‘Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do’ 6
In an attempt to quash this argument, the woman attempts to kill the flea, to which the narrator reacts with feigned horror,
‘Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?’ 7
Having pretended to be shocked at the woman killing the flea, the narrator then turns this metaphor of a sexual union completely on its head, and shows the woman how wrong she was to be apprehensive of losing her purity and honour in the first place, and that by killing the flea, she lost just as much honour as she would do giving into his wishes,
‘Tis true – then learn how false fears be:
Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.’ 8
Both of these poems are written in a very argumentative manner, following a regular pattern; the initial argument is followed by a counter argument, which is in turn followed by a conclusion. These poems are the most argumentative of the ones studied, probably due to the theme of both of these poems: the man’s desire for the woman. This male chauvinistic attitude was common in the seventeenth century, during a time when women were seen as either objects of lust or just as housewives. Both narrators seem to have little regard for the woman’s feelings, and are only concerned with whether or not they will get what they want.
Another of Donne’s poems whose main theme is the persuasion of the woman is ‘Elegy 19 To his mistress Going to Bed’, but the narrator actually succeeds in this poem, whereas normally the narrator fails in his persuasion.
An obvious theme common to most of the poems is the beauty of the woman itself. Many of the poems describe in great detail the woman’s appearance, perhaps in order to flatter the woman so that she might take notice of the narrator.
For example, in ‘The Fair Singer’ by Andrew Marvell, the woman’s beauty is almost unavoidable for the narrator; he does not want to fall in love with the woman, but cannot help himself due to her physical beauty and the beauty of her voice. This poem is similar to ‘The Sirens’ by Homer, as Ulysses is powerless against the beautiful nymphs, whose voices possess the power to charm any man. This is exactly how the narrator feels in ‘The Fair Singer’, that he is powerless against the beauty of this woman. However, the negative attitude portrayed by the male narrator in this poem is very unusual, as metaphysical poetry normally consists of the yearning male and the reluctant female.
Marvell uses metonymy in this poem, using the sun to represent her physical beauty and the wind to represent the beauty of her singing voice. The narrator feels as if the beautiful voice of the woman is entangling and trapping him,
‘Whose subtle art invisibly can wreathe
My fetters of the very air I breathe?’ 9
This idea is very interesting, as at the time of writing, sound waves had not yet been discovered. From the language and imagery Marvell uses, it appears that he is using the idea of the vibrations in the air from her voice trapping him and not letting him escape. This idea of the beauty of the woman stifling the man is comparable to Donne’s poem ‘The Apparition’, in which the constant rejections from the beautiful woman leads the narrator to his death.
‘The Fair Singer’ mainly comprises of the narrator watching the woman from a distance, not wanting to get involved with her but finding his resistance futile. This is comparable to ‘The Picture of Little T.C In A Prospect Of Flowers’, in which the narrator deems it wise to observe the future of the girl from a safe distance, as to remain unnoticed by her scorn.
The narrator also admires the woman’s beauty in ‘To His Coy Mistress’, although this praise is not there just for admiration of the woman; the flattery of the woman is intended to make her relent and agree to sleep with the narrator. In the fifth line of this poem, the narrator flatters the woman by placing her by the side of the river Ganges, somewhere exotic and romantic, and at the time this poem was written, it would have been like a place of myth. Whilst there, he says she shall find rubies, again emphasising her beauty and almost saying that her beauty requires such a setting.
The idea of two people in love creating a private world for themselves is a main theme in John Donne’s ‘The Sun Rising’. This poem expresses the idea that when people are so in love, the outside world does not matter, and that the whole world is just you and your lover.
‘She is all States, and all Princes, I
Nothing else is.’ 10
This is a typically characteristic quote, as it encompasses both the idea of the private world and the geographical imagery, and also the views about women at the time. The idea that the woman is all the states of the world, and he King of them, shows us that they have created their own world in which she is the land and he rules over her. This, therefore, also shows us how women were perceived at the time; the man was always the one to rule over the woman.
