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Other Renaissance Poetry

Carpe Diem

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    The concept of carpe diem was also brought to England from Italy during the Renaissance.  The phrase is Latin for "seize the day."
        Carpe diem poetry dealt with two major themes:
    1. The Swift Passage of Time
    2. The Transiency of Youth.

The theme goes back to Horace and other Roman writers, but it became very popular during the Renaissance in England.  One of the reasons could very well be that the average age of death for the major English Renaissance poets was 45.  Life was short: illness, accidents, war, and executions were very commons ways of cutting one's life short. 
    - Sir Thomas Wyatt: died of fever at 39
    - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey: beheaded at 30
    - Sir Francis Bacon: died of bronchitis at 65
    - Sir Walter Raleigh: beheaded at 66
    - Christopher Marlowe: died in a bar fight at 29
    - Edmund Spenser: died at 47
    - Sir Philip Sydney: died from an old battle wound at 32
    - William Shakespeare: died at 52


Carpe Diem Poems

"The Passionate Shepherd to his Love," by Christopher Marlowe

"The Nymph's Reply," by Sir Walter Raleigh

"The Bait," by John Donne

"Virtue," by George Herbert

"To His Coy Mistress," by Andrew Marvel

"To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," by Robert Herrick

"On Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-Three," by John Milton

"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," by Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields
Woods or steepy mountain yields

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flower, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

Notes for "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love."
Pastoral lyric: Poetry that expresses emotions  in an idyllic setting.  It is related to the term "pasture," and is associated with shepherds writing music to their flocks.  The tradition goes back to David in the Bible and Hesiod the Greek poet. The themes of the poem - carpe diem and the immediate gratification of their passions.
        Love in the May countryside will be like a return to the Garden of Eden.  There is a tradition that our problems are caused by having too many restrictions, by society.  If we could get away from these rules, we could return to a pristine condition of happiness.  The "free love" movement of the 1960's was a recent manifestation of this Utopian belief.  If the nymph would go a-maying with the shepherd, they would have a perfect life.
        In quatrains (4 line stanzas) of iambic tetrameter (8 syllables per line, 4 measures per line with 2 syllables in each measure), the shepherd invites his beloved to experience the joys of nature.
        He hopes to return with the nymph to a Edenic life of free love in nature.

"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," by Sir Walter Raleigh

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complain of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy bed of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Notes for "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd."
        Raleigh argues that it is not society that taints sexual love.  We are already tainted before we enter society.  Releigh combines carpe diem with tempus fugit in an unusual way.  Normally we should sieze the day because time flies.  Raleigh argues that because time flies, we should NOT sieze the day.  There will be consequences to their roll in the grass.  Time does not stand still; winter inevitably follows the spring; therefore, we cannot act on impulses until we have examined the consequences. The world is NOT young--we are not in Eden, but in this old fallen world - a world in which shepherds have actually been known to lie to their nymphs.
        This poem by Sir Walter Raleigh uses the same meter and references to present "mirror images" of Marlowe's poem. The feminine persona (the nymph) of the poem sets up a hypothetical set of questions that undermine the intelligence of the man's offer because all that he offers is transitory. She reverses his images into negative ones:
  • rocks grow cold
  • fields yield to the harvest
  • the flocks are driven to fold in winter
  • rivers rage
  • birds complain of winter (a reference to the story of Philomela who was raped and turned into a nightingale).
        We live in a fallen world.  Free love in the grass in impossible now because the world is not in some eternal spring.  The seasons pass, as does time.  Nymphs grow old, and shepherds grow cold.

John Donne
Biography from Poets.org

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John Donne was born in 1572 in London, England. He is known as the founder of the Metaphysical Poets, a term created by Samuel Johnson, an eighteenth-century English essayist, poet, and philosopher. The loosely associated group also includes George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, and John Cleveland. The Metaphysical Poets are known for their ability to startle the reader and coax new perspective through paradoxical images, subtle argument, inventive syntax, and imagery from art, philosophy, and religion using an extended metaphor known as a conceit. Donne reached beyond the rational and hierarchical structures of the seventeenth century with his exacting and ingenious conceits, advancing the exploratory spirit of his time.

