| John Donne's Songs and Sonnets do not | | | | on the soul leads Donne to express a |
| describe a single unchanging view of love; | | | | condescending attitude towards physical love |
| they express a wide variety of emotions and | | | | in this poem which is in marked contrast to |
| attitudes, as if Donne himself were trying to | | | | the attitude he expressed in To his Mistris |
| define his experience of love through his | | | | Going to Bed.But O alas, so long, so farre |
| poetry. Love can be an experience of the | | | | |
| body, the soul, or both; it can be a | | | | Our bodies why doe wee forbeare? |
| religious experience, or merely a sexual one, | | | | |
| and it can give rise to emotions ranging from | | | | They'are ours, the though they'are not wee. |
| ecstasy to despair. Taking any one poem in | | | | Wee are |
| isolation will give us a limited view of | | | | |
| Donne's attitude to love, but treating each | | | | Th'intelligences, they the spheare.But in |
| poem as a fragment of a totality of | | | | reading Donne one soon learns that an |
| experience, represented by all the Songs and | | | | attitude expressed in one poem is not to be |
| Sonnets, it gives us an insight into the | | | | taken as absolute and exclusive. One of |
| complex range of experiences that can be | | | | Donne's characteristics is that he freely |
| grouped under the single heading 'Love'.In To | | | | contradicts himself from one poem to another. |
| his Mistris Going to Bed we see how highly | | | | The title of this poem, The Extasie, implies |
| Donne can praise physical pleasure. He | | | | that love is a religious experience, just as |
| addresses the woman as:Oh my America, my new | | | | the diction of To his Mistris Going to Bed |
| found lande, | | | | conveyed sex as a religious experience. The |
| | | | religious metaphors give a hyperbolic |
| My kingdome, safeliest when with one man | | | | intensity to his imagery, but the ideas |
| man'd, | | | | expressed in The Extasie are firmly rooted in |
| | | | the scientific theories of his day.Donne's |
| My myne of precious stones, my Empiree,The | | | | view that spiritual love can be attained |
| images are of physical, material wealth, and | | | | through physical love ties in with the |
| anyone reading this poem alone would think | | | | contemporary theory of the 'chain of being'. |
| Donne's interest in women was limited to the | | | | Angels, presumably, could experience a |
| sexual level. He describes sex in terms of a | | | | totally spiritual love, unadulterated by the |
| religious experience; the woman is an | | | | physical. But man, being part divine and part |
| 'Angel', she provides 'A heaven like | | | | animal, can only reach the spiritual level |
| Mahomet's Paradise', and the bed is 'loves | | | | through the sensual.So must pure lovers |
| hallow'd temple'. But this is not a love | | | | soules descend |
| poem; nowhere does he say that he loves the | | | | |
| woman, or that sex is part of a deeper | | | | T'affections, and to faculties, |
| relationship.In The Extasie Donne conveys a | | | | |
| very different and more complex attitude to | | | | That sense may reach and apprehend, |
| physical pleasure, when it is just one part | | | | |
| of the experience of love.This Extasie doth | | | | Else a great Prince in prison lies.The |
| unperplex | | | | inherent superiority of the spiritual level, |
| | | | and the part love can play in refining man's |
| (We said) and tell us what we love, | | | | nature towards the spiritual, is expressed in |
| | | | these lines:If any, so by love refin'd, |
| Wee see by this, it was not sexe, | | | | |
| | | | That he soules language understood, |
| Wee see, we saw not what did move . . | | | | |
| .Love's mysteries in soules doe grow, | | | | And by good love were grown all |
| | | | mindeCopyright: Ian Mackean |
| But yet the body is his booke.The body and | | | | |
| the soul are distinct, but related aspects of | | | | Mackean runs the sites which features a |
| the totality of love. The uniting of souls is | | | | substantial collection of Resources and |
| the purest and highest form of love, but this | | | | Essays, (and where his site on Short Story |
| can only be attained through the uniting of | | | | Writing can also be found,) and He is the |
| bodies.Soe soule into the soule may flow, | | | | editor of The Essentials of Literature in |
| | | | English post-1914, ISBN 0340882689, which was |
| Though it to body first repaire.This focus | | | | published by Hodder Arnold in 2005. |