John Donne (/dʌn/ DUN) (1571 or 1572[a] – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier

and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a cleric in the Church of England.
[2] Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London (1621–1631).[1] He is
considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His poetical works are noted
for their metaphorical and sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious
poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs and satires. He is also known for his sermons.

Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations.
These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and
his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan
poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques.[3] His early
career was marked by poetry that bore immense knowledge of English society. Another important
theme in Donne's poetry is the idea of true religion, something that he spent much time considering
and about which he often theorised. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is
particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits.

The Flea

BY J OH N DONNE

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is;

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pampered swells with one blood made of two,

And this, alas, is more than we would do.

The poet in the poem, ‘The Flea’ by John Donne, asks his beloved to observe the flea

carefully and mark that what she denies to him is not of much significance. The flea

sucked her blood and then sucked his. In this way, in its body, their respective blood are
mixed up. She must acknowledge that this mingling of their blood in the body of the flea

is neither sin, nor shame, nor loss of virginity.

But the flea has enjoyed her without any wooing or courtship, and its body is now swelled

up with the enjoying of their respective blood, which now mingles in its body. The body

regrets that such direct enjoyment and consummation is not possible for human beings.

The meaning of the very first word “Marke” is to observe carefully, while the use of the

word “union” in the second line means the physical union which she has denied to him

has been accomplished in the body of the flea. That is; all her shrinking from his

advances has been of little avail to her. In the sixth line of the stanza, with the use of the

word like maidenhead, he means to indicate the virginity of the beloved, whereas the

meaning of line like: “With one blood made of two,” he means to be talking about their

respective blood which mingle and become one in the body of the flea.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, nay more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our mariage bed, and marriage temple is;

Though parents grudge, and you, w’are met,

And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that, self-murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

The beloved must not kill the flea because in its body they are more than married, for in

its body her blood and his blood are mingled. Therefore, not only is the body of the flea,

their wedding temple, but it is also their bridal bed. Their blood mingles in the body of

the flea as they mingle in the sex-act, despite the objections of her parents and her own
objections. They have been isolated from the world and have met in privacy within the

four walls which make up its body.

She should not kill the poor creatures, for it would be triple murder. She would kill the

flea, as well as the poet whose blood it has sucked. It will also be a self-murder which is

prohibited by religion. The killing of the flea would be sin and sacrilege; it would be three

murders in one. In the second stanza, when the poet says, “Oh stay”, he means to say as

the beloved gets ready to kill the flea, while the meaning of the word three lives is the

life of the flea, of the lover and the beloved herself.

Stanza Three

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?

Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou

Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;

’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:

Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,

Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

As the beloved kills the flea, the lover calls her cruel and rash. She has purpled her nails

with the blood of the innocent flea. What was the fault of the poor creature, except that it

had sucked a drop of her blood? The beloved is triumphant and says that neither she nor

her lover is in any way weaker for having killed it. This is perfectly true. From this, she

should learn that her fears of losing her honor through yielding to the advances of her

lover are false.

Just as she has lost little life in the death of the flea which sucked her blood, so she will

lose honor in yielding herself to him. When the poet says: “Purpled thy naile”, he means

to say that the beloved has actually killed the flea and thus purpled her nails with

innocent blood.
 And when he says: “’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:” he means to be saying that

since she has not lost any honor from the flea’s sucking her blood, she should not fear

that she should lose any honor from yielding to her lover, while the meaning of words

like: “Will waste” means will be lost.

The Sun Rising

BY J OH N DONNE

Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong

Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

She's all states, and all princes, I,

Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus.
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

This verse does much to emphasize the enormous importance the narrator places on
their lover — she is everyone and everywhere he ever needs to be or know, and
nothing else exists while the two are together. Honour and wealth become
meaningless, princes seem poor when compared to what they have. Returning to
the personification of the sun, the narrator addresses it once more, stating that its
presence is not needed, since its purpose is to warm the world, and he feels
warm. The Sun Rising ends on a somewhat cryptic note, but suggests that the
narrator’s universe consists of two people and one room only — that bed is the
centre of the universe, and the walls of the room are its edge, and so when that
room is warmed, the whole of the world is to them.