John Donne stands as a towering figure in English literature, celebrated as the foremost metaphysical poet of his era. Born in 1572 into a Roman Catholic family during a time of religious persecution in England, Donne’s life and faith profoundly shaped his poetic voice. His work is instantly recognizable for its intense emotional depth, intellectual rigor, and exploration of complex themes. Donne masterfully navigated the paradoxes inherent in faith, the multifaceted nature of love—both human and divine—and the ever-present question of salvation. A hallmark of his style is the use of conceits, elaborate and often surprising metaphors that, as Samuel Johnson noted, “yoke together heterogeneous ideas.” This technique generates the powerful ambiguity and intellectual tension that define Donne’s enduring appeal. After centuries of relative obscurity, the 20th century witnessed a resurgence of interest in Donne, firmly establishing his place not only as a great English poet but also as a master of English prose.
The Remarkable Journey of Donne’s Literary Reputation
The history of John Donne’s literary reputation is unique among major English writers. Few poets of such significance have experienced such a dramatic fall from favor, followed by a long period of neglect, before being rediscovered and celebrated once more. In his own lifetime, Donne’s poetry was highly esteemed within a select circle of admirers. His poems circulated in manuscript form, a common practice at the time, and in his later years, he achieved widespread fame as a compelling preacher. For approximately three decades following his death, successive editions of his poetry cemented his strong influence on subsequent generations of English poets.
However, the literary tastes of the Restoration period shifted dramatically. Donne’s intricate and intellectually demanding style fell out of fashion, and this decline in popularity persisted for centuries. Throughout the 18th and much of the 19th centuries, his works were seldom read and even less appreciated. It was only towards the end of the 19th century that a growing number of avant-garde readers and writers began to rediscover the power and originality of Donne’s poetry. His prose works, in contrast, remained largely unnoticed until the early 20th century, with 1919 marking a turning point in their recognition.
The first two decades of the 20th century marked a definitive rehabilitation of Donne’s poetic legacy. His extraordinary appeal to modern readers provides valuable insights into the Modernist movement and resonates with our contemporary sensibilities. While Donne may no longer be the cult figure he was in the 1920s and 1930s—when literary giants like T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats found in his poetry a compelling blend of intellect and passion, and a striking sense of contemporaneity that they sought to emulate in their own work—he remains a poet of profound significance. Although not universally appealing across all tastes and eras, for many readers, Donne remains what Ben Jonson famously declared him to be: “the first poet in the world in some things.” His poems continue to captivate and challenge readers, offering fresh perspectives with each encounter. His esteemed position in the canon of English poets is now firmly established.
The Enduring Appeal of Donne’s Love Poetry
Donne’s love poetry, penned almost four centuries ago, possesses a remarkable immediacy. It speaks to contemporary readers with a directness and urgency as if we are overhearing a private conversation. Consider, for instance, the poignant moment in “Elegy V, His Picture” where a lover, about to embark on a long sea voyage, turns back to share a final intimate gesture with his beloved: “Here take my picture.” Or, in “The Good Morrow,” two lovers, having shut out the outside world, celebrate their profound connection, discovering a new universe within each other:
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to others, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
Donne’s poetic world is exhilaratingly unpredictable, demanding both caution and sharp intellect. The risks and secrecy inherent in clandestine love affairs heighten the intensity of pleasure. Lovers in Donne’s poems often seek to outwit societal disapproval, jealous spouses, or overbearing family members, as vividly depicted in Elegy 4, “The Perfume”:
Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes,
As though he came to kill a cockatrice,
Though he have oft sworn, that he would remove
Thy beauty’s beauty, and food of our love,
Hope of his goods, if I with thee were seen,
Yet close and secret, as our souls, we have been.
