Man should be ‘rich and weary’ – rich not only in a financial but in a moral and spiritual sense, too, we assume. We suppose one way of looking it is to say that God is advocating hard work as its own reward, and justifying having just one day of the week as a ‘day of rest’ on which to worship Him. Work is important so that man should worship the God who made Nature, rather than Nature itself. ‘The Pulley’ is a Creation poem which imagines God making man and bestowing all available attributes upon him – except for rest. Soules must againe take rise, from whence they fell.Īnother of Herbert’s poems whose paradoxes and wordplay show him to be one of the greatest metaphysical poets. What need hast thou? theise blotted Lines should tell, To a large heauen, from a vaute circular,īecause, the thronginge virtues, in thy brest,Ĭould not haue roome enough, in such a chest, Since, thou for state, hath raisd thy state, soe farr, Make fortune, or fate hath power, to breake a chinke. Soe safe that Doubt it selfe can neuer thinke, Of Lillyes, Violletts, and roseall pride,Īnd lockt in marble chests, that Tapestrye Since, thou hast layd that downy Couch aside Since thou fayre soule, art warbleinge to a spheare,įrom whose resultances, theise quickned weere. This poem is not available elsewhere online, so we reproduce the first few lines below: 1574-1636) proves this: born only a couple of years after Donne (probably), Southwell penned this metaphysical ‘elegy’ in which the Ptolemaic and Platonic versions of the universe are used as a way of understanding the power of prayer. Since this flea has sucked blood from both me and you, the poet says to his would-be mistress, our blood has already been mingled in the flea’s body so why shouldn’t we mingle our bodies (and their fluids) in sexual intercourse? Of course, this rather crude paraphrase is a world away from the elegance and metaphorical originality of Donne’s poem with its extended metaphor …Īlthough all of the best-known metaphysical poets are men, it isn’t true that metaphysical poetry in the seventeenth century was solely the province of male poets.
Like Andrew Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ (see below), ‘The Flea’ is essentially a seduction lyric. Like many of the best metaphysical poems, ‘The Flea’ uses an interesting and unusual conceit to make an argument – in this case, about the nature of physical love. How little that which thou deniest me is Īnd in this flea our two bloods mingled be Ī sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,Īnd pampered swells with one blood made of two,Īnd this, alas, is more than we would do …
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