John Donne Trivia

1. What is the narrator of "The Flea" attempting to do?

From Quiz The Flea

Answer: Persuade a woman to go to bed with him

"The Flea" might be regarded as one long, terrible pick-up line. The narrator of "The Flea" is trying to convince a woman to go to bed with him. He argues that because they, in a sense, come together in the flea that bites each of them, there's nothing untoward about them coming together sexually. The poem is reflective of the "carpe diem" (seize the day) genre of poetry in Europe, in which a narrator encourages his subject (often a woman) to make the most of youth.

From Quiz John Donne's Love Poetry

Answer: "The Flea"

"This" refers to the flea which has bitten both the man and the woman and is, thus, swelling with their blood. This swelling of the flea is "more than we would do" because he does not intend to impregnate the woman.

From Quiz John Donne - Holy Sonnet Quotes

Answer: "Death, be not proud" (Holy Sonnet X)

When at rest or asleep, a person appears dead. Donne argues that if rest and sleep bring pleasure, then death must be even more pleasurable; thus, death should not be feared.

From Quiz The Poetry of John Donne

Answer: Idle princes

Donne concludes the poem by suggesting that for lovers, their bed rather than the sun is at the centre of the orbit!

From Quiz The Flea

Answer: Mark but this flea

The poem begins with these two lines: "Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is." It is clear from the start of the poem that the speaker's initial sexual advance has been rejected, but he continues his attempt to persuade. John Donne was no stranger to seduction himself. While pursuing his legal training, he was appointed Secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. In 1601, he secretly married Egerton's pretty young niece, Anne Moor. This resulted in a job loss for Donne and temporary imprisonment in the Tower of London.

From Quiz John Donne's Love Poetry

Answer: "The Ecstasy"

These lines emphasize the unity and intimacy of the couple as they look into one another's eyes.

From Quiz John Donne - Holy Sonnet Quotes

Answer: "Thou hast made me" (Holy Sonnet I)

The speaker asks God to forgive (repair) his sin since death is nearing.

From Quiz The Poetry of John Donne

Answer: Christopher Marlowe

Marlowe's poem is entitled 'The Passionate Shepherd to His Lover' and the first verse is: 'Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods or steepy mountain yields.'

From Quiz John Donne's Love Poetry

Answer: "The Canonization"

This line always makes me smile because I imagine the man's facial expression. He is exasperated with the woman because she won't shut up while he is trying to show his love for her.

From Quiz John Donne - Holy Sonnet Quotes

Answer: "Batter my heart" (Holy Sonnet XIV)

These lines present a paradox. In order to be a new person, complete and acceptable to God, the speaker must be broken and overthrown.

From Quiz The Poetry of John Donne

Answer: new-found-land

Donne was writing around the time when the first Puritans were leaving England to form settlements in America. Newfoundland had itself been claimed by England in 1497, a hundred or so years earlier.

From Quiz John Donne's Love Poetry

Answer: "The Sun Rising"

How could the sun be so rude as to shine into the bedroom and wake the couple? The speaker demands the sun go bother people who should be awake early in the morning and leave the lovers alone.

From Quiz John Donne - Holy Sonnet Quotes

Answer: "I am a little world made cunningly " (Holy Sonnet V)

The speaker claims that both his physical and spiritual parts have been betrayed by his sin. The physical damage might be disease while the spiritual damage could keep him from eternity with God.

From Quiz The Poetry of John Donne

Answer: rivers

The river Trent runs through the Midlands but the river Lethe was, according to Greek mythology, one of the rivers running through Hades, which brought forgetfulness or oblivion. Donne refers in the same poem to the Po, the Sequan and the Danube rivers. The Sequan is probably an old name for the Seine.

From Quiz The Flea

Answer: bloods

When a flea bites each of them, their blood is sucked up and mingles together within the flea. If that mingling of their bodily fluids is innocent, the narrator reasons, why wouldn't their mingling through sex be equally innocent? John Donne and Ann Moore had 12 children in their 16 years of marriage, two of which were still births. Ann died in 1617, five days after giving birth to their stillborn twelfth child. Donne expressed his mourning for his wife in the 17th of his "Holy Sonnets", writing: "Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt To Nature, and to hers, and my good is dead, And her soul early into heaven ravishèd, Wholly on heavenly things my mind is set."

