John Donne's love poems

John Donne is one of many poets of his time who wrote love poetry. The thing that sets him apart from the others is that he manages to successfully subvert the traditional conventions to his own ends. Each of the secular poems "The Flea", "The Sunne Rising" and "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" shows Donne's verbal dexterity, manipulation of the conventional form and the use of a variety of textual features. For the secular love poem "…

…last analogy of their love is to a circle drawn by the compass. It suggests continuity, perfection, renewal and marriage and finishes the argument with the idea that like the circle that doesn't end neither will their love. Even within a conventional form it is possible for a clever poet to subvert the conventions. John Donne has done that in three of secular love poems "the Flea", "the Sunne Rising" and "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning".