Poet’s Corner: Donne

31 January 2026

(4 April 2014) Well a week without the Internet certainly made things quiet around here, and played heck with our posting schedule! We will be back on Monday with another installment of our epic. Meanwhile, we will go back to the 17th century for another favorite poem of ours, by John Donne, who invented what we call the ‘metaphysical conceit’, which is basically using unusual things as metaphors, in this case, the lowly flea:

The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, nay more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our mariage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w[e]’are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou
Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;
’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

This poem by Donne still makes me chuckle in his strange comparison of the flea, who bites both, their blood mingled in the flea as it would be in pregnancy, so when she kills the flea, it contains three lives: his, hers, and their unborn, unconceived child! This becomes his argument, that the flea has already done what we have not, which is no sin, and therefore, our ‘mingling’ (through sex) can be no sin, or no more sin, since the flea, in sharing our blood has ‘married’ us, which means it is okay for us to do ‘it!’ What great, convoluted reasoning to justify his desires for her! Of course, she doesn’t ‘buy’ such ridiculousness, and so smashes the flea. Come back on Tuesday for another Poet’s Corner!