G. M. Hopkins Heaven-haven
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Third stanza
But there is a reverse in the conceit:
Investigating Twicknam Garden
'Twickenham Garden' is a meta-physical poem in the sense that the main focus is about love and the fact that Donne cannot receive any back from the girl he has fallen in love with. In this poem love is mentioned continually throughout in different contexts. In the first stanza Donne is describing his state of misery and loneliness and the inner turmoil he suffers from falling in love with a woman he cannot have. The first line: "Blasted with sighs, and surrounded with teares" is showing his sate of mind, he feels as though his heart had been 'blasted' with the sighs he utters when he is alone and depressed. The metaphors Donne uses to express these feelings are meta-physical because they deal with feelings and other none physical attributes like a broken heart. The line "O, selfe traytor" shows that he himself is not happy with the fact he has fallen in love with a married woman, He feels as though his heart has betrayed him. The final line "True Paradise, I have the serpent brought" makes it seem as though as he walks through this lush garden that plants wither and die, as he walks past as if he is some kind of bad disease on this 'paradise'. The Second Stanza The second Stanza is about him feeling sorry for himself and his 'condition'. The metaphysical side of his love and feeling of self -pity are openly paced in this stanza and this adds to the effect of the raw emotion he writes about in this stanza. The first two lines "'Twere wholsomer for mee, that winter did Benight the glory of this place," is saying that his current state of mind and emotion would be more suited to the cold barren landscape of winter rather then the lush colourful garden he is in. The line "These trees to laugh, and mocke mee to my face:" is an addition to the preference of winter by his mood. He is trying to tell us about how he feels at odds with nature and how he feels that all these happy summer moods going around seem to be mocking him. After this there is the line "Love let mee Some senseless peece of this place bee:" He is addressing love as if it is a real person and asking it to make him into one of the inanimate garden LOVE'S GROWTH. by John Donne I SCARCE believe my love to be so pure As I had thought it was, Because it doth endure Vicissitude, and season, as the grass ; Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore My love was infinite, if spring make it more. But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow With more, not only be no quintessence, But mix'd of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense, And of the sun his active vigour borrow, Love’s not so pure, and abstract as they use To say, which have no mistress but their Muse ; But as all else, being elemented too, Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do. And yet no greater, but more eminent, Love by the spring is grown ; As in the firmament Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown, Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough, From love's awakened root do bud out now. If, as in water stirr'd more circles be Produced by one, love such additions take, Those like so many spheres but one heaven make, For they are all concentric unto thee ; And though each spring do add to love new heat, As princes do in times of action get New taxes, and remit them not in peace, No winter shall abate this spring’s increase. The poem begins with the speaker stating that his love is not as pure as he once thought it to be. Love is a mixture of many different things. It is not a simple idea that can be applied to the idealized feelings that go along with love at times. Love can have its happy times, which Donne relates to the spring, where love “is growne.” Yet love experiences trouble sometimes as well, which Donne relates to the winter. Although he does not paint a perfect image of love, he revels in the realistic image because even though love must weather the winter, when it does, it is made stronger in the spring. In examining the meaning further, I wanted to look at individual quotes closer: "I scarce believe my love to be so pure as I had thought it was…" The concept of purity approached in a few different ways. The purity he speaks of is examined first by admitting in this line, a misinterpretation that the speaker has made about his own love’s purity. He explains that it is not as pure as he once thought it was. The assumptions that could be drawn from this therefore, are that his love has strayed from one of these definitions or simply that he has contemplated the very universal concept of love and decided that he has been wrong about his past definition of love. "No winter shall abate the spring’s increase." The point he makes earlier about love being a mixture of the good times and the bad is completed by juxtaposing the spring and winter seasons. He uses the contingencies of individual relationships in comparison with the universals of the seasons to make his point. The analogy of spring and winter to good times and bad times, respectively, in a relationship is Donne’s way of describing love as a mixture, or “medicine.” He leaves the poem on a very upbeat and hopeful note with this final line. He admits that even though a relationship may have its problems, the positive moments can outweigh the negative and even strengthen the love. The quarrels and “winters” of a relationship allow for “spring” to strengthen the love further.
