Synopses & Reviews
John Donne's standing as one of the greatest poets in the English language is now thoroughly established, and critics such as T. S. Eliot and F. R. Leavis have found in Donne's poetry qualities profoundly responsive to the modern age. While Donne is famous for his religious poetry, his love poems are among the most beautiful ever written, and this collection brings them together for the first time.
Donne was a man who knew all the many faces of love-- physical passion, jealousy, rapture, grief and parting-- and possessed the genius to distill his experiences into poetry. The potency of his writing has lost none of its effect; Donne's love poetry taps the reservoir of feelings and emotions common to all human beings.
Before Donne was ordained as a priest in 1615, he wrote sonnets (such as "The Dream" and "The Ecstasy"), elegies (such as "To His Mistress Going to Bed" and "Love's Progress"), and wedding songs ("St. Valentine's Day" and "Epithalamion"), all of which glitter with an eroticism that truly marries body and soul.
Charles Fowkes, author of a critically acclaimed biography of Rembrandt and several anthologies of short stories, has gathered those poems in which Donne is most passionate and most lyrical. The result is this lovely volume- the perfect gift for every beloved, a book of poems to press flowers in and to keep by the heart.
About the Author
Charles Fowkes is the director of a London publishing company. Although he spends most of his time publishing the work of others his first love is writing. He has selected and introduced several collections of short stories, and his biography of Rembrandt, published in 1978, received great praise. The opportunity to select and introduce a collection of the love poetry of John Donne was irresistible to him, and his essay is a refreshing look at one of the finest wordsmiths the English language has known.
Table of Contents
Introduction by Charles Fowkes
SONGS AND SONNETSThe Good-morrow
Song: Go, and catch a falling star
Woman's Constancy
The Undertaking
The Sun Raising
The Indifferent
Love's Usury
The Canonization
The Triple Fool
Lover's Infiniteness
Song: Sweetest love, I do not go
The Legacy
A Fever
Air and Angels
Break of Day
The Anniversary
A Valediction: Of My Name, in the Window
Twickenham Garden
A Valediction: Of the Book
Community
Love's Growth
Love's Exchange
Confined Love
The Dream
A Valediction: Of Weeping
Love's Alchemy
The Flea
The Curse
The Message
A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day
Witchcraft by a Picture
The Bait
The Apparition
The Broken Heart
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
The Ecstasy
Love's Deity
Love's Diet
The Will
The Funeral
The Blossom
The Primrose
The Relic
The Damp
The Dissolution
A Jet Ring Sent
Negative Love
The Prohibition
The Expiration
The Computation
The Paradox
Farewell to Love
A Lecture upon the Shadow
Sonnet: The Token
Self-Love
Song: Stay, o sweet, and do not rise (sometimes attributed to Dowland) ELEGIES
Jealousy
The Anagram
Change
The Perfume
His Picture
Elegy: Oh, let me not serve
Elegy: Nature's lay idiot
The Comparison
The Autumnal
The Dream
The Bracelet
His Parting from Her
On his Mistress
Love's Progress
To His Mistress Going to Bed
Love's War