Donne’s poetry unflinchingly portrays a world where exploitation and being exploited are seen as natural conditions, shared equally by humans and creatures of the wild. In “Metempsychosis,” he draws a striking parallel between a whale and a powerful official, highlighting their predatory behaviors:
He hunts not fish, but as an officer,
Stays in his court, as his own net, and there
All suitors of all sorts themselves enthral;
So on his back lies this whale wantoning,
And in his gulf-like throat, sucks everything
That passeth near.
Donne characterizes life in the natural world as inherently transient and in constant flux, yet he suggests we can harness this very momentariness to our advantage. The dynamic tension in his poetry arises from the interplay of conflicting impulses within his arguments. In “A Valediction: Of my Name in the Window,” a lover’s name etched into his mistress’s window is intended as a protective charm to ensure her fidelity. However, he then considers the possibility that it might become an unwitting witness to her potential betrayal:
When thy inconsiderate hand
Flings ope this casement, with my trembling name,
To look on one, whose wit or land,
New battery to thy heart may frame,
Then think this name alive, and that thou thus
In it offend’st my Genius.
Donne’s exploration of love encompasses a diverse range of experiences, often strikingly different and even contradictory in their implications. In “The Anniversary,” he seemingly contradicts himself, first justifying frequent changes in partners before celebrating a profound and timeless mutual connection, untouched by worldly desires or the passage of time. Some of Donne’s most celebrated love poems, such as “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” articulate a love that transcends physical presence and the limitations of time:
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.
Donne employs powerful imagery to define this state of unity amidst separation. He compares their souls, not divided but expanded by distance, to “gold to airy thinness beat.” Another striking image likens them to the legs of a pair of compasses, where one foot remains fixed while the other moves, yet both are inextricably linked:
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.
Donne’s poems unfold with supple arguments and lyrical grace. It’s important to remember that these poems, often grouped together by modern editors, were not originally conceived as unified collections. Donne did not write for formal publication in the modern sense. Fewer than eight of his poems were published during his lifetime, and only two of these were authorized by him. Instead, his poems circulated in manuscript, copied and shared among his admirers, sometimes individually and sometimes in gatherings. Some of these manuscript copies have survived to this day.
When the first printed edition of Donne’s poems appeared in 1633, two years after his death, the poems were arranged haphazardly, offering no indication of their chronological order of composition. Many modern editions impose thematic categories—love poems, satires, religious poems, verse letters, epithalamiums, funeral poems—divisions that may not accurately reflect Donne’s original intentions or the order in which he wrote them. In fact, only a handful of Donne’s poems can be dated with certainty. The Elegies and Satires are generally believed to have been written in the early 1590s. “Metempsychosis” is dated August 16, 1601. The two memorial Anniversaries for Elizabeth Drury are known to be from 1611 and 1612, and the funeral elegy for Prince Henry dates from 1612. The Songs and Sonnets were not initially conceived as a single collection of love verses and do not appear as such in early manuscript collections. It is likely that Donne composed them over a span of approximately 20 years, in various contexts and at different times in his poetic development. Some of these love poems may even overlap in time with his renowned religious poems, which are thought to have been written around 1609, before he entered the clergy.
Donne’s Life and Context: Shaping the Poetry
Donne’s vividly individual poems naturally invite speculation about the life experiences that shaped them. While we should avoid reading his poetry as a straightforward biographical record, Donne’s life and personality are undeniably compelling and provide a crucial context for understanding his work. He was born in London between January and June 1572, into the precarious world of English recusant Catholicism, a reality his family knew well. His father, John Donne, was a Welsh ironmonger. His mother, Elizabeth (Heywood) Donne, remained a devout Catholic throughout her life and was the great-niece of the martyred Sir Thomas More. His uncle, Jasper Heywood, led an underground Jesuit mission in England. When captured, he was imprisoned and subsequently exiled. Donne’s younger brother, Henry, tragically died from the plague in 1593 while imprisoned in Newgate for sheltering a seminary priest. Despite this strong Catholic family background, Donne himself converted to Anglicanism in his young adulthood, a reasoned decision he never reversed.