The narrator initially feels negatively towards the sun, saying that it is a ‘busy old fool’ 11. However, by the beginning of the third stanza, his opinion of the sun has softened and the narrator recognises that the sun is getting old, and if its duty is to shine on the world, it is carrying that out very well by shining on just the two of them, and that with the sun’s growing age, it would be much easier for it to orbit just the two lovers:
‘Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done by warming us.’ 12
Donne also uses the Ptolemaic model of the universe in this poem; the idea that the sun is attached to a crystalline sphere which orbits around the Earth, which was believed to have been the centre of the universe. This can be clearly seen in the last two lines of the poem,
‘Since here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed they centre is, these walls thy sphere.’ 13
Death is quite a common theme amongst these metaphysical love poems, which seems to be quite paradoxical, considering they are poems of love. In Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Picture Of Little T.C. In A Prospect Of Flowers’, the theme of death is particularly prominent. In this poem, Marvell imagines what a beautiful young girl’s future will be like. He imagines that she will be very beautiful, but also cold and distant. Just like the woman in ‘The Flea’, she will also represent chastity, but not because she wants to remain pure, but rather that love is ‘afraid’ of her due to her coldness,
‘Yet this is she whose chaster laws
The wanton Love shall one day fear,’ 14
Marvell then goes on to suggest how she becomes powerful and scornful, rejecting every man that comes her way, and Marvell uses the image of some sort of ‘warrior queen’, riding over the hearts of the men in her chariot,
‘Ere they have tried their force to wound,
Ere, with their glancing wheels, they drive
In triumph over hearts that strive,’ 15
However, the main point to Marvell’s poem is that she might not actually live long enough to have the chance to fulfil these predictions, as the stanzas two and three are set in the future, based entirely on Marvell’s imagination. For much of the poem he has used the girl’s name, Theophila, which means ‘loved by God’. As the title of the poem says, the girl is amongst the flowers, and, using the link of the goddess, Marvell suggests that she gives names to the flowers, giving the garden its spirit. However, Theophila must be careful of what she does in the garden; if she continues to pick the buds of the flowers, which Marvell says are like the children of the goddess Flora, then Flora may have to kill her, as Theophila has killed the buds. We can clearly see this is what Marvell meant from the last few lines of the poem,
‘Gather the flowers but spare the buds;
Lest Flora angry at thy crime,
To kill her infants in their prime,
Do quickly make the example yours;
And, ere we see,
Nip in the blossom all our hopes and thee.’ 16
A typical characteristic of these poems are the conceits: unusual comparisons or metaphors. Also very common are the use of paradox and oxymoron, and both of these characteristics often come hand in hand. Both Andrew Marvell and John Donne use conceits extremely frequently, not only in the poems studied. For example, Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ even has a paradoxical title, whilst in ‘The Fair Singer’, the beginning of the poem contains a paradox,
‘Love did compose so sweet an enemy’ 17
‘The Sun Rising’ also contains a paradox in the very first line of the poem, as the narrator calls the sun ‘unruly’, which is completely incorrect as the sun follows a very regular pattern indeed.
Donne uses paradox in quite a few of his poems, in order to create the effect of impossibility and flattery. For example, in the poem entitled ‘Song’, the entire first stanza is based on impossibilities:
‘Go and catch a falling star
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,’ 18
From this quote, we can also see that Donne uses time in his poems to express a certain emotion or idea; this poem is no exception. This particular poem conveys a quite cynical view of love, however, which is unusual for metaphysical love poems, as they usually contain a lot of flattery and persuasion from the narrator. In another of Donne’s poems, ‘Elegy 19 to his Mistress Going to Bed’, the use of paradox is again quite obvious:
‘To enter in these bonds, is to be free,’ 19
The frequent use of paradox, hyperbole and conceits give Donne’s poetry a persistent wittiness, often treating the human complexities with a sense of cynicism and irony. The use of this ironic tone, coupled with the frequent puns and comparisons, gives the reader the impression of actual speech. Donne’s use of conceits is comparable to the Petrarchan sonneteers, whose frequent use of flowery language and extended metaphors influenced Donne greatly, although Donne tended to add more humour and irony to his poems. Eighteenth century poet Samuel Johnson described their conceits as
‘a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.’ 20
Many of the metaphysical poems also have a song-like rhythm, due to the majority of the poems comprising of a regular rhyme scheme and stanza length, with some resulting in an iambic pentameter, ‘The Fair Singer’ for example. However, this can also be used in reverse, and in some cases, due to irregular stanza length and no rhyme scheme, the poems can give the impression of being spoken aloud, which helps to create a good atmosphere in the poems with a more argumentative tone.
The use of military imagery is quite common of the metaphysical poems, which, again, seems to contradict the overall theme of the poem; it is unusual to use images of death and pain in a poem about love. However, at the time these poems were written, it was considered commonplace.
