I’m drowning in 17th century metaphysical poets and their conceits and metaphors (studying for my British literature class). John Donne, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Robert Herrick–they all wrote poems with extended metaphors that swirl around and lose themselves in a vortex of metaphysical meaning. However, they tend to lose me, too, either because of the difficulty of the antiquated language they use or because my head already hurts a bit tonight. Dancer Daughter says that Donne was conceit-ed, but I think she only read the love poetry and skipped the holy stuff. Anyway, here are a few samples so that we can all drown together:

Henry Vaughan:
Ah, my dear Lord ! what couldst thou spy
In this impure, rebellious clay,
That made Thee thus resolve to die
For those that kill Thee every day ?

O what strange wonders could Thee move
To slight Thy precious blood, and breath ?
Sure it was love, my Lord ! for love
Is only stronger far than death !

Thomas Carew:
MURDERING BEAUTY.

I’LL gaze no more on her bewitching face,
Since ruin harbours there in every place ;
For my enchanted soul alike she drowns
With calms and tempests of her smiles and frowns.
I�ll love no more those cruel eyes of hers,
Which, pleased or anger�d, still are murderers :
For if she dart, like lightning, through the air
Her beams of wrath, she kills me with despair :
If she behold me with a pleasing eye,
I surfeit with excess of joy, and die.

John Donne:
Sonnet XIV.

Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me

So was John Donne an Anglican Calvinist?