Farewell to Love by John Donne

Name: Farewell to Love
Author: John Donne

The poem addresses Love as a force the speaker once worshipped without understanding, comparing his early devotion to atheists who cry out to an unnamed power at their dying hour. He explains that men give shape to unknown things through their desires, so that what they crave grows or shrinks according to those desires rather than its own true size. He then likens the object of lovers' worship to a king seen fleetingly in his golden chair, admired greatly by children for three days but soon forgotten; so too the thing lovers blindly admire and woo loses its power once possessed, since being had makes it decay. What before delighted all the senses afterward engages only one sense, and that imperfectly, leaving behind a dull sorrow in the mind. The speaker then asks why men cannot be as merry after such pleasures as cocks and lions are, unless wise Nature has decreed it so—since, as is said, each such act shortens life by a day. He suggests Nature intends man to despise the sport for this reason, cursed further by being brief: made eager for only a minute, yet driving desire toward the raising of posterity. Given this, the speaker resolves that his mind shall no longer desire what no other man can find, and that he will no longer dote upon or pursue things that have damaged him. When he comes upon moving beauties, he will act as men do in high summer when the sun grows great: admiring their greatness while shunning their heat. He notes that every place can afford shadows for shelter from this heat, and, failing that, one may simply apply wormseed to the tail.

By John Donne · First published 1633 · Genre: Metaphysical Poetry, Lyric Poetry, Love Poetry · 414 words

First lines

Whilst yet to prove / I thought there was some deity in love, / So did I reverence, and gave / Worship; as atheists at their dying hour / Call, what they cannot name, an unknown power, / As ignorantly did I crave. / Thus when / Things not yet known are coveted by men, / Our desires give them fashion, and so / As they wax lesser, fall, as they size, grow.

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Farewell to Love 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, Lyric Poetry, Love Poetry, Philosophical Poetry, Inverted Carpe Diem Poetry
Length: 414 words
Structure: 1 section, 4 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Difficult (10th-12th Grade)

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Genres

Metaphysical Poetry — Exemplifies the metaphysical tradition through intellectual wit, elaborate conceits comparing love to religious worship and desire to a deity, paradoxes, and fusion of spiritual and physical concerns central to Donne's oeuvre.
Lyric Poetry — Structured as a first-person meditation expressing the speaker's personal emotional and intellectual evolution regarding romantic desire and the wisdom of rejecting it.
Love Poetry — Focuses centrally on romantic love by analyzing attraction, the idealization of the beloved, and the speaker's ultimate rejection of romantic passion.
Philosophical Poetry — Constructed as a reasoned argument dismantling idealized notions of love through logical analysis of human nature, desire, and mortality.