The Anniversary by John Donne (1633)

Name: The Anniversary
Author: John Donne

The poem addresses "thou," the speaker's beloved, framing their love against the passage of a year. It opens by observing that all kings and their favourites, all glory of honours, beauties, and wits, and even the sun itself, which makes time as it passes, are now a year older than when the speaker and the beloved first saw one another. All other things draw toward their destruction, but the speaker declares that their love alone has no decay: it has no tomorrow and no yesterday, and though it runs, it never runs away from them, but keeps its first, last, everlasting day. The speaker then turns to mortality, noting that two graves must hide his and her corse, and that if one grave might hold them both, death would be no divorce. He laments that, like other princes, the two of them — who are prince enough in one another — must at last leave in death these eyes and ears, which were often fed with true oaths and with sweet salt tears. But he asserts that their souls, where nothing dwells but love (all other thoughts being merely inmates there), shall prove this love, or a love increased above, when their bodies remove to their graves and their souls remove from their graves. The speaker envisions that then the two shall be throughly blessed, but says that for now they are no more blessed than all the rest. Here upon earth, he says, the two of them are kings, and none but they can be such kings or have such subjects. He asks who is as safe as they are, since none can commit treason against them except one of the two against the other. He calls for them to refrain from both true and false fears, to love nobly, and to live, adding years and years unto years until they attain to write threescore. He closes by naming this present time as the second of their reign.

By John Donne · First published 1633 · Genre: Metaphysical Poetry, Love Poetry, Lyric Poetry · 361 words

First lines

All kings, and all their favourites, / All glory of honours, beauties, wits, / The sun itself, which makes time, as they pass, / Is elder by a year now than it was / When thou and I first one another saw. / All other things to their destruction draw, / Only our love hath no decay; / This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday; / Running it never runs from us away, / But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

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The Anniversary 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, Early Modern Poetry
Length: 361 words
Structure: 1 section, 3 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

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Genres

Metaphysical Poetry — Employs elaborate conceits (lovers as kings), paradoxical logic, and intellectual argumentation about love's transcendence—the defining hallmarks of Donne's metaphysical style
Love Poetry — Celebrates romantic love and its transcendent, eternal qualities as the poem's primary subject and thematic center
Lyric Poetry — Expresses personal, intimate emotion and reflection through verse, though with complex intellectual rather than merely sentimental treatment
Philosophical Poetry — Explores philosophical concepts including time, eternity, mortality, constancy, and the relationship between body and soul through the lens of love