Donne

Directions: Read the following poem carefully. Then, in a well-organized essay, 

analyze how the speaker uses the varied imagery of the poem to reveal his attitude toward the nature of love.

“The Broken Heart”

By John Donne

He is stark mad, whoever says,

That he hath been in love an hour,

Yet not that love so soon decays,

But that it can ten in less space devour ;

(5) Who will believe me, if I swear

That I have had the plague a year?

Who would not laugh at me, if I should say

I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,

(10) If once into love's hands it come !

All other griefs allow a part

To other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;

They come to us, but us love draws ;

He swallows us and never chaws ;

(15) By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die ;

He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

If 'twere not so, what did become

Of my heart when I first saw thee?

I brought a heart into the room,

(20) But from the room I carried none with me.

If it had gone to thee, I know

Mine would have taught thine heart to show

More pity unto me ; but Love, alas !

At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

(25) Yet nothing can to nothing fall,

Nor any place be empty quite ;

Therefore I think my breast hath all

Those pieces still, though they be not unite ;

And now, as broken glasses show

(30) A hundred lesser faces, so

My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,

But after one such love, can love no more.

Donne Samples

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In Donne’s poem, “The Broken Heart,” the author’s disatisfying attitude toward the nature of love is revealed. This dissatisfying attitude is uncovered by the use of imagery which clearly illustrates how his heart has been put into a relationship and then broken.

Throughout the poem, Donne’s imagery creates a picture of how a heart’s love is broken. He beigns by thinking of the factors of love. He portrays a picture of a love receiving a heart and then implies that when someone receives love or finds love lots of grief is to follow. His words express how we can easily be swallowed by the grief of love after something has fallen apart in a relationship. Within the second stanza imagery takes over allowing the reader to create potential feelings of grief from love’s nature.

The remainder of the poem’s imgery gives an example of a broken heart that now grieves from a first love. The author seems to have met his first love as he has “brought his heart into the room.” Though as you flashback the author writes that he has “left the room without a heart” which gives the image of a shattered heart. The use of imagery in Donne’s poem also shows the comparison of the broken heart to shattered glass. This first shows that the author has become dissatisfied at the outcome of love’s nature.

Although it is obvious that the outcome of the nature of love is not to the author’s satisfaction, he realizes that life goes on even though his heart has abeen broken. He writes that “nothing can to nothing fall” “nor any place be empty quite.” This imagery usage shows that his heart is shattered to pieces. However, nothing changes that still those ununited pieces are still there. He also realizes that life still goes on by stating that his “pieces of heart can still like, wish, and adore another love,” although he can never love another person like his first love.

Donne’s use of imagery in the poem “A Broken Heart” allows the reader to create a visual of a heart full of love being broken just as shattered glass. While the reader conveys this picture they can also better understand how the author developed a disatisfying attitude toward the nature of love because of his broken heart.

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Many times in poetry, love is referred to as something wonderful, but in the poem, “The Broken Heart” by John Donne, love is looked upon as a villainous fiend. Donne uses the many unpleasant descriptions of love to convey a message which states love is a harmful substance, which causes only pain. This is revealed in lines (14-16) of the poem, “He swallows us and never chaws; By him, as by chain’d shot, whole ranks do die; He is the tyrant pike, our hearts fry.” In these lines, the speaker is telling the reader, that love hurts, thus relating it to the conceit of the entire work.

In this poem, the speaker is using “He” to represent love. This fiendish person is used to show the reader, the many personalities of love and how it can “break” a person. By personifying love and making it a person, the speaker allows the reader to see the “true” picture of love. Instead of the speaker trying to sugar code love, he shows the reader that there are drawbacks. These drawbacks are expressed when love is described as a rugged man who hurts and leaves a person without a heart. By using the broken images of this person after being in love (lines 31&32) the speaker lets us know that love is a villain who should only be crossed once.

In conclusion, the overall work is greatly affected with the use of unflattering images of love. Through the personification of love the speaker reveals his feeling about love in showing that love is bad news. With the overall conceit of love being a villain the speaker lets us know that we should be cautious about love because we may just get burned!

MMM

Love can be expressed in many different ways. In this particular poem; The Broken Heart by John Donne the speaker uses imagery to describe his attitude towards the nature of love. He talks about love as if it is a person. In the first stanza, the speaker tells us that just because he was hurt by love it doesn’t mean that you can no longer love but the space becomes smaller. He also uses the image of a plague to describe how he was in love for a year.

The second stanza talks about the heart and how it controls love. The speaker state that if the heart falls into the hands of love then all other grief will allow a part other grief. He also uses love as a visious creature.

The speaker also talks about when he first saw thee, he brought his heart with him intending to love but she didn’t feel the sameway about him. If the speaker would have had more time with her he could have made her heart take pity on him. His love was like a glass. By taking pity on him and not really feeling the same way about him, she broke his glass. And now after that one painful love that is now broken he can only like, wish and adore but he can never piece back his broken heart.