Donne entered the world during a period of theological and political unrest for both England and France; a Protestant massacre occurred on Saint Bartholomew's day in France; while in England, the Catholics were the persecuted minority. Born into a Roman Catholic family, Donne's personal relationship with religion was tumultuous and passionate, and at the center of much of his poetry. He studied at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities in his early teen years. He did not take a degree at either school, because to do so would have meant subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles, the doctrine that defined Anglicanism. At age twenty he studied law at Lincoln's Inn. Two years later he succumbed to religious pressure and joined the Anglican Church after his younger brother, convicted for his Catholic loyalties, died in prison. Donne wrote most of his love lyrics, erotic verse, and some sacred poems in the 1590s, creating two major volumes of work: Satires, and Songs and Sonnets.

In 1598, after returning from a two-year naval expedition against Spain, Donne was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. While sitting in Queen Elizabeth's last Parliament in 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, the sixteen-year-old niece of Lady Egerton. Donne's father-in-law disapproved of the marriage. As punishment, he did not provide a dowry for the couple and had Donne briefly imprisoned.

This left the couple isolated and dependent on friends, relatives, and patrons. Donne suffered social and financial instability in the years following his marriage, exacerbated by the birth of many children. He continued to write and published the Divine Poems in 1607. In Pseudo-Martyr, published in 1610, Donne displayed his extensive knowledge of the laws of the Church and state, arguing that Roman Catholics could support James I without compromising their faith. In 1615, James I pressured him to enter the Anglican Ministry by declaring that Donne could not be employed outside of the Church. He was appointed Royal Chaplain later that year. His wife, aged thirty-three, died in 1617, shortly after giving birth to their twelfth child, a stillborn. The Holy Sonnets are also attributed to this phase of his life.

In 1621, he became dean of Saint Paul's Cathedral. In his later years, Donne's writing reflected his fear of his inevitable death. He wrote his private prayers, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, during a period of severe illness and published them in 1624. His learned, charismatic, and inventive preaching made him a highly influential presence in London. Best known for his vivacious, compelling style and thorough examination of mortal paradox, John Donne died in London in 1631.

"John Donne- Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More." Poets.org. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/243>.


"The Bait"

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.

There will the river whispering run
Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun;
And there th'enamour'd fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou, to be so seen, be'st loth,
By sun or moon, thou darken'st both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy net.

Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;
Or curious traitors, sleave-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes.

For thee, thou need'st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait:
That fish, that is not catch'd thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.


Article by Wilhelm Branigan

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        John Donne's poem "The Bait" is an excellent example of the way in which metaphysical poetry is able to parody other, more romantic poems. This poem is particularly useful in analyzing the traits of metaphysical poetry as a whole since it is in direct response to a non-metaphysical poem. In fact, it might be said that metaphysical poetry-such as this-may be closer to realism (though it is certainly not realistic, in the normal sense of the word) than the romantic genre of poetry as epitomized by Marlowe's "Passionate Shepherd to his Love." The first way in which John Donne's poem differs from Marlowe's is the prominence of explicitly sexual imagery. Marlowe's poem might suggest a bit of sexual imagery, but it is not swimming in it like "The Bait." The Shepherd poem focuses much more on the relationship and the "romantic" side of things. The tone itself in "The Bait" seems to be very different from the first stanza, and this is achieved even as early as the first two lines simply by changing a few words. The rest of the poem is awash in fish and fishing imagery, something that would be unusual for a romantic poem, but not for one of the metaphysical variety. This is certainly debatable, but the fishing imagery probably has something to do with the sexual tone of the poem. It is should also be made clear, however, that the prevalence of this awkward fishing metaphor also does another thing for the poem. There are a sufficient number of lines dealing with metaphors that are "disgusting and different" enough to maintain the seriousness of the poem (ex. "let others freeze with angling reeds, and cut their legs with shells and weeds"). The Shepherd poem, on the other hand, is much more pastoral and, instead, rife with flowery imagery and language. In this way, "The Bait" almost seems to be mocking Marlowe's poem in a skeptical manner about the existence of such honestly romantic relationships.
        There is also a lot of imagery that relates to death; after all, the main metaphor in this poem deals with fishing. The death of fish (and perhaps the "bait") is an awkward presence in this poem. It is also interesting, however, that Sir Walter Raleigh's "Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" exhibits the theme of death. In fact, it would not be a stretch to say that is the main purpose of the poem. Raleigh is significantly less cheerful than even Donne in his poem (which says a lot). The futility of love due to the presence of death is a theme that is also present in another poem by Raleigh-"What is our life?" Obviously, this was a big issue for Raleigh. It is very strange that both Donne and Raleigh decided to include the death theme in their response to Marlowe's poem. There is a lot of flowery, spring imagery and "lively language" in "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." Though it is not so explicit, Marlowe was, in a way, promoting a sort of procreative message in relation to "romantic love," so that may be the reason that both Donne and Raleigh exhibit skepticism in the form of death. The important thing is that Donne's metaphysical style differs from Raleigh's normal, depressing poetic style in that he uses weird, out-of-place metaphors-a distinctly metaphysical trait.
        John Donne's poem is a great example of metaphysical poetry. As it is a response to another non-metaphysical poem, it is actually a rather smooth read compared to other metaphysical poems. Through comparison to other poetry, we are able to use John Donne's brilliant style to learn a great deal about metaphysical poetry.

