John Donne: ”The Ecstasy,” ”A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” and ”For Whom the Bell Tolls”

1) "The Ecstasy" is a poem of incarnation. It is one of my favorite Donne love poems. The souls of lovers, that which truly loves, are sheathed in flesh:

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

. . .

Love's mysteries in souls do grow,

         But yet the body is his book.

 

2) "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" was written by Donne to his pregnant wife, Ann More, on the occasion of his departure from England to continental Europe. This beautiful love poem is filled with Donne's wit and passion. Playing on an extended metaphor of twin compasses, the poem ends with these lines:

 

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.

 

3) "For Whom the Bell Tolls," also called "No Man is an Island," is not technically a poem, but a paragraph taken from a "Meditation" on life's trials. It is, nevertheless, one of the Donne's most well-known and quoted works.

 

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