John Donne Biography by Jess

John Donne Biography

22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631

Donne was born in London in 1572 into a Catholic family at a time when Catholicism was illegal. He studied at both Oxford and Cambridge but could not graduate because of his faith. After university he became a soldier and fought on the continent and then returned to a promising civil service career. But Donne effectively stalled his own career when he secretly married his employer's teenage niece, Anne More. Her uncle was furious and had him arrested. Though he was later released from prison, he found it hard to find employment, and over the coming years he would be unable to support his increasingly large family without charitable help.

When King James I came to power, Donne converted to Church of England and moved towards religious poetry, writing prose attacking the Catholic faith. In 1615, in a final change of fortune, Donne took holy orders and rose quickly in his profession to become the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London. Towards the end of his life he wrote the famous Holy Sonnet X (Death). He died in 1631, and his work was never published in his lifetime.

He is considered the fulcrum of the metaphysical poets and poetry. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms are a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits.

A range of John Donne’s poetry are:

The Flea (shown below) 

Death

Good Morrow

A Vediction: Forbidding Mourning  

La Corona

Nativity

Fall Of A Wall  

The Flea 
by John Donne

 MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, 
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.