Branigan, Wilhelm. "Metaphysical Poetry: John Donne's The Bait." Yahoo! Contributor Network. 26 Nov.
        2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://voices.yahoo.com/metaphysical-poetry-john-donnes-
        bait-4947724.html>.

"A Valedition: Forbidding Mourning"

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"The breath goes now," and some say, "No,"

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do;

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

Analysis provided by Cummingsstudyguide.com

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.."A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" is a lyric poem. Some scholars further classify it as a metaphysical poem; Donne himself did not use that term. Among the characteristics of a metaphysical poem are the following:
  • Startling comparisons or contrasts of a metaphysical (spiritual, transcendent, abstract) quality to a concrete (physical, tangible, sensible) object. In "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," Donne compares the love he shares with his wife to a compass. (See Stanza 7 of the poem).  
  • Mockery of idealized, sentimental romantic poetry, as in Stanza 2 of the poem.
  • Gross exaggeration (hyperbole). 
  • Presentation of a logical argument. Donne argues that he and his wife will remain together spiritually even though they are apart physically. 
  • Expression of personal, private feelings, such as those Donne expresses in "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning."
Summary With an Explanation of the Title .......In 1611, John Donne wrote "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" to his wife, Anne More Donne, to comfort her while he sojourned in France on government business and she remained home in Mitcham, England, about seven miles from London. The title says, in essence, "When we part, we must not mourn." Valediction comes from the Latin verb valedicere, meaning to bid farewell. (Another English word derived from the same Latin verb is valedictorian, referring to a student scholar who delivers a farewell address at a graduation ceremony.) The poem then explains that a maudlin show of emotion would cheapen their love, reduce it to the level of the ordinary and mundane. Their love, after all, is transcendent, heavenly. Other husbands and wives who know only physical, earthly love, weep and sob when they separate for a time, for they dread the loss of physical closeness. But because Donne and his wife have a spiritual as well as physical dimension to their love, they will never really be apart, he says. Their souls will remain united–even though their bodies are separated–until he returns to England. 

Figures of Speech Metaphor

.......Donne relies primarily on extended metaphors to convey his message. First, he compares his separation from his wife to the separation of a man's soul from his body when he dies (first stanza). The body represents physical love; the soul represents spiritual or intellectual love. While Donne and his wife are apart, they cannot express physical love; thus, they are like the body of the dead man. However, Donne says, they remain united spiritually and intellectually because their souls are one. So, Donne continues, he and his wife should let their physical bond "melt" when they part (line 5). 
.......He follows that metaphor with others, saying they should not cry sentimental "tear-floods" or indulge in "sigh-tempests" (line 6) when they say farewell. Such base sentimentality would cheapen their relationship. He also compares himself and his wife to celestial spheres, such as the sun and others stars, for their love is so profound that it exists in a higher plane than the love of  husbands and wives whose relationship centers solely on physical pleasures which, to be enjoyed, require that the man and woman always remain together, physically. 
.......Finally, Donne compares his relationship with his wife to that of the two legs of a drawing compass. Although the legs are separate components of the compass, they are both part of the same object. The legs operate in unison. If the outer leg traces a circle, the inner leg–though its point is fixed at the center–must pivot in the direction of the outer leg. Thus, Donne says, though he and his wife are separated, like the legs of the compass, they remain united because they are part of the same soul.


