Complete English Poems - John Donne

Complete English Poems - John Donne: Base metal to Gold (1895 words)
by Celandine - written on 27.08.01 (Very useful, 644 readings)
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Passion. That's what I first think of when I see Donne, but it's an intellectual, as well as a physical passion. It's a passion where ideas are explored, and which is governed by the head, as well as driven by the heart. It's an uneasy passion, always looking at it's own end, and even in his sonnets, endowed with an extreme urgency, becuase we know the end will come, the scales will fall, and age and death will triumph, because they have to. That makes Donne sound terribly depressing, but he isn't. He isn't because he juxtaposes ideas together so cleverly, and uses the new scientific discoveries of the seventeenth century to explore ...