Romancing The Real

John Donne was not all fun and sex. He also fell in love and felt the pangs of amorous sentiments. However, even when he writes about ethereal love, he is still very down to earth and always refers to realities pertaining to science of geography. Similes and metaphors, in this case known as conceits, are all linked to real tangible objects. The Metaphysical poets wanted to keep their feet on the ground. In the poem The Good-morrow his conceits revolve around discoveries, maps and hemispheres. Even the 'oneness' (remember The Flea?) is explained mathematically / scientifically... "Whatever dies, was not mixed equally..." Read the poem here.

Talking about the unity and oneness of lovers, I think that the most startling and effective conceit Donne used in his poetry was that of a compass, the geometrical tool used to draw a perfect circle. To exist, the compass must be made up of two distinct rods. Each rod represents the two lovers.

Donne uses it to highlight the the fact that two rods that make up one tool. If one were missing the other would be useless. He also describes the long-distance relationship he had experience with his wife. He says that his wife is "fix'd" in the centre of the circle, while he, the other rod, draws a perfect circle to return back to the beginning...back to his wife. His perfect circle also suggest infinity, there is no start or end in a circle, it goes on and on, eternal like their love.     

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Notice too the connotation of the words used, like stiff and grows erect... Romantic, scientific and of course, sexual. Read the poem here.

Tomorrow I shall show you Donne after his mystical crisis. He remains Metaphysical also in religion.