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Compare the presentation of love in two John Donne poems
Love is a recurring theme in many of Donne’s poem, although it appears in different
forms; platonic love, sexual love, divine or romantic
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One demonstrates Donne’s love of his mistress,
and the other outlines his love of a woman presumed to be his wife
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In ‘The Sun Rising’, Donne puts
himself and his lover at the centre of the poem with strong imagery
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” He suggests that they are the world, and so the sun need only warm them
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”1 This serves to highlight their love as ‘true’ through their being consumed by
each other, with nothing that could interrupt them
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This contrasts
with the tone of ‘She whom I love’, which is much more subdued and solemn
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Donne’s grief in ‘She whom I loved’, is provoked by his love for the woman
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He also portrays a feeling of guilt for loving God, “And dost not only I
fear lest I allow/ My love to saints and angels, things divine,” he suggests he knows this love
should be offered to God but is afraid that he will lose the love he still holds for his wife
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” In this
way she helps him, she leads him to God and religion
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Donne also goes against the norm in poetry of the time with ‘She whom I loved’ as
1

Patrick Cruttwell, The Love Poetry of John Donne

it is said love poetry was to contain, “fictional expression”2 i
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in the style of a modern day
soap opera, to write about more interesting things than real life
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‘She whom I loved’ contains an element of pleading with God, although whether this
is for his wife back or for the return of his religion we cannot be sure
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He often structures his
poems as a one-sided address to either God, as in ‘She whom I loved’ or another being
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This need to practise what he is going to say
highlights the importance of his words, thus emphasising his love for the woman, with his
need to get it right
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It has
been suggested that the purpose of Donne’s love poetry is to, “present as total a knowledge
of the experience of love as one imagination could compass
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However,
the only main differences between these two appear to be the Christian convention of
marriage, and the implied physical relationship with one but not with the other
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B

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