John Donne’s ‘s poem loves diet is an excellent example of his use of metaphysical conceit. The title of the poem itself is rather intriguing. At the first glance the title seems to suggest a diet of love prescribed to a person in an attempt to better his life, however as one reads the entire poem one realizes that the poems love is subjected to a diet in this case the diet requires love to exercise discretion.
In the first stanza of the poem, the poet tells the reader that his love had grown to a “cumbersome unwieldiness and burden us corpulence.” It had become so unbearable and troublesome for him to deal with that he had to put it on a diet and curtail it. In this case love had to make use of “discretion” and exercise it limits. In this stanza itself Donne’s makes use of the greatest figure of speech that proceeds to characterise the entire poem as well. He portrays love as a separate human being, in this case a rather obese one. Therefore love has been given a rather negative portrayal at the very beginning of the poem itself using this personification which is the major figure of speech in this stanza and in the poem as a whole.
The speaker in stanza 2 changes from the poet to love. In this stanza love takes on the actual role of a separate human being and get almost be regarded as the speakers friend. Love talks about the diet that the poet has enforced on him and his effort in living up to it. He begins by telling the reader that he did not allow the lover more than “’sigh” in favour of his lady love, irrespective of whether she praised her lovers love for her or criticizes its insufficiency. This portrays the women as never being satisfied with what she has and always looks for something more that she can get out of it. If at all the lover managed to extract a sigh from his lady and attempt to live upon that sigh, Love would show him that it was not that genuine or sincere that it could be lived on. The major figure of speech governing this stanza is a personification again primarily because Donne’s has endowed love with several personal qualities.
