Further I would like to attend to two poems by Donne

     Further I would like to attend to two poems by Donne; one of which, The Flea, celebrates the physical side of love, while  the other, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, describes a spiritual love. (In both poems, however, Donne uses the reason to convince his beloved in what he at the moment perceives appropriate).

     In The Flea Donne asks his lover to look at a flea that just sucked his and her blood, and to note “how little that which thou deniest me is”. That is to say he tries to convince her that sleeping with him is a really tiny thing, which she could do easily without loosing anything, for “in this flea our two bloods mingled be”, – their bloods are already mingled in the flea. Donne tries to convince the lover, that the flea’s behavior “cannot be said a sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead”; yet compared to that that “we would do”, the flea’s misdeed is more serious.

     As his lover makes an attempt to kill the flea, Donne arrests the her hand, for there are “three lives in one flea” now, when it sucked their blood. The flea is “our marriage bed and temple”. Although their parents grudge, and she will not sleep with him, they are already “cloistered in these living walls of jet”. The murder of the flea, he says, can be considered “self-murder”, “and sacrilege, three sins in killing three”.

     However, as the lover “purpled [her] nails in blood of innocence”, Donne calls her “cruel and sudden”. He inquires her “wherein could this flea guilty be, except in that drop which it sucked from thee”. Her triumph over her success to kill the flea Donne converts against her: if she thinks that having killed the flea she does not find neither herself not him “the weaker now”, then her fears about loosing anything if she “yeild’st” to him, are false.

    

     In A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning Donne convinces his lover not to mourn over his departure. Like “virtuous men pass mildly away”, their parting must be without “tear-floods” and “sigh-tempests”. They do not have to publicly announce their love, for it would be a “profanation”. Donne brings examples of “moving of th’e earth” that brings “harms and fears”, and “trepidation of the spheres”, that is innocent despite its power. The first disaster Donne equates with “dull sublunary lovers’ love”, and the second with their spiritual love, which although is greater than the physical love of the mundane people, yet its “trepidation” can not do them any harm. Their love is “so much refined”, that it has nothing to do with physicality; and being away from each other they are not going to miss each other’s eyes, lips and hands.

     Their souls, Donne says, are so connected that parting will not break them, but rather expand, “like gold of airy thinness beat”. He compares their souls to “twin compasses”, his lover’s soul is “the fixed foot” in the center, and his is the one that “far doth roam”. Together they make a perfect circle – as one stands still, the other moves around, yet the “fixed foot” makes him “end where I begun” – that is draws him back.

     We see that in The Flea Donne celebrates the physical aspect of love, while in The Valediction he is critical of the “dull sublunary lovers’ love”, which does not stand physical absence of the beloved. While The Valediction explores a theme of pure spiritual love,  in The Flea, which theme is explicitly physical, Donne however employs such references to spirituality as “temple” and  “marriage”, by this mingling the different essences of love.  In addition to that, I would suggest that this is his inconstancy, -- his adherence to both sides of love and being, -- that contributes to the “frustration” of the spirit/body and mind/body dichotomies.