Donne’s father died in January 1576 when John was only four years old. Within six months, his mother, Elizabeth, married John Syminges, an Oxford-educated physician practicing in London. In October 1584, Donne entered Hart Hall, Oxford, where he studied for approximately three years. Although there are no surviving records of his attendance at Cambridge, he may have continued his studies there as well. He may also have traveled to Paris and Antwerp with his uncle Jasper Heywood during this period. It is documented that he entered Lincoln’s Inn in May 1592, following at least a year of preparatory study at Thavies Inn, and nominally studied English law for two or more years. After participating as a gentleman adventurer in English expeditions to Cadiz and the Azores in 1596 and 1597, he entered the service of Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper of England. As Egerton’s highly valued secretary, Donne developed a keen interest in statecraft and foreign affairs that he maintained throughout his life.
His position in the Egerton household also brought him into contact with Egerton’s extended family. Egerton’s brother-in-law was Sir George More, a parliamentary representative for Surrey. More visited London for a parliamentary session in the autumn of 1601, accompanied by his seventeen-year-old daughter, Ann. Ann More and Donne may have met and fallen in love during a previous visit to the Egerton household. They secretly married in December 1601 in a ceremony facilitated by a small group of Donne’s friends. Several months passed before Donne dared to inform Ann’s father of the marriage, doing so by letter. This act provoked a furious reaction from Sir George More. Donne and his accomplices were briefly imprisoned, and More attempted to have the marriage annulled and demanded that Egerton dismiss Donne from his service.
While the marriage was eventually upheld—and Sir George More eventually reconciled with his son-in-law—Donne lost his position in 1602. He did not secure regular employment again until he took holy orders more than twelve years later. Throughout these middle years, Donne and his wife raised a growing family, relying on support from relatives, friends, and patrons, and on the uncertain income Donne could earn from polemical writing and similar work. His earnest attempts to gain secular employment, including positions in the Queen’s household in Ireland and with the Virginia Company, were unsuccessful. He did, however, accompany Sir Robert Drury on a diplomatic mission to France in 1612. These years of frustration and uncertainty were remarkably productive in terms of his writing. From this period came most of his verse letters, funeral poems, epithalamiums, and holy sonnets, as well as his prose treatises Biathanatos (1647), Pseudo-Martyr (1610), and Ignatius His Conclave (1611).
Skepticism and Faith in Donne’s Middle Years
In Donne’s writings from his middle years, a sense of skepticism deepened into a premonition of impending doom. Poems like the two memorial Anniversaries and “To the Countess of Salisbury” reflect a growing sense of decline in human nature and the world itself, within a cosmos seemingly disintegrating. In “The First Anniversary,” Donne declares, “mankind decays so soon, / We are scarce our fathers’ shadows cast at noon.” Yet, Donne is not advocating despair. On the contrary, the Anniversaries offer a path out of spiritual crisis: “thou hast but one way, not to admit / The world’s infection, to be none of it” (“The First Anniversary”). Moreover, these poems suggest a countervailing force at work, resisting the world’s chaotic descent. This “amendment of corruption” is presented as the true purpose of our earthly existence: “our business is, to rectify / Nature, to what she was” (“To Sir Edward Herbert, at Juliers”). However, in the current state of the world and humanity, this task becomes heroic, demanding exceptional resolve.
The verse letters and funeral poems from this period celebrate qualities in their subjects that stand in opposition to this general decline towards chaos: “Be more than man, or thou’art less than an ant” (“The First Anniversary”).
