Sweetest Love

  Here John Donne writes about love, it’s not just love but ‘sweetest love’, is a lyric made up of five stanzas each with the same rhyme scheme ababcddc. Each stanza develops an aspect of the problem of separation from one’s beloved.

In the first stanza the lover wards off any fear of a weakened love on his part. He does not leave “for weariness” of the beloved, nor does he go looking for a “fitter love” for himself. He instead compares his departure to death, saying that since he “Must die at last”, it is better for him to practice dying by “feign’d deaths”, those short times when he is separated from his love. Thus, he turns her fears about losing him into an assurance that she is the very source of his existence; when he is not with her, it is like being dead.

In the second stanza, Donne uses the sun as a metaphor for his fidelity and desire to return. He compares his leaving to the sun’s setting “Yesternight”. It left darkness behind, “yet is here today. If the sun can return each day, despite its lengthy journey around the world, then the beloved can trust that the lover will return since his journey is shorter. Besides, he will make “speedier journeys” since he has more reason to go and return than does the sun.

In the third stanza, the poet examines the view of metaphor aspect compass it’s turns to contemplating larger problems beyond merely being separated from a loved one. He notes how “feeble is man’s power” that one is unable to add more time to his life during periods of “good fortune”. Ironically, the poet notes, we instead add “our strength” to misfortune and “teach it art and length”, thereby giving bad situations power over our lives. We are so powerless that even the power we have turns against us in bad fortune. Perhaps the suggestion here is that the lover has no choice but to go, not having enough strength to overcome fate.

This stanza also serves as a turning point in the song. The two prior stanzas are assurances that the lover will return quickly and faithfully. The final two stanzas focus on the harms his beloved may cause or fear.

Actually when he writes my soul away, he says in the first line of the fourth stanza. The beloved’s expressions of despair cause harm to her lover, he argues, because he is so much a part of her that he is in her breath. He may also mean that her sighs demonstrate her lack of trust in him. The same argument applies to her tears; she depletes his “life’s blood” when she cries. This is why she said to be “unkindly kind” with her tears; this oxymoron emphasizes the lover’s pain in seeing the extent of her need to be with him.

In the final stanza, the lover warning his beloved against future ills she may bring upon him if she continues to fear a future without him. He urges her “divining heart” to avoid predicting him harm; it is possible that “Destiny may take thy part” and fulfill her fears by leading to true dangers.