From Quiz John Donne's Love Poetry

Answer: "The Canonization"

The speaker wonders who is bothered by his love; he affects no one but himself. This stanza ends with the lines "Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still/Litigious men, which quarrels move,/ Though she and I do love."

From Quiz John Donne - Holy Sonnet Quotes

Answer: "Batter my heart" (Holy Sonnet XIV)

A viceroy is a governor, a representative of a king. Thus, Reason, God's viceroy in the speaker, should enable the speaker to avoid sin. However, the viceroy is held captive and cannot provide the necessary guidance.

From Quiz The Poetry of John Donne

Answer: A marriage poem

Donne describes the poem he wrote for the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine as 'an epithalamion or marriage song.' The pair were married on St Valentine's Day and so the poem begins 'Hail Bishop Valentine, whose day this is, All the air is thy diocese, And all the chirping choristers, And other birds are thy parishioners;'

From Quiz The Flea

Answer: head & maidenhead

Maidenhead is another term for virginity. Their blood came together in the flea, and yet that, he argues, "cannot be said / a sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead." By insisting on maintaining her virginity and refusing his sexual advances, the woman is, the speaker argues, denying him a very trivial thing: "Mark but this flea, and mark in this, / How little that which thou deniest me is."

From Quiz John Donne's Love Poetry

Answer: "The Flea"

Donne intertwines sexual and religious language in these lines. The speaker is "killed" each time he reaches sexual fulfillment, and he uses religious language ("sacrilege") in his efforts to keep the woman from killing the flea.

From Quiz John Donne - Holy Sonnet Quotes

Answer: "Death, be not proud" (Holy Sonnet X)

The speaker belittles Death because it has no control of its own. Death is controlled by kings who order execution, by desperate men who kill themselves or others, by anyone who uses poison or is sick. Fate and war also control Death.

From Quiz The Poetry of John Donne

Answer: For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernest Hemingway took his title from this great, and oft-quoted, observation of Donne's: 'No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee'

From Quiz The Flea

Answer: woo

"Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pampered swells with one blood made of two, And this, alas, is more than we would do." The flea doesn't have to go through a long courtship period before enjoying the woman, so why should the narrator have to? The speaker opines that even the flea is having more enjoyment than they are.

From Quiz John Donne's Love Poetry

Answer: "The Sun Rising"

The rising and the setting of the sun are immaterial for lovers since their focus is on one another. Even time itself is irrelevant to them.

From Quiz John Donne - Holy Sonnet Quotes

Answer: "Thou hast made me" (Holy Sonnet I)

The speaker feels terror because he believes his sin will keep him from heaven. He feels trapped between despair and death.

From Quiz John Donne's Love Poetry

Answer: "The Ecstasy"

The new soul created when two people love one another is able to combat loneliness.

From Quiz John Donne - Holy Sonnet Quotes

Answer: "I am a little world made cunningly " (Holy Sonnet V)

These lines express a similar idea found in "Batter my heart" (Holy Sonnet XIV). Paradox: being eaten, which would usually result in an item being completely used up, here becomes a means of restoration with God. These lines allude to Psalm 69:9 -- "zeal for your house consumes me".

From Quiz The Poetry of John Donne

Answer: Autumn

He tells us in 'The Autumnal': 'No Spring, nor Summer beauty hath such grace, As I have seen in one Autumnal face.' and again: 'But name not Winter-faces, whose skin's slack; Lank, as an unthrift's purse; but a soul's sack.' He likes mature, but not actually old, women!

From Quiz The Flea

Answer: purpled

The speaker's pleas fall on deaf ears. The woman does not refrain from squashing the flea, just as she squashes the poet's sexual advances. She kills the flea with her finger, and her nail is purpled with its blood.

From Quiz John Donne's Love Poetry

Answer: "The Canonization"

A common theme in poetry, these lines immortalize the lovers in verse.

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