G. M. Hopkins Heaven-haven
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- Death the leveller
- The second of our raigne
- Religious conceits
- First stanza
- Second stanza
Love’s timelessnessThe other thing that anniversaries make us think of is the passing of time. Love and time were typically seen as enemies in Elizabethan poetry. There was a great fear of ‘mutability’, of the temporariness of things – and the word ‘temporary’ comes from the Latin word ‘tempus’, which means ‘time’. Donne boldly defies this: their love is outside time. It has a timeless quality, unlike everything else from kings to the sun itself. ‘Only our love hath no decay’ is a typical Donne statement, drawing attention to the uniqueness of his experience of love. So, like heavenly time (cf. Hebrews 13:8), it has no yesterday or tomorrow; it is eternally present. Death the levellerHowever, death is a reality, and Donne does not flinch from thinking about it, since love and death might be seen as even greater enemies. However, for him, death is a leveller, though not so much in the conventional sense of everyone being brought down to the grave. In stanza two he acknowledges this in passing, but goes on to stress the opposite: everyone being ‘throughly blest’ (l.21) by entering heavenly life. Their souls will have been liberated from their bodies. The image of the body as the soul's grave (1.20) is more Platonic than Christian, it should be noted. The second of our raigneDeath, therefore, does not threaten, but it is nothing to be celebrated, since in heaven their love will not be unique. So, at the end of the poem, he turns back to the unique present: let us live nobly, with no fear or jealousy, for the next sixty years. The final clause; ‘this is the second of our raigne’ returns us confidently to the here and now. Investigating The Anniversarie
TWICKENHAM GARDEN. by John Donne BLASTED with sighs, and surrounded with tears, Hither I come to seek the spring, And at mine eyes, and at mine ears, Receive such balms as else cure every thing. But O ! self-traitor, I do bring The spider Love, which transubstantiates all, And can convert manna to gall ; And that this place may thoroughly be thought True paradise, I have the serpent brought. 'Twere wholesomer for me that winter did Benight the glory of this place, And that a grave frost did forbid These trees to laugh and mock me to my face ; But that I may not this disgrace Endure, nor yet leave loving, Love, let me Some senseless piece of this place be ; Make me a mandrake, so I may grow here, Or a stone fountain weeping out my year. Hither with crystal phials, lovers, come, And take my tears, which are love's wine, And try your mistress' tears at home, For all are false, that taste not just like mine. Alas ! hearts do not in eyes shine, Nor can you more judge women's thoughts by tears, Than by her shadow what she wears. O perverse sex, where none is true but she, Who's therefore true, because her truth kills me. Religious conceitsAs with most Metaphysical poetry, the real matter of Twicknam Garden lies in its imagery, here a series of brilliant conceits. Many of these conceits have religious origins, and we soon become aware of Donne's use of the ‘religion of love’ language. First stanzaIf we look at the first stanza, what we find is a complex conceit woven from a number of quite different religious sources. 
Andrew Marvell's poem The Garden uses similar imagery. Second stanzaThe conceits in the second stanza are more straightforward:
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forked root, often seen as symbolising males, sometimes females, especially anatomically. They were reputed to groan as they were pulled up. Some manuscripts have ‘groane’, some have ‘grow’ here. Since the groaning of mandrakes was an Elizabethan commonplace, this would appear the better reading.