‘The Flea’, in my opinion, is completely different to these two poems however in that it appears to be an attempt to coax a woman into having sex before marriage. This poem is much more selfish than the other two and nowhere in the poem is the word ‘love’ used or are any compliments given to the lover. It is arguable that Donne at the time felt that he and his partner had a deep enough understanding of each other to warrant not using such blatant words to express his feelings. However I do feel that the concept of ‘love’ is forgotten and replaced with lust in this poem. I believe that this poem concentrates much more on the sexual side of a relationship rather than the importance of having a mutual understanding or an inseparable link with a person. ‘The Flea’ has an obvious ulterior motive which is a property that is not evident in the two other poems; I believe that this makes this poem much more self-centred and male dominated than the other two poems. For this reason our opinion of the character is different in this poem compared to the other two, where we see a genuine person who is truly in love.
I feel that to make a love poem effective the words written must appear to be truthful, Donne makes me believe his love in ‘The Sun Rising’ and ‘The Good Morrow’ simply because of the effort he goes to think of alternative ways of saying ‘I love you’. He prevents creating any clichés by creating the idea of their love being the only thing and everything that matters in ‘The Sun Rising’, ‘Princes do but play us; compared to this,’ Donne uses a similar technique in ‘The Good Morrow’ to express his love, ‘Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one’
He creates the idea of absolute closeness here and tells us that they are the same thing; almost like a united force in their love. Yet again this makes ‘The Flea’ completely different in the way it deals with love, if it is dealing with love at all. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for me to consider that the way that love is shown in this poem is through his devotion to the cause; his desperate urge to have sex with her. However, I do think that this is unlikely.
‘The Flea’ has yet more differences to the other poems in that it uses seemingly sexless imagery to emphasise the sexual theme of the poem, ‘Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee.’ Whereas the other two have no obvious sexual references, other than a bedroom setting, all they seem to desire is pure love, ‘Which I desired, and got, ‘twas but a dream of thee.’
There are definitely elements of anger and frustration in ‘The Flea’ and ‘The Sun Rising’ whereas ‘The good Morrow’ seems to be a little more sedate. In ‘The Sun Rising’ we see,
‘Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?’ This shows us Donne’s frustration of being split up from his lover, which is quite different from his frustration seen in ‘The Flea’,
‘And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.’ He shows childlike qualities in this poem by the way that he tries to place guilt on his lady for not sleeping with him. He attempts to make her feel like she is depriving him of something he deserves by right,
‘ Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deny’st me is;’ This also displays how little he must care for this woman in the way that he attempts to emotionally blackmail her by acting as though he is being wronged by her.
‘The Sun Rising’ and ‘The Good Morrow’ consider the love that is within the poem to be powerful over all,
‘Thou sun art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus;’ whereas the ‘love’ and unity of two people in ‘The Flea’ is being controlled by a small disease carrying creature,
‘This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;’ I feel that this makes ‘The Flea’ less effective as a love poem than the other two as it’s motives are so blatant and it’s imagery is far from flattering!
Each poem appears to be set in a different time period, ‘The flea’ is looking forward to the future, ‘The Good Morrow’ is considering aspects of the past and ‘The Sun Rising’ concentrates on the present. It could be the over ambition of ‘The Flea’ that causes it to seem a little hostile to real love and the comfortable setting of the known past and present that make ‘The Good Morrow’ and ‘The Sun Rising’ more welcoming poems, having knowledge about the relationship from past or present experiences would make it easier to write about how much in love two people are whereas ‘The Flea’ is almost having to predict what will happen.
Despite many differences between the three poems there are possibly even more similarities. A major resemblance between the three poems is the strong imagery and hyperbole effect that Donne uses to emphasise the purpose of each of his poems, for example in ‘The Flea’ Donne takes the death of the flea as a symbol of their lives and completely takes it’s death out of context,
‘Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?’
Bedroom imagery is also used in each poem,
‘This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.’ Is seen in ‘The Flea’. An example from ‘The Sun Rising’, ‘All here in one bed lay.’ I believe that Donne uses this imagery to subtly emphasise the aspect of sex within a relationship.
Other reoccurring elements to these poems are religion and royalty, which at the time of writing were important aspects of most people’s lives and could be used to great effect in helping the reader to identify with a particular point within the poem, royalty and religion also provide people with a vision of richness which could be useful when it comes to creating imagery,
‘Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.’
My conclusion to which is the most effective love poem out of the three would be that I do not really see ‘The Flea’ as a love poem of such and so I would have to cancel that poem out in this question. However, it does serve as an effective persuasive poem about lust. Out of the other two poems I feel that both would be equally effective for different people and their respective personalities. Each poem has it’s own qualities and all are intelligently and very alternatively presented.
