“Ideas are the imaginative core of Donne’s poetry.”Test this statement against your own reading of at least two poems set for study.

John Donne’s poetry has been greatly acclaimed, the concepts he explores and the deep meanings conveyed surpass those of other poets that were before, of and after his time. John Donne’s ideas have provided the imaginative core of his poetry. By not using already well known metaphors, Donne’s critiques are fresh and new, such as his use of the compass to describe lovers in “A Valediction: forbidding mourning” and his comparisons of himself to an usurped town in the holy sonnet “Batter my heart, three person’d God”. Even when Dr John Donne employed previously used imagery, his ideas were conveyed in different and distinct ways, as in “The Sunne Rising” where he states that his lover is all important.

In “A Valediction: forbidding mourning”, John Donne compares the love between him and his lover to gold. When gold is pure, it can be turned into leaf of “ayery thinnesse”. This metaphor is common place today, but Donne presented the concept in a way that woul...