Love: Suffering Or Resurrection.

Love: suffering or resurrection.

An author, John Donne has expressed two significant themes of love in his poems.

The following essay talks about the relationships between religious and romantic love.

Poems that are introduced in this essay show a reflection of poet's opinions and feelings

about different kinds of love. Three poems: "The Broken Heart", "A Hymn To Christ At

The Author's Last Going Into Germany", and "Hymn To God, In My Sickness" chosen

and carefully deconstructed and explained. The main points of three poems are about how

they reflect different kinds of love and how human soul reacts to this love. In

John Donne's poems love is being described in different forms such as love to God and

love to a human even though those two kinds are different, Donne describes them as one.

This essay is based on comparing poems and finding the relationship between religious

and romantic love.

First poem that will be examined called a "The Broken Heart". This poem talks about

strong feelings of love and desire that are too strong to handle for a human soul.

"He is stark mad, whoever says,

That he hath been in love an hour"(Donne, 1-2)

Author explains that real love is a very strong feeling and in his opinion no man can ever

truly overcome it. He explains that human soul dies a lot faster than true love. Love lives

forever but no human heart can hold it for more than few breaths of life. Love is very

violent and when people are not careful with it, it may destroy them.

"Who will believe me, if I swear

That I have had the plague a year?

Who would not laugh at me, if I should say

I saw a flash of powder burn a day?"(Donne, 5-8)

It's hard to believe anyone who says that he or she loved for an hour as someone saying

that he saw a flash of powder burning for an hour or someone having a plague for a

whole year. Poet is making a point that he does not and will not believe anyone who says

that he loved for at least and hour. Second stanza of the poem deals with power of love

and how it affects the heart.

"All other griefs allow a part

To other griefs, and ask themselves but some;

They come to us, but us love draws;

He swallows us and never chaws;" (Donne, 11-13)

He expresses that when heart is occupied with love it only spends little part of it for

other grieves, but it will be swallowed by love completely. Love will take over all of the f

feelings and heart will be paralyzed with its power. Poet is explaining that love is very

strong and powerful and that everyone who wants to let it in their hearts should be very

careful before they do it. In the third stanza poet makes a reference to himself asking his

lady what is she doing with his heart.

"If it had gone to thee, I know

Mine would have taught thine heart to show

More pity unto me; but Love, alas!

At one first blow did shiver it as glass." (Donne, 21-24)

He feels that she destroys him and asks her to have some kindness and respect to his

feelings but instead, she has no mercy and breaks it into little pieces. In this part the

tone is very gloomy and hopeless. Poet is devoured up by endless misery and despair. He

doesn't have any hope for love any longer. At the end, the author says that all those

pieces are still there in his soul and can still reflect feelings but will never be the same.

"My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,

But after one such love, can love no more" (Donne, 31-32)

Irony is used here because poet is talking about how he does not believe when people

are talking about love, because love made him a victim and changed him forever. Donne

is trying to say that everyone can love only for once all other feelings will never be so

powerful and strong as before. Heart is very innocent and trustful, but once it gets

betrayed it will never trust again.

Poem, "A Hymn To Christ At The Author's Last Going Into Germany", is a beautiful

poem which talks about lost soul that is looking for love and is ready to give up

everything to get it.

"That ship shall be my emblem of thy ark;

What sea soever swallow me, that flood

Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood" (Donne, 2-4)