ABSTRACT
And there is perhaps no more salient instance in English poetry of this revulsion from the conventional to an unchartered individuality of expression than the case of John Donne. For here was one of the most daring and penetrating imaginations, one of the most subtle and restless intellects that ever, before or since, expressed itself through the medium of verse. Yet for all his magnificent and lavish gifts, Donne is the preeminent example of the inability of genius itself to escape the inevitable, when a dominant individuality refuses to be subdued to what it works in, and rebels against the limitations imposed upon every one who would impart his thoughts. Donne imagines (or recalls) a flea, in which his own and his lady’s ‘two bloods mingled be’. ‘Oh! Stay’, he cries,
three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, yea, more than marry’d are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed and marriage temple is. Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met, And cloister’d in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
