John Donne : A Great Poet

Abstract

John Donne is one of the greatest of English religious poets, and the poets of the 17th century on whom his influence was most deep and lasting than all religious poets. As Joan Bennett tells us this is so because his temperament was essentially religious. A man of religious temperament is constantly aware, constantly perceiving the underlying unity, the fundamental oneness of all phenomena, and the perception of such a relationship, such an inherent principle of unity, is revealed even by the imagery of the earliest poetry of Donne. No doubt Donne's religious poetry belongs to the later part of his career, to the period after his ordination, and the gloom, despair and frustration which resulted from the death of his wife, poverty, and ill-health. The earliest of his religious poems are the sonnet-sequence called La Corona and The Litanie; the best of his religious poetry is contained in the Holy Sonnets, the Divine Poems and The Three Hymns. The best of Donne's religious poetry was written only during the last phase of his career, but the nature of his imagery, even the early one, clearly indicated that his genius was religious and he was bound to take to religious poetry and to the pulpit.