Doing Donne Donnes Use of Conceit in Holy Sonnet 14

As a young poet, John Donne often utilized metaphors of spiritual bond in many of his Songs and Sonnets in order to explain fleshly love. Once he renounced Catholicism and converted to the Anglican faith (circa 1597), Donne donned a more devotional style of verse, such as in his Holy Sonnets (circa 1609-1610), finding parallels to divine love in the carnal union. In many ways, however, his love poems and his religious poems are quite similar, for they both address his personae’s deep-seated fear of isolation by women and God, respectively. For example, in “Song,” Donne’s speaker tells an unknown person (presumably male) that if he would “Ride ten thousand days and nights” he would return “And swear/ Nowhere/ Lives a woman true, and fair” (ll. 12; 16-18). Similarly, in Holy Sonnet 2, the speaker voices fear that God will not be with him on his day of reckoning: “Oh I shall soon despair when I do see/ That Thou lov’st mankind well, yet wilt not choose me” (ll. 12-13). Whereas many of Donne’s love poems display a speaker’s anxiety and anger about his inability to sustain affection from a woman, Donne transferred that theme of resentment towards wo

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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 836
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)