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Yesterday's poem, "Death Be Not Proud", was from the thoughtful, more religious side of John Donne. Today, a more earthly love poem in rhymed couplets from Donne, who lived in the late 16th and early 17th century. About two hundred years after his birth, Dr. Samuel Johnson dubbed him a "Metaphysical Poet", part of (and in truth, founder of) a loosely associated group of poets who used art, history and religion as extended metaphor (known as a conceit, a word which here has absolutely nothing to do with being stuck-up. The Metaphysical Poets delighted in using what was considered unusual imagery and syntax in their poems. Expediency caused him to convert from Catholicism to the Anglican church; Donne was eventually forced by King James I to become an Anglican clergyman (by royal decree preventing him from occupying any other job, no less).

Today's poem was, as it turns out, actually written as a song and set to music by three different contemporary (to Donne) composers: John Dowland, Orlando Gibbons and William Corkine.

Break of Day
by John Donne

Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise, because 'tis light?
Did we lie down, because 'twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say,
That being well, I fain* would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honor so,
That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must business thee from hence remove?
O, that's the worst disease of love.
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.

*fain: happily

Form: The poem/song is written in three stanzas of six lines each using iambic tetrameter (meaning there are four iambs per line: taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM) for the first four lines, and iambic pentameter (five iambs per line - taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM) for the last two, and in rhymed couplets; as a result, each stanza rhymes AABBCC. The effect of the two longer lines at the end of each stanza is to slow the pace a bit, and also to impart a bit more weight to those closing lines in each stanza than is given to the first four lines.

Discussion: The poem is sometimes considered an aubade, a poem or song about lovers separating at dawn (like his poem, "The Sun Rising"), although as the poem progresses, it becomes clear that this is not truly a love song, but is instead a complaint about the man's priorities. John Donne writes the poem from a female point of view, something that becomes apparent for the first time in the second stanza. The first stanza asks whether the man must get up and go just because it's now daylight, making the point that their decision to lie down together was not based on it being dark. "If we found each other despite it being dark, should we not remain together despite it being daylight?" is a slightly update variant of the final question of the first stanza.

The second stanza features a personification of "light", which is characterized as being all-seeing, but incapable of speech. If light could speak, however, (says the female speaker) the worst it would be able to say is that the speaker would happily stay with her man, based on her own principles of love and honor, both of which are qualities that she attributes to the man as well.

The final stanza makes clear that the people involved in the poem are not nobility, and at leisure, but are working folk: The man must rise in order to attend to his business concerns, and is not at leisure to

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After yesterday's poem, "Full Fathom Five" by William Shakespeare, I seriously considered posting about The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot. I even spent hours reading and pondering yesterday, but it's a ridiculous notion - I could spend a week on that poem, and more than one post on any one section of it. My next thought was to post "I started Early - Took my Dog" by Emily Dickinson but I posted that one last year during National Poetry Month as part of this "Building a Poetry Collection" series.

Then I got to thinking about that bell in "Full Fathom Five", which led me to think of this passage from John Donne's Meditation XVII, presented here with modernized spellings:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

Such a lovely snippet, though the entire Medititation is pretty great. The Meditation comes from Donne's religious persona. Donne lived in the late 16th and early 17th century, and wrote an interesting mix of work - some religious, some quite, um, not-religious.

About two hundred years after his birth, Dr. Samuel Johnson dubbed him a "Metaphysical Poet", part of (and in truth, founder of) a loosely associated group of poets who used art, history and religion as extended metaphor (known as a conceit, a word which here has absolutely nothing to do with being stuck-up. The Metaphysical Poets delighted in using what was considered unusual imagery and syntax in their poems. Expediency caused him to convert from Catholicism to the Anglican church; Donne was eventually forced by King James I to become an Anglican clergyman (by royal decree, preventing him from occupying any other job, no less).

Many of Donne's poems dwell on issues of death and mortality, including one of my favorites of his works, "Death Be Not Proud", which I've been remiss in not posting before. The poem is actually entitled "Holy Sonnet X" or "Divine Sonnet X", but is usually called by its first few words.


Death Be Not Proud
by John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have callèd thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.


Form: It's a Petrarchan or Italianate sonnet written in iambic pentameter (five iambic feet per line taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM) - that first line is written "death BE not PROUD though SOME have CALL-ed THEE" - when reading it aloud, however, I always go with modern pronunciations, which makes the line read as follows "DEATH BE not PROUD though SOME have CALLED thee". No sense torturing the language just to make the meter fit when the result sounds awkward to modern ears.

The rhyme scheme is ABBAABBACDDCEE (remembering that in Donne's day "eternally" rhymed with "die").

Discussion: The poem uses apostrophe, meaning that the poem is a poem of address directed to an imaginary figure or an abstract idea. Here, th

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