These poems from Donne’s middle years are less frequently read than his other works and have often struck readers as strangely obscure and unconventional. They deliberately disregard conventional poetic decorum, sometimes to the point of shocking the reader. In his funeral poems, Donne dwells on themes of decay and mortality, even including satirical asides while contemplating bodily corruption: “Think thee a prince, who of themselves create / Worms which insensibly devour their state” (“The Second Anniversary”). He uses the analogy of a beheaded man to illustrate how our dead world can still appear to possess life and movement (“The Second Anniversary”). He compares the soul in a newborn infant to a “stubborn sullen anchorite” confined to a pillar or a grave, “Bedded, and bathed in all his ordures” (“The Second Anniversary”). He elaborates in intricate detail the conceit that virtuous men are like clocks and that the late John Harrington, second Lord of Exton, was a public clock (“Obsequies to the Lord Harrington”). This persistent idiosyncrasy is too deliberate to be merely whimsical or sensational. It challenges conventional proprieties to reveal a deeper truth.
Religious Poetry and the Path to Priesthood
Donne’s initial reluctance to become a priest, despite repeated encouragement, does not indicate a lack of faith. His religious poems, written years before he entered the clergy, powerfully suggest that his hesitations stemmed from a deep sense of personal unworthiness, a feeling that he could not possibly merit God’s grace. This is evident in lines from Divine Meditations 4:
Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lack;
But who shall give thee that grace to begin?
Oh make thyself with holy mourning black,
And red with blushing, as thou art with sin.
These Divine Meditations, also known as Holy Sonnets, transform religious life into a universal drama, where every moment can bring us face-to-face with the ultimate end of time: “What if this present were the world’s last night?” (Divine Meditations 13). In Divine Meditations 13, the prospect of immediate entry into eternity also necessitates a confrontation with oneself and with the pivotal events that unite the temporal and the eternal:
Mark in my heart, O soul, where thou dost dwell,
The picture of Christ crucified, and tell
Whether that countenance can thee affright.
The Divine Meditations emphasize self-awareness as a necessary step towards grace. They dramatize the spiritual dilemma of flawed beings who require God’s grace to become worthy of it. We are destined to sin and earn death, even though redemption is offered; yet, we cannot even begin to repent without divine grace. These poems open the sinner to God, imploring divine intervention through the sinner’s willing acknowledgment of their desperate need for a radical transformation, as expressed in Divine Meditations 14:
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
The forceful language of this plea reflects the intensity of Donne’s struggle with himself and with the forces opposing God. He appeals to God, suggesting that God too has a stake in this battle for the sinner’s soul: “Lest the world, flesh, yea Devil put thee out” (Divine Meditations 17). This dramatic tension brings home to the poet the enormity of his ingratitude to his Redeemer, confronting him directly with the paradox of Christ’s self-humiliation for humanity. In Divine Meditations 11, Donne questions why the sinner should not personally experience Christ’s suffering:
Spit in my face ye Jews, and pierce my side,
Buffet, and scoff, scourge, and crucify me,
For I have sinned, and sinned, and only he,
Who could do no iniquity, hath died.
Donne’s religious poems revolve around a central paradox of Christian faith: Christ’s self-sacrifice to save humankind. God’s ways are often paradoxical, and in Divine Meditations 13, Donne employs a form of reasoning similar to the casuistry he used with his “profane mistresses,” suggesting that only the unattractive lack compassion:
so I say to thee,
To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assigned,
This beauteous form assures a piteous mind.
In Divine Meditations 18, he resolves his search for the true Church through an even more audacious sexual paradox, addressing Christ as a “kind husband” and asking him to reveal his spouse to the poet’s amorous soul so that he may “court thy mild dove”: “Who is most true, and pleasing to thee, then / When she is embraced and open to most men.” The seemingly inappropriate image of the true Church as a harlot and Christ as her accommodating husband serves to jolt us into recognizing the universality of Christ’s love. This paradox highlights a truth about Christ’s Church that may be unsettling to those who advocate for sectarian exclusivity.
