A Fever by John Donne (1633)

Name: A Fever
Author: John Donne

The speaker begs an unnamed woman not to die, insisting that if she does, he will hate all women afterward, unable even to celebrate her memory once he recalls she was one of them. He then reasons that she cannot truly die, since dying means leaving the world behind, but when she departs from this world, the whole world dissolves into vapour with her breath. He proposes that if the world remains after this world's soul has gone, what stays is only her carcase; the fairest woman would then be but her ghost, and the worthiest men merely corrupt worms. He rebukes the wrangling schools that dispute what fire will one day burn the world, wondering why none had the wit to guess that her fever might be that very fire. Yet he concludes she cannot be consumed by it, nor long endure such torturing wrong, since a fever needs continual corruption to feed on, and she cannot supply fuel enough to sustain it for long. Her burning fits are merely meteors, their matter in her soon spent, while her beauty and all the parts that make her herself belong to an unchangeable firmament. He admits the fever seized her only as it seized his own mind, though it cannot persist in her, for he would rather possess her for a single hour than possess everything else forever.

By John Donne · First published 1633 · Genre: Metaphysical Poetry, Love Poetry, Lyric Poetry · 295 words

First lines

O! Do not die, for I shall hate / All women so, when thou art gone, / That thee I shall not celebrate, / When I remember thou wast one.

But yet thou canst not die, I know; / To leave this world behind, is death; / But when thou from this world wilt go, / The whole world vapours with thy breath.

Or if, when thou, the world's soul, go'st, / It stay, 'tis but thy carcase then; / The fairest woman, but thy ghost, / But corrupt worms, the worthiest men.

O wrangling schools, that search what fire / Shall burn this world, had none the wit / Unto this knowledge to aspire, / That this her fever might be it?

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A Fever is listed on Textopian as a poem by John Donne, dated 1633 CE.

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Work type: Poem
Author: John Donne
Date: 1633 CE
Language: English
Genres: Metaphysical Poetry, Love Poetry, Lyric Poetry, Philosophical Poetry, Religious Poetry
Length: 295 words
Structure: 1 section, 7 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

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Genres

Metaphysical Poetry — Defines Donne's characteristic style with elaborate conceits, paradoxes, and intellectual merging of physical sensation (the fever) with spiritual and cosmological themes; the poem uses complex logical arguments and startling comparisons typical of metaphysical verse.
Love Poetry — Directly addresses a beloved and explores the speaker's emotional dependence on the beloved's existence, fear of loss, and valuation of one hour with her over eternity apart.
Lyric Poetry — A personal, emotionally immediate first-person meditation expressing intimate feelings and subjective experience through musicality and direct address to the beloved.
Philosophical Poetry — Engages complex philosophical questions about beauty, immortality, corruption, and the nature of existence; references scholastic debate (wrangling schools) while positing metaphysical truths.