John Donne's Holy Sonnets

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        "John Donne's Holy Sonnets: Overview" from Enotes.com
John Donne’s religious poetry is collectively known as the Divine Poems; among these, the largest group is the nineteen Holy Sonnets. Donne began writing his love poetry in the 1590s, while still single, and did not turn to religious poetry until 1609, eight years after he had married Anne More, which resulted in his banishment from the royal court. During this time he had begun to renounce his Roman Catholic faith but had not yet converted to the Church of England, which he did in 1615. He became a minister two years later. The dramatic character of the Holy Sonnets suggests that Donne probably read them aloud to his friends, enhancing their argumentative tone, years before he began circulating them in manuscript form. Although not necessarily biographical in nature, the sonnets do reflect Donne’s meditation on his religious convictions and address the themes of divine judgment, divine love, and humble penance. However, just as the persona of Donne’s love poems speaks with passion, wit, and tenderness in seducing or praising his beloved, so the speaker in these sonnets turns to God in a very personal way, with a love passionate, forceful, and assertive yet fearful, too. Although the sonnets are predominantly Petrarchan, consisting of two quatrains and a sestet, this form is often modified by an inclusion of a Shakespearean couplet or other variation in structure or rhyme. Donne probably wrote all but two of the Holy Sonnets between 1609 and 1611. Dating Sonnets 18 and 19 is more difficult because they were not discovered until the nineteenth century. Along with the love poems, the first seventeen Holy Sonnets were published in the collection Love Songs and Sonnets in 1633, a few years after Donne’s death.

"John Donne's Holy Sonnets." Enotes.com. Enotes.com. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://www.enotes.com/john-donne-holy-sonnets>.

Sonnet 10

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Meditation 17

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Cavalier Poetry

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        Cavalier poetry got its name from the Royalists who supported King Charles I during the civil war between the King and the Parliament. Royalists were also called Cavaliers.  Those who supported Parliament were called Roundheads. 

Characteristics of Cavalier Poetry:
    - light-hearted tone
    - Celebrated Love
    - Celebrated Loyalty
    - Celebrated Bravery

"To Althea, from Prison," by Richard Lovelace

WHEN Love with unconfinèd wings   
Hovers within my gates, 
And my divine Althea brings   
To whisper at the grates; 
When I lie tangled in her hair        
And fetter'd to her eye, 
The birds that wanton in the air   
Know no such liberty.   

When flowing cups run swiftly round   
With no allaying Thames, 
Our careless heads with roses bound,   
Our hearts with loyal flames; 
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,   
When healths and draughts go free-- 
Fishes that tipple in the deep 
Know no such liberty.   

When, like committed linnets, I   
With shriller throat shall sing 
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,   
And glories of my King; 
When I shall voice aloud how good   
He is, how great should be, 
Enlargèd winds, that curl the flood,   
Know no such liberty.   

Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage;  Minds innocent and quiet take   
That for an hermitage;  If I have freedom in my love   
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,   
Enjoy such liberty.   

Analysis of "To Althea, from Prison," from Cummingsstudyguide.com

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Richard Lovelace (1618-1657) was a dashing, handsome, well-educated gentleman who, as a soldier and poet, strongly defended the king during The Bishops' Wars in Scotland (1639-1640) and the English Civil Wars (1642-1651). He held inherited estates in Kent and freely used his personal resources to support the king's causes. He became famous as one of the cavalier poets.
Reason for Imprisonment

.......During a power struggle in England between King Charles I and Parliament, Lovelace sided with the king. Charles—King of England, Ireland, and Scotland from 1625 to 1649—believed strongly that his authority was God-given and pre-eminent. This viewpoint disconcerted Parliament. Charles further unsettled Parliament when he married a French Catholic, Princess Henrietta Maria, and when he championed the authority of the Church of England, insisting on preservation of its elaborate rituals in opposition to the wishes of a large bloc of Puritans in Parliament. After Parliament took issue with his foreign policy and his administration of the national purse, Charles dissolved Parliament (1629) and governed without it until 1640, when he convened a new Parliament. Sentiment against him remained strong. However, he had his defenders—notably a group of writers known as Cavalier poets. They were refined, cultured, fashionably dressed gentlemen—the very definition of cavalier—who included Lovelace, as well as Thomas Carew, Robert Herrick, and Sir John Suckling. When Parliament Puritans known as Roundheads (because of their short haircuts compared with the luxurious locks of the cavaliers) ousted Anglican bishops from Parliament, Lovelace presented a petition calling for their restoration. In response, Parliament imprisoned him in Gate House.

