The poems of John Donne are often filled with religious allusions, romantic imagery, and a focus on love and mortality. Such elements are embodied by all three of DonneÆs works under discussion herein: The Anniversary, The Relic, and The Funeral. While all of these poems include religious allusions, romantic imagery, and a focus on love and mortality, one main theme emerges from a comparison and contrast. In all three poems Donne appears to be arguing that the only refuge or monument against the inevitable march of time and mortality is the love shared between two individuals.
The Anniversary makes the strongest argument of the three poems that only a love shared between two individuals can offset the inevitability of mortality and decay from the passing of time. The speaker appears to argue that timeÆs march is inevitable but there is one thing that timeÆs decay cannot touch. That one thing is a genuine love shared between two human beings. As the speaker states, ôAll other things to their destruction draw, / Only our love hath no decay; / This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday; / Running it never runs from us away, / But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day,ö (Donne 1).
In The Anniversary we get a powerful expression of the ability of love to transcend time and even mortality. Being in love is likened to a ôreignö in which the lovers are as kingly as it is possible to be. Lovers in such a condition are somewhat immune to the slings and arrows of time, so-to-speak. For example, the speaker asks, ôWho is so safe as we? Where none can do / Treason to us, except one of us two,ö (Donne 2). However, these lines also express that even such a great love is vulnerable to treason but only from one or the other of the individuals involved.
We see a similar questioning of the capabilities of love in The Funeral. In the poem the speaker asks us not to question or harm him muc
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