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Deceitful and heart-breaking is the speakers attitude toward the nature of love in the poem, “The Broken Heart,” by John Donne. In this poem, the speaker uses a variety of imagery to convey this message. He lets his readers know through his imagery, just how tricky and painful love can really be.

“He swallows us but never chaws,” is an example of this imagery. Here the speaker is comparing someone eating but never chews his food to that of love. He’s saying that in his experience with love, all of the pain that was being endured made him feel as if someone was swallowing him whole. They didn’t even take the time out to stop and chew but made the pain in which he felt even more devastating.

“I brought a heart into the room, But from the room I carried none with me” is another example of imagery that the speaker uses. This makes the speaker’s heart seem as if it’s just some ordinary object, like a table, for example. A person can easily bring a table into a room and leave without it, but not their hear. Here, the speaker is making his heart seem as if it was taken away from and that there’s nothing that he could do about it, except deal with it. It puts more pity into the whole situation at hand because nobody likes to have something that they treasure deeply taken away from them and being unable to do something about it. It helps the reader to grasp on to what the speaker is saying because in a spirutual sense, they can feel it themselves.

So in conclusion, we see that the speaker uses a variety of imagery to reveal that his attitude toward the nature of love, is one that is deceitful and heart-breaking. And its because of that the speaker feels that he can never love again.

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Imagery is frequently used in a poem to usually express the poem’s main theme.

It is also used to reveal the speaker’s attitude toward the theme of the poem. In John Donne’s poem ‘The Broken Heart’, the speaker uses varied imagery to express this attitude toward the nature of love.

In the first stanza, the speaker describes love as” a flash of powder”. Reading that the speaker saw a flash of powder burn a day suggests that the speaker that love doesn’t last for just an hour. A flash of the powder is something that normally happens instantly.

BBB

The poem “The Broken Heart” by John Donne portrays a negative image of the nature of love. Although the tone of the poem itself is not negative, the narrator’s views and description of love is very. It is obvious that the narrator has been a victum, or has experienced troubles with love. The narrator states, “if ‘twere not so, what did become/Of my heart when I first saw thee?”. By saying this, this lets us, the readers, know that he/she has experienced love before.

The narrator gives the nature of love a thievish image. Someone who will take and destroy your heart without a second thought, as displayed in lines 20 through 25. The narrator states, “I brought a heart into the room,/But from the room I carried none with me… At one first blow did shiver it as glass”. Analyzing these lines, I could conclude that the narrator went into a relationship, fell in love, and then, just as glass would, got his/her heart broken. Considering the fact that throughout the poem, the narrator made no claims of his/her wrongdoings, I get an even vulgure image of love. By disguarding the narrator’s wrongdoings, the image of love becomes barbaric, to a sense. It seems as though the nature of love is illerate to the feelings of others, which makes it all the more dangerous.

As if the image of love isn’t bad enough, the narrator continues. Not only is love a unemotional thief, he is a long-term theif. Love is not something that will hurt for one day and leave. No, it is more cruel than that. It takes time to regain what you have lost from love, just as it would take time for a victum to receive his goods from a robber if stolen. No one know when they will get robbed, just as no one will know when love breaks your heart. Love and theft is a perfect analogy for this poem. The fact that love will take you for everything without a thought is the same as would a crook and I feel that the narrator was trying to make the same analogy to.

LLL

In the poem “The Broken Heart” by John Donne, the speaker thinks of love as a prime experience that only happens once in a lifetime. The imagery created by the diction chosen causes the reader, me, to infer this as the attitude of the speaker towards love.

In the first stanza, love is thought of as something harmful such as a disease as shown in line 5-6, “Who will believe me, if I swear/That I have had the plague a year?” Plague as used in the preceeding quote means severely harmful and, therefore, establish the foundation that the speaker isn’t too fund of love.

The speaker believes that love captures us and swallows us whole, like snakes do their prey, without even thinking about the consequences or feelings that the victim have as shown in line 14 “He swallows us and never chaws.” Love acts as a ruler and/or king that makes people do what it commands as if it has them, victims of love, at gun-point as expressed in line 15, “He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.” After love gets what it wants, it leaves you feeling down as if you have lost everything as shown in lines 23-24, “More pity unto me; but Love, alas!/At one first blow did shiver it as glass.” and lines 19-20 “I brought a heart into the room,/But from the room I carried none with me.”

Overall, the speaker feels as if love happens only once. He feels this way because love leaves him hurt with a broken heart as he expressed in lines 31-32, “My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,/But after one such love, can love no more.” The imagery such as love giving the heart a blow cause the reader to infer this attitude which the author has towards love.