Wit becomes the tool through which Donne discerns the workings of Providence in the mundane events of life. A journey westward from one friend’s house to another during Easter 1613 leads Donne to reflect on the general perversion of nature that causes us to prioritize pleasure over devotion to Christ. At Easter, he believes, we should be traveling east to contemplate and share in Christ’s suffering. In summoning this image to mind, he recognizes the shocking paradox of God’s ignominious death on the cross: “Could I behold those hands, which span the poles, / And turn all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?” (“Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward”). The image of Christ’s humiliation is directly juxtaposed with an image of God’s omnipotence. We see that this event is both a catastrophic consequence of our sin and the ultimate assurance of God’s saving love. Even the poet’s westward journey can be seen as providential if it leads him to a penitent recognition of his present unworthiness to directly behold Christ:
O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;
I turn my back to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O think me worth thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou mayest know me, and I’ll turn my face.
A serious illness Donne suffered in 1623 inspired an even more striking poetic expression. In “Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness,” he imagines his body as a flat map, over which doctors pore like navigators searching for a passage through present dangers to calmer waters. He contemplates his own mortality as if he were a ship navigating perilous straits to reach desirable destinations:
Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are
The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar,
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them.
Through this introspection, he comes to understand that his suffering may be a blessing, as it mirrors the human condition where ultimate joy is attained through enduring hardship. The physical symptoms of his illness become signs of his salvation: “So, in his purple wrapped receive me Lord, / By these his thorns give me his other crown.” The imagery connecting his suffering to Christ’s transforms his pain into reassurance.
In Donne’s poetry, language itself can capture the presence of God in human affairs. The pun on his name in ““ registers the distance created by sin between himself and God, with new sins arising as quickly as God forgives past ones: “When thou hast done, thou hast not done, / For, I have more.” The subsequent puns on “sun” and “Donne” resolve these anxieties:
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thy self, that at my death thy son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done,
I fear no more.
For Donne, these wordplay and coincidences are not mere jokes. They precisely reflect the workings of Providence within the natural order.
From Poet to Preacher: Donne’s Transformation and Legacy
The transformation of Jack Donne, the libertine poet, into the Reverend Dr. Donne, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, may initially seem jarring. However, such rigid categorizations of a person’s life may oversimplify human complexity. The fact that the author of the Elegies and Songs and Sonnets is also the writer of the Devotions and the sermons does not necessarily indicate a radical spiritual conversion. One reason for Donne’s enduring appeal in modern times is his ability to reflect the multifaceted nature of human experience.
Donne entered holy orders in January 1615, persuaded by King James himself of his suitability for ministry, “to which he was, and appeared, very unwilling, apprehending it (such was his mistaking modesty) to be too weighty for his abilities,” as his first biographer, Izaak Walton, who knew him well and frequently heard him preach, wrote. Once committed to the Church, Donne dedicated himself entirely to his ministry. His later life is marked by his ecclesiastical appointments and his prolific preaching.
Donne’s wife, Ann, died in childbirth in 1617. He was elected Dean of St. Paul’s in November 1621 and became the most celebrated clergyman of his era, frequently preaching before the King at court, as well as at St. Paul’s and other churches. 160 of his sermons have survived to this day. The few religious poems he wrote after becoming a priest demonstrate no decline in imaginative power. However, his later calling led him towards prose, and the artistry of his Devotions and sermons rivals that of his poetry.
The 1919 publication of Donne’s Sermons: Selected Passages, edited by Logan Pearsall Smith, was a revelation to readers, even those who had little interest in sermons. John Bailey, writing in the Quarterly Review (April 1920), recognized in these excerpts “the very genius of oratory … a masterpiece of English prose.” Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in Studies in Literature (1920), considered the sermons to contain “the most magnificent prose ever uttered from an English pulpit, if not the most magnificent prose ever spoken in our tongue.”
Over a literary career spanning approximately 40 years, Donne journeyed from skeptical naturalism to a profound conviction in the divine presence shaping the natural world. However, his mature understanding did not contradict his earlier perspectives. Instead, he came to perceive a Providential order within the seemingly chaotic world. The passionate, adventurous poet ultimately nurtured the Dean of St. Paul’s, demonstrating the complex and evolving nature of a truly remarkable literary figure.
