The Growing Up Of John Donne In His Love Poetry

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The Growing up of John Donne in his Love Poetry “Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time” is a quote from John Donne which talks about how love defies time however he did not always have such an optimistic view of love. John Donne was a writer in the 1700s’ who used the theme of love in quite a few of his poems. Donne can be a pessimistic poet, which often creates misunderstandings in both the theme of love and how the poem is written. Since love is so unclear and there is nothing definite about love, it makes it difficult to write about and often misunderstood says R.V. Young (251). Donne shows his love in these poems through references to physical love, the union of two souls, and journeys. These references can be seen in “To his Mistress Going to Bed,” “The Flea,” “The Extasie,” and “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”. One of the ways Donne expresses the theme of love is through physical love. The two main poems that refer to physical love are “To his Mistress Going to Bed” and “The Flea.” Donne’s poem “To his Mistress Going to Bed” is about the speaker trying to convince a women to remove her clothes by saying “Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glittering, / But a far fairer world encompassing. / Unpin that spangled breast-plate, which you wear” (lines 5-7). The speaker talks in great detail about his wishes for this woman to remove her clothing even though the woman does not want to. In order to comfort her, he says “there is no penance due to innocence” (line 46) meaning that removing her clothes is an innocent act and not a sin; therefore there is nothing for her to fear. In this poem, the speaker does not say that he loves this woman; he only refers to the physical relationship he wishes to have with her and how happy he is to share a romantic encounter with her but not
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