Choose two or three poems that you think exemplify the characteristics of Donne's poetry.

'The Sun Rising' exemplifies many characteristics of Donne's poetry, particularly his love poetry as his Jack Donne persona is typically light hearted and witty. Donne immediately reverses expectations of what the poem will be about as he begins the poem with a characteristically vibrant first line that dismisses the sun outright. 'Busy old fool, unruly sun'. Donne is both condescending and supercilious when readers might instead expect him to be awed by the Sun's great power. In poetry, personification of the sun is not uncommon but Donne’s is particularly unusual as the sun’s personification takes the form of a voyeuristic, old man. 'Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us?' The line opens with great energy, in which is recognised not only Donne's determination to win an argument but also his triumphant mood as a successful lover. In ‘Good-Morrow’ too, the first line illustrates the remarkable directness of Donne’s poetic voice. ‘I wonder by my troth, what thou and I Did till we lov’d?’

Several of Donne's poems are written in the dramatic and rhetorical form of an urgent and heated argument, notably 'The Flea' and 'To his Mistress Going to Bed' and 'Sun Rising is no different'. However in this case, Donne is questioning the sun rather than his lover. Donne can be seen to first draw in the reader with his sharp wit before launching his argument to the sun. Readers are at once impressed by the worldly assurance of this lover who professes to care nothing for the world. Despite his complaint that the sun has disturbed him and his lover, there is nothing sleepy about his opening outburst; he is already more alert and indeed more 'busy' than any of those who are reluctantly setting about their day's work. He is too arrogant to regard the sun as a possible threat to his happiness, treating it instead as an incompetent but harmless servant to be sent about his business 'go chide', 'go tell'. In the same brisk manner the poet scoffs at the 'rags of time' as hardly meriting the lovers' attention, since love is of its very nature 'all alike', and therefore exempt from the pressures of time and change. The poem is both solipsistic and narcissistic in keeping with many others of Donne's songs and sonnets. The lovers are at the centre of a living and attractive world and Donne gives full weight to their sense that they are, uniquely, immune from time. "Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,

                        Nor hours, days, months which are the rags of time.'

Love does not know of time, seasons or social responsibility but shelters lovers in their own secluded world. In this way, Donne uses the idea of the Ptolemaic universe in which the earth is at the centre. At the time Donne was writing the Copernican universe was beginning to be established, with the sun at the centre and with it came the dawn(!) of a rational era. However, the Ptolemaic universe was still frequently used in poetry, being a more romantic idea and Donne uses images from both contemporary science and outgoing science.  Donne repeatedly uses images of exploration and discovery as Drake's circumnavigation of the globe was still fairly recent and Donne would have been well aware of the new treasures that were being discovered. His lover is both 'th' Indias of spice and mine'.

 In 'Good-Morrow' images of discovery are used in order to enliven the poetry and comparisons are made between the excitement of two lovers waking up in a new world of love and the thrill of 'new worlds' which have been found. 'Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown'. This can be considered to be the central conceit of the poem and is characteristically complex. Donne seeks to acknowledge the past and the future as well as the present reality of the couple's love, and ambition leads him to include a wide range of feeling and mood in the space of the poem.

Humour is present in nearly all of Donne's poems although in 'Good-Morrow' it is more subtle than others such as 'Sun Rising'. The bungled 'country pleasures' of the past provide an opportunity for the lovers (and readers) to express their love in shared laughter.  At the same time Donne shows himself acutely aware of the possibility that love will be invaded by fear ‘And now good-morrow to our waking souls Which watch not one another out of fear’. He seems instinctively to recognise that while we cannot banish fear, we can nonetheless rise free of it.  The effect of this recognition is profoundly emotional as the movement of verse signals the lovers’ sudden emergence from suspicious watchfulness into a world of mutual contemplation. ‘For love all love of other sights controls And makes one little room an everywhere’. The couple’s literal awakening after a night together is made to suggest the awakening of their souls into a new clarity of feeling. This metaphor is not original to Donne but the poem is so characteristic of him because the images are not used merely decoratively, to give poetic status to a simple idea but rather, argumentatively, to reveal more about the experience of love than was at first evident.

Despite their differences both ‘The Good-Morrow’ and ‘The Sun Rising’ can be seen to exemplify Donne’s poetry sharing, as they do, complex metaphors and challenging perspectives on love.