Does Perfect Love Exist? A Closer Look at John Donne's Poetry

The use of a flea to persuade a woman to have sex, the morrow being good because she was there to wake up beside him, referring to sex as two souls coming together are all examples of images John Donne uses throughout many of his poems. The founder of the “Metaphysical Poets,” Donne addresses love and sex often in just about all of his poems written for his young lover. In many he claims love is wonderful while in many other ones he addresses love as being unreal, untrue that the perfect woman does not exist (John Donne, 29). His use of imagery in his poetry is just astounding, in my personal opinion his imagery is the best I have read in a long time.

In the second ling of “Song: Go Catch A Falling Star,” Donne refers to a mandrake root. According to John Donne: The Elegies and The Songs and Sonnets, the mandrake root was taken to be an aphrodisiac and helped women to be fertile (1965, 53). The first stanza just talks about things that the speaker could do in order to ‘advance an honest minde” (1965, 29). As he continues into the second stanza the use of the word “see” can be interpreted as “ride” (1965, 153). He says that until there are white hair, he will continue to say there is no true woman and keep hoping that one day he will be wrong. He hopes that one day one woman will have kept her word and he can say that she is the perfect woman (1965, 153). The last stanza he tells the reader that although she may have been true and real when he met her, but as time goes on, he would see that she was false. I think this poem Donne contradicts himself by saying there is no perfect going to exist, but the he says he will wait forever for her. I’m not sure when thie piece was written, but if it was after Anne More’s death this poem could be saying that he will never find another woman like her.