Yet it is only this century that Donne has been indisputably established as a great poet - and even, many feel, the greatest love poet of them all. Jonson went on to remark that"That Done, for not keeping of anaccent,deserved hanging", yet Donne's rhythms, once thought "unmusical"are now recognized as the natural rhythms of the speaking voice; his"eccentricity"as a complex self-doubt; his 'obscurity' the reflection of a brilliantly learned and allusive mind.

Yet it is only this century that Donne has been indisputably established as a great poet - and even, many feel, the greatest love poet of them all. Jonson went on to remark that"That Done, for not keeping of anaccent,deserved hanging", yet Donne's rhythms, once thought "unmusical"are now recognized as the natural rhythms of the speaking voice; his"eccentricity"as a complex self-doubt; his 'obscurity' the reflection of a brilliantly learned and allusive mind. Poets such as Eliot and Empson have found Donne's poetry profoundly attuned to our modern age, while Yeats' glowing comment will always be true:"the intricacy and subtlety of his imagination are the length and depth of the furrow made by his passion." This volume, superbly edited by Professor Smith, is the first complete edition to make a serious attempt to guide the reader closely through the complexities of Donne's poetry. Considerable attention has been paid to the text,and a selection of the important manuscript variants are included. This edition is also the first to make use of the newly discovered manuscript of the verse letter to Lady Carey and Mistress Essex Rich.

Preface

Table of Dates

Further Reading

A Note on the Metre

Songs and Sonnets

Air and Angels

The Anniversary

The Apparition

The Bait

The Blossom

Break of Day

The Broken Heart

The Canonization

Community

The Computation

Confined Love

The Curse

The Damp

The Dissolution

The Dream

The Ecstasy

The Expiration

Farewell to Love

A Fever

The Flea

The Funeral

The Good Morrow

The Indifferent

A Jet Ring Sent

A Lecture upon the Shadow

The Legacy

Lovers' Infiniteness

Love's Alchemy

Love's Deity

Love's Diet

Love's Exchange

Love's Growth

Love's Usury

The Message

Negative Love

A Nocturnal upon S. Lucy's Day

The Paradox

The Primrose

The Prohibition

The Relic

Self Love

Song (Go, and catch a falling star)

Song (Sweetest love, I do not go)

Sonnet. The Token

The Sun Rising

The Triple Fool

Twicknam Garden

The Undertaking

A Valediction: forbidding Mourning

A Valediction: of the Book

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