In Marvell’s ‘The Fair Singer’, the use of military imagery is particularly prominent, and is used to emphasise the feeling of the narrator being conquered by the beauty of the woman. For example, the very first few lines of the poem contain strong military imagery:
‘To make a final conquest of all me,
Love did compose so sweet an enemy,’ 21
In the second stanza, some interesting military imagery is used:
‘My disentangled soul might save,
Breaking the curled trammels of her hair.’ 22
This imagery is interesting as trammels were nets used in combat to trap the enemy, and in later times used to catch fish. The use of a weapon to describe an object of beauty is entirely unique to this type of poetry.
The last stanza of the poem brings the most interesting imagery of the poem, comparing her beauty to an army, which, due to her physical beauty and the beauty of her voice, has gained all possible advantages in battle:
‘It had been easy fighting in some plain,
Where victory might hang in equal choice,
But all resistance against her is vain,
Who has the advantage of both eyes and voice,
And all my forces needs must be undone,
She having gained both the wind and sun.’ 23
The last line is particularly interesting, as it couples both as a compliment to the woman’s beauty, but also as a metaphor for war; as the woman has gained both the wind and the sun, she would have the advantage during battle, as having the wind in your back helps with the arrows and the sun in your enemies face hinders sight.
Marvell also uses military imagery in his poem ‘The Picture Of Little T.C In A Prospect Of Flowers’, in which the future, adult girl is depicted as a cold, fierce woman who drives over the hearts of men in her chariot.
‘To His Coy Mistress’ only contains one instance of military imagery, in which the feelings between the narrator and the woman are ‘rolled’ into a cannonball, to be fired through the restrictions of love:
‘Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life.’ 24
The lack of military imagery in this poem is probably due to the general tone of the poem; it is not intended to be just an admiration of the woman’s beauty, but rather an impatient argument and plea by the narrator for the woman to sleep with him, so therefore the military imagery of the man being conquered by the woman does not apply.
Due to the extremely religious beliefs of the majority of society during the seventeenth century, religious imagery is also used in metaphysical poetry. Both John Donne and Andrew Marvell were born to religious families, with Marvell’s father being a reverend and Donne’s family being devout Catholics.
In Donne’s ‘The Flea’, religious imagery is used to add to the argumentative tone of the poem, in one instance saying that the death of the woman would be like the death of something holy:
‘Let not to this self murder be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.’ 25
To back up the narrator’s theory of the woman and himself being unified inside the flea, he again uses religious imagery:
‘Though parents grudge – and you – we are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.’ 26
Donne also uses an extended metaphor in this poem, using the flea to represent their union, and their ‘marriage bed and marriage temple’ 27 are used to represent the physical and spiritual sides of their marriage respectively.
In another of Donne’s poems, ‘Song’, religious imagery is also used, but for a different purpose to its use in ‘The Flea’. The narrator uses the religious imagery here to present a cynical view of women, saying how rare and exciting it would be to find a faithful woman;
‘If thou find’st one let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet,’ 28
In Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’, there is one example of religious imagery, in which the ‘marble vault’ creates a sepulchral atmosphere. It is used to add strength to the narrator’s argument against the woman - once she has died, they will no longer be able to be together;
‘Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song;’ 29
Appendix
1 Andrew Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’, ll. 21-22.
2 ibid, ll. 13-14.
3 ibid, ll. 7-8
4 John Donne, ‘The Flea’, l. 2.
5 ibid, ll. 5-6.
6 ibid, ll. 7-9.
7 ibid, ll. 19-20.
8 ibid, ll. 25-27.
9 Andrew Marvell, ‘The Fair Singer’, ll. 11-12.
10John Donne, ‘The Sun Rising’, ll. 21-22.
11 ibid, l.1.
12 ibid, ll. 27-28.
13 ibid, ll. 29-30.
14 Andrew Marvell, ‘The Picture of Little T.C’, ll. 11-12
15 ibid, ll. 19-21.
16 ibid, ll. 34-40.
17 Andrew Marvell, ‘The Fair Singer’, l. 2
18 John Donne, ‘Song’, ll. 1-4.
19 John Donne, ‘Elegy 19 To his Mistress Going to Bed’, l. 31.
20 Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784.
21 Andrew Marvell, ‘The Fair Singer’, ll. 1- 2
22 ibid, ll. 8-9.
23 ibid, ll. 13-18.
24 Andrew Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’, ll. 41-44.
25 John Donne, ‘The Flea’, ll. 17-18.
26 ibid, ll. 14-15.
27 ibid, l.13.
28 John Donne, ‘Song’, ll. 19-20.
29 Andrew Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’, ll. 25-27.
