Donne, John - Maureen Sabine (essay date 1996)
Maureen Sabine (essay date 1996)
SOURCE: Sabine, Maureen. “No Marriage in Heaven: John Donne, Anne Donne, and the Kingdom Come.” In John Donne's “Desire of More”: The Subject of Anne More Donne in His Poetry, edited by M. Thomas Hester, pp. 228-55. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996.
[In the following essay, Sabine discusses the importance of Donne's wife to his love poetry.]
“In the last hour of his last day, as [Donne's] body melted away and vapored into spirit,”1 Izaak Walton depicted the poet facing death with remarkable composure. However, Donne's own tormented poetry invites me to imagine another death-bed scenario. His “sad friends” open his shirt to see if his “breath goes now” (“A Valediction forbidding mourning,” ll.3-4), and bring an ear to the Dean of St. Paul's chest, only to discover there the letter ‘A’ that scored the flesh of another minister of God and transgressive lover,...
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