John Donne's Songs and Sonnets by John Donne

The love poems occasionally provide a specific setting, such as the field in which two lovers lie holding hands in “The Ecstasy,” and several times we imagine lovers in bed, as in “Break of Day” and “The Flea”; however, even though settings might be absent or vague, all of the poems have a distinct speaker and audience. Many begin with “I” and those that do not refer to “me.” The speaker is usually sufficiently vivid for us to infer he has worldly experience and a clear purpose; his audience is quite frequently a woman whom he is wooing. For example, the poem “The Good-Morrow ” begins, “I wonder...what thou and I / Did till we loved.” In this poem, his...