The Flea
John Donne’s poem “The Flea” seems to have been written in the 1590s, when he was a young law student and before he became a respected religious figure as Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral. It wasn’t published until 1633, a couple of years after his death.
John Donne was born on 22 January 1572 in London, England, and he died on 31 March 1631 in London, England, at the age of 59.A poet, priest, scholar, and soldier, Donne is considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His poetical works are noted for their metaphorical and sensual style, characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies, and dislocations. These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax, and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques.
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Errata:
- At 6:56: “…like the thread of the spider…”
Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deny’st me is; Me it suck’d first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be; Confess it, this cannot be said A sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead, Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two; And this, alas, is more than we would do. Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, nay more than married 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. Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence? In what could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it sucked from thee? Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou Find’st not thyself nor me the weaker now; ’Tis true, then learn how false fears be; Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me, Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.