet claims that the mingling of their bloods in the flea’s body is a kind of marriage. He suggests that it is a more meaningful and profound union than any conventional marriage: “Where we almost, nay more than married are.”

Since they are already married, according to the poet’s logic, she should have no objection to sleeping with him.

The flea’s body is the temple where their marriage has been celebrated: “this / Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is”. It has become, therefore, a holy place.

The flea, he declares, is a church with “living” and “jet” black walls where he and he lady have been “cloistered” or sheltered.

The FleaThe poet asks his mistress to spare the flea

The mistress threatens to kill the flea. The poet, however, asks her to restrain herself: “Oh stay”.

The flea, having sucked their blood, contains a little piece of each of them: “This flea is you and I”. She will kill not only the flea, but all of them, so if she spares it, they all will be spared: “three lives in one flea spare”.

If she kills the flea she will commit three sins: she will murder the poet, or at least the part of him within the flea; she will commit the sin of suicide, because part of her is inside the flea and she will commit the sin of sacrilege, the destruction of a sacred place, which he argues the flea has become.

The FleaThe mistress triumphs?

The mistress ignores the poet’s plea for mercy and acts in a “Cruel and sudden” manner.

She kills the flea whose only crime, according to the poet, was taking a little of her bodily fluid: “In what could this flea guilty be, / Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?”

She swats the flea and her nail is “Purpled” with its blood. The mistress laughs in triumph.

She has disproved the poet’s argument in favour of sparing the flea’s life. She has killed the poet and yet no harm has come to her or the poet: “Yet thou triumph’st, and says’t that thou / Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now.”

The Flea

The mistress triumphs?

The poet, however, attempts to turn her triumph against her. It’s true that she has not damaged herself but he argues that this proves her fears about sleeping with him are false: “then learn how false, fears be”

In the killing of the flea she lost nothing of her life force. Similarly, in giving into his advances little or nothing of her honour will “waste” away.

THEME: Cynical SeductionThis is a witty and cynical poem of seduction.

The poet uses a series of bizarre yet strangely ingenious arguments in an attempt to talk his mistress into bed.

The poem presents a very one-dimensional view of love. The poet’s only goal is sexual satisfaction. We get little sense of any romantic attachment between the poet and his mistress.

The poet seems to have a cynical disregard for marriage and commitment, envying the flea’s ability to enjoy itself “before it woo”.

THEME: VirtueThis is one of several poems in which Donne deals with the notion of virtue or sexual honour.

In this poem the mistress will not give in to his advances. She is conscious of how her honour will “waste” away is she does. To sleep with is man out of wedlock would be a “sin” and a “shame”. She would compromise her virtue.

The poet nonetheless tries his hardest to overcome her objections to making love with him, though he is ultimately unsuccessful.

LANGUAGETone

The Flea takes the form of an argument. It is one half of a discussion between the poet and his mistress.

Its tone, however, is playful and teasing rather than seriously argumentative. Donne conjures a series of witty, outlandish arguments, all of which are based around the idea of the flea.

Metaphor

Stanza 2 features a memorable metaphor where the flea is compared to a temple where the poet and the lady have been married.