In John Donne’s poem “The Dream,” the narrator is woken from a dream by the person who he claims to have been dreaming about. Like in the more popular Donne poem “The Flea,” the narrator attempts to cajole the woman into coming to bed with him by talking about the poetic conceit (the dream, the flea) and how it relates to them. Unlike in “The Flea,” however, Donne uses some very complex imagery to describe the dream and the waking and to form his arguments for her staying. Although nothing in “The Dream” uses the feminine pronoun to describe the one who wakes the narrator, the imagery of an angel and the cajoling tone all point to a feminine character. Because of this, Donne’s romantic reputation, and his use of the female pronoun in other similar poems the following explication assumes that the unnamed person who wakens the narrator is a woman. Dearest, for nothing worth less than you Would I have woken up from this dream; For reality was stronger than fantasy. The clause is an explanation from the narrator that reality (her in his room) is stronger than fantasy and simply the reality of her being there woke him up. In the actual poem, this clause reads “For reason, much too strong for fantasy.” It’s an odd juxtaposition – why “reason” and not “reality,” the more exact opposite of fantasy – that hints at a pun. According to Merriam-Webster OnLine, the entry for reason includes an archaic definition meaning “treatment that affords satisfaction,” the very sort of treatment the narrator is looking for. Therefore, it was wise [good] that you woke me; yet You didn’t end my dream, but you [yourself] are the continuation of it You are so true that the thought of you Is enough to make a dream true, and fables [factual] history; Enter my arms, for since you thought it was best, For me not to dream, let us act [out] the conclusion of that dream. The narrator, glad to be awoken by the person he was dreaming about, starts off by complementing her and attempts to bring her into his bed. He tells her she is so true that she makes dreams into reality and histories into fables. Although it’s not a theme he uses often, the idea of a woman altering history appears in one other Donne poem: The Damp. In “The Damp” Donne challenged the wooed to “…like a Goth and Vandal rise, / Deface records and histories,” (lines 13-14) –to make different choices then what she made in the past. In each poem, Donne uses this image to portray women as have remarkable power over reality and perceptions of reality. At the end of the stanza, much like the quip that was in his usage of reason, Donne again makes a reference to the activities occurring in the dream but in a less veiled way. “Let’s act out the rest,” (line 10) as the line was originally written, coupled with his calling her back into his arms, gives away the sexual nature of this dream. As lightning, or the light of a candle, Your eyes, and not your noise woke me; The abstraction of the woman’s eyes fits perfectly into both the Petrarchan tradition, where Laura’s eyes are often described as stars, and also to the more contemporary Philip Sidney. In Sidney’s sonnet “7,” Sidney describes Stella’s unveiled eyes as “sunlike, should more dazzle then delight” (line 8). With this metaphor of eyes and light being a common one, it’s not surprising to see it here. But, in other poems, Donne uses eyes and light to express something else. In Elegy IV: Julia, Donne describes Julia as a “This she Chimera that hath eyes of fire, / Burning with anger —anger feeds desire—” (lines 15 – 16). In each of these Donne poems, eyes inspire desire through a burning light, candle and fire, and create desire. In “The Dream,” Donne happily moves from fantasy to reality when those eyes wake him. In Julia, he describes the burning anger within the subject that creates desire within her. Yet I thought you -for you love truth- were an angle when I first saw you [after I woke up]; But when I saw that you saw [what was in] my heart,
When you knew what I was dreaming, when you knew when An excess of joy would wake me, and then you came, I must admit, it would be nothing but Profane to think of you as anything but yourself.
But rising [leaving my arms] makes me doubt, what your real intentions are. The toughest and last stanza of the poem begins with the easiest lines to paraphrase. She came into Donne’s room and woke him from an erotic dream. In the previous stanza he said she knew the precise moment to wake him and, for him, this means she was interested in playing out that dream in reality. But as she gets up to leave, he questions why she is leaving. Love becomes weak with fear [hesitation] And if this fear [hesitation] is a mixture of shame, then have honor Like torches, which must be ready for Men to light and put out, so you deal with [treat] me; The original text for this section reads “That love is weak where fear's as strong as he; / 'Tis not all spirit, pure and brave,” (lines 14 – 15). When viewed through the Petrarchan tradition it lends itself to an interpretation based upon the personification of Fear and Love, with the former becoming stronger as the latter becomes weaker. But this doesn’t mesh with the implied question of the two previous lines: Why is she leaving?
You came to kindle, then you go to leave; and then [now] I Will dream that hope [of you coming] again, or die.
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