No poet has been more wilfully contradictory than John Donne, whose works forge unforgettable connections between extremes of passion and mental energy. From satire to tender elegy, from sacred devotion to lust, he conveys an astonishing range of emotions and poetic moods. Constant in his work, however, is an intensity of feeling and expression and complexity of argument that is as evident in religious meditations such as 'Good Friday 1613. Riding Westward' as it is in secular love poems such as 'The Sun Rising' or 'The Flea'. 'The intricacy and subtlety of his imagination are the length and depth of the furrow made by his passion,' wrote Yeats, pinpointing the unique genius of a poet who combined ardour and intellect in equal measure.
The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics)
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John Donne was born into a Catholic family in 1572. After a conventional education at Hart Hall, Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, he took part in the Earl of Essex's expedition to the Azores in 1597. He secretly married Anne More in December 1601 and was imprisoned by her father, Sir George, in the Fleet two months later. He was ordained priest in January 1615 and took a Doctorate of Divinity at Cambridge the same year. He was made Dean of St Paul's in London in 1621, a position he held until his death in 1631. He is famous for the sermons he preached in his later years, as well as for his poems.
A.J. Smith was Professor Emeritus of the University of Southampton. His book include Literary Love (1983) and Metaphysical Wit (1992). He died in Salisbury in 1991.
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Twice or thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name; So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be; Still when, to where thou wert, I came, Some lovely glorious nothing I did see, But since my soul, whose child love is, Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do, More subtle than the parent is Love must not be, but take a body too, And therefore what thou wert, and who I bid love ask, and now That it assume thy body, I allow, And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Twice or thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name; So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be; Still when, to where thou wert, I came, Some lovely glorious nothing I did see, But since my soul, whose child love is, Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do, More subtle than the parent is Love must not be, but take a body too, And therefore what thou wert, and who I bid love ask, and now That it assume thy body, I allow, And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Here we see the English language at its most beautiful exposing the many facets of love with courageous honesty and stunning insight. The human condition has never been better expressed and love has never had such a worthy exponent. For poetry lovers from Wordsworth to TS Eliot, Donne demonstrates how wonderful the English language is at expressing every nuance of our existence and what an amazing servant it can be in the right hands.
You will treasure this book and dip into it often throughout a variety of moods. It will never let you down nor cease to surprise.
You will treasure this book and dip into it often throughout a variety of moods. It will never let you down nor cease to surprise.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Doc Barbara
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
John Donne is widely appreciated for his combination of wit (meaning agility of mind) and emotion, uniting the two in crisp yet melodic poetry - although for centuries his verse was thought to be unmusical. A unified sensibility is what T.S Eliot found in him, meaning that a thought was an experience to him just like the scent of a rose. He is my favourite poet with certain lines lingering forever in the mind: "Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,/ Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time" where the last line drags out its rhythm to echo the sense. A poem such as "The Will" requires a decoding of each stanza: read the final line in each verse first so that you see why he is bequeathing a certain aspect of himself to a particular recipient - and yet it is also a moving poem from a disappointed and cynical lover. Donne is valued for his conceits (extravagant analogies); the drama in his treatment of topics; the density of his language; the immediacy even colloquialism of his language; the range of his references, many scientific; his intellectual capacites along with strength of emotion; his variety of sentence structures; the deft skill of the way he changes direction in argument and his direct appeal to a reader. His contemporaries thought him original though Dr Johnson found "the most heterogenous ideas...yoked by violence together". This volume contains his complete poetic works and is an authoritative text yet a reader might be happier with a selection of the best poems (love and religious) with explanatory footnotes. If you do not need the Verse Letters and/or Anniversaries in their fulness you might want the Songs and Sonnets only and concentrate on them before moving on to this exhaustive compilation.... Read more ›
By jenny
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book, the authorative text; used, with yellowing, soft pages, was a delight to receive, arrived promptly well packaged, and as described.
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