Theme: No One Can Imprison the Human Mind

.......A human being remains free to think and dream—as well as to hold fast to controversial opinions—even though his body has limited mobility. Obviously, this theme can apply not only to a prisoner in a cell but also to anyone limited by circumstances and conditions, such as blindness, paralysis, geographical isolation, economic deprivation, and so on. 

"To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars," by Richard Lovelace

Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind,
    That from the Nunnery
Of thy chaste breast, and quiet mind,
    To War and Arms I flee.

2
True, a new Mistress now I chase,
    The first Foe in the Field;
And with a stronger Faith embrace
     A Sword, a Horse, a Shield.

3
Yet this inconstancy is such
     As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
    Loved I not Honour more.

Analysis

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Who Is Lucasta? .......The identity of the woman to whom Lovelace addresses the poem is uncertain; she may even have been a product of Lovelace's imagination. However, evidence suggests she was Lucy Sacheverell, whom he sometimes called by the Latin name Lux Casta. Lux, a noun,means light; casta, an adjective, means chaste, moral, virtuous, pure, sacred. Thus, Lux Casta may be translated as Pure Light or Sacred Light.



Theme
    One Interpretation
.......The theme of the poem is the importance of honor and duty. The speaker asks his beloved not to think harshly of him for leaving her side to go to war. He could not love her as much as he does, he says, if he dishonored himself by failing to answer the call to duty. 
    Another Interpretation
.......The speaker—like many other young men of his age or any age—is eager for a little derring-do to prove his mettle. But he is worried that his love will think less of him if he leaves her side. The theme, then, is that a man sometimes must sweet-talk his beloved in order to get his way. 

A Brief Guide to Metaphysical Poetry

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        The term "metaphysical," as applied to English and continental European poets of the seventeenth century, was used by Augustan poets John Dryden and Samuel Johnson to reprove those poets for their "unnaturalness." As Goethe wrote, however, "the unnatural, that too is natural," and the metaphysical poets continue to be studied and revered for their intricacy and originality.
        John Donne, along with similar but distinct poets such as George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, and Henry Vaughn, developed a poetic style in which philosophical and spiritual subjects were approached with reason and often concluded in paradox. This group of writers established meditation—based on the union of thought and feeling sought after in Jesuit Ignatian meditation—as a poetic mode.
        The metaphysical poets were eclipsed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by romantic and Victorian poets, but twentieth century readers and scholars, seeing in the metaphysicals an attempt to understand pressing political and scientific upheavals, engaged them with renewed interest. In his essay "The Metaphysical Poets," T. S. Eliot, in particular, saw in this group of poets a capacity for "devouring all kinds of experience."
        John Donne (1572 – 1631) was the most influential metaphysical poet. His personal relationship with spirituality is at the center of most of his work, and the psychological analysis and sexual realism of his work marked a dramatic departure from traditional, genteel verse. His early work, collected in Satires and in Songs and Sonnets, was released in an era of religious oppression. His Holy Sonnets, which contains many of Donne’s most enduring poems, was released shortly after his wife died in childbirth. The intensity with which Donne grapples with concepts of divinity and mortality in the Holy Sonnets is exemplified in "Sonnet X [Death, be not proud]," "Sonnet XIV [Batter my heart, three person’d God]," and "Sonnet XVII [Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt]."
        George Herbert (1593 – 1633) and Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678) were remarkable poets who did not live to see a collection of their poems published. Herbert, the son of a prominent literary patron to whom Donne dedicated his Holy Sonnets, spent the last years of his short life as a rector in a small town. On his deathbed, he handed his poems to a friend with the request that they be published only if they might aid "any dejected poor soul." Marvell wrote politically charged poems that would have cost him his freedom or his life had they been public. He was a secretary to John Milton, and once Milton was imprisoned during the Restoration, Marvell successfully petitioned to have the elder poet freed. His complex lyric and satirical poems were collected after his death amid an air of secrecy.

"A Brief Guide to Metaphysical Poets." A Brief Guide to Metaphysical Poets. Poets.org. Web. 17 Feb. 2012. <http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5662>.


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