"The Flea"

"The Relic"

"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"

". . . his purpose is to establish his moral and intellectual mastery by refuting the mistress's reasons for keeping her virginity, and by proving the emptiness of her fears." He rolls over her protests and reaches the conclusion that "the loss of maidenhood [virginity] is nothing more than a fleabite" (Winny). "The argument of the poem begins and ends with a fleabite. The insect has bitten the lover and the mistress in turn, and now contains a mixture of their bloods. Thus the flea has brought about the kind of union which the lover desires, yet without raising any moral protest from the mistress; enjoying them both with no longwinded preliminaries, and growing into a compound being as they might if the lady would yield to him. When she threatens to kill the flea, he restrains her: the insect is now them, filled with their two bloods. It is also the marriage-bed in which they were physically united, and the church in which their marriage was celebrated. Despite hostile parents and the lady's own reluctance, they have become a single being within the flea's body. Although, hardened by custom, she might think nothing of murdering part of him by killing the flea, that crime would involve suicide and sacrilege; for she would also kill part of herself and destroy the marriage-temple in which they were united. But she persists in her triple crime; and having 'purpled her nail' in the flea's blood she refutes his argument about murder and suicide by showing that neither of them is any weaker for having lost the particle of life supposedly sucked from them. In this momentary triumph she gives the lover the means of crushing her in a final, unanswerable demonstration by turning her own point against her. She is right, he admits; and just as she lost nothing of consequence to the flea, so in surrendering to him her honour she will suffer no more than a fleabite" (Winny).

This poem is addressed to his partner in a true love-match. Donne contemplates a time after his death when his grave will be opened and his bones thrown out to make room for another corpse. When his grave is reopened and the gravedigger comes a cross a bone encircled with a bracelet of his mistress' hair, the gravedigger might think that a couple lies together "hoping to be reunited on Judgment Day, and will leave them undisturbed. If this should happen during a period of a false religion, the gravedigger will carry these relics to the bishop, to be venerated as holy things: her hair as though it had belonged to another Mary Magdalen, the bone as though it came from one of her lovers. Together they will be adored; and as miracles will be expected of them, this poem sets down for future ages what wonderful things they have already performed. The great miracle lay in the virtuousness of their behaviour as lovers whose relationship ignored sex, who kissed only at meeting and parting, and who never challenged the moral law which restrains natural impulse. This miracle he can describe, but to give any proper account of his miraculous self lies beyond the power of poetry" (Winny).

This poem is one of several poems addressed to a woman by a lover about to leave on a journey or voyage which must separate them for some time. This was probably written for Ann Donne, his wife. "The central concern of this poem is to define the relationship between the lovers which makes separation unimportant, or even impossible. . . . Their parting . . . must not involve a show of extravagant grief but a silent melting from one another; and as illustration he suggests a death so imperceptible that the watchers at the bedside cannot tell when the last breath is taken. . . . Their grief . . . is in any case too profound to be expressed by such means; earthquakes cause terror and perplexity, but the much greater movement of the spheres [in the seventeenth century they believed that the stars and planets were held up by invisible spheres] brought about by trepidation [movement of the heavens] is regarded as a natural occurrence, and upsets no one. . . their parting, though far more momentous than any ordinary separation, must attract much less attention. Lovers of a 'dull sublunary ' kind, Donne argues, know nothing beyond physical love; and cannot reconcile themselves to parting because, for them, bodily separation is absolute. All sublunary [beneath the moon] beings are subject to change and decay, and in applying this term to other lovers Donne implies that he and she have the constancy and permanence found above the moon. For them, whose love has been purified to such a degree that they themselves cannot comprehend it, loss of physical contact is much less important. The phrase, 'interassured of the mind', seems openly to admit the need for unshakable security which Donne so often represents . . . The lovers form a single being, sharing a single soul; and their unity is not to be fractured by physical separation. Rather, their shared soul will extend itself as the gap between their bodies widens, 'Like gold to airy thinness beat' . . . Other metals -- copper and lead, for instance -- can be beaten into sheets, but none of them so impalpably thin as gold leaf; nor do other metals have the beauty, value and noble associations of gold. Donne's image gives the lovers' shared soul these splendid qualities yet at the same time suggests its insubstantial nature through the evocative phrase 'airy thinness'. . . .

If the lovers do not share a common soul, Donne argues, then their individual souls are firmly joined together, like the legs of a pair of compasses [that device we use in geometry to draw circles]. . . . 'thy soul, the fixed foot', he tells his partner, is not impelled to move until he does so, but then follows his example. In the same way, when the outer leg of the compass [draws] a circle, its partner marking the center turns about, as though watching. Again, when the outer leg [draws] an arc at the limit of its reach, its partner 'leans and hearkens after it' as though straining to keep in contact; and draws itself up straight when the outer leg completes its circular journey and 'comes home'. This corresponds with their own relationship, Donne tells the lady. Like the leg which describes the circle, he must trace out his traveller's course while she, the fixed foot, remains in one place" )Winny).

Winny, James. A Preface to Donne. revised ed. New York: Longman, 1981.