she whose rich eyes and breast
Gilt the West Indies and perfumed the East.
It is impossible to understand how a poet, now of the mature age of thirty-nine, could write in this fashion if he had any humour.
"The Second Anniversary" dwelt on the incommodities of the soul in this life, and her exaltation in the next. Donne says that the world still has a semblance of life, as when the eyes and tongue of a decapitated man twinkle and roll, while
He grasps his hands and he pulls up his feet.
So struggles this dead world,
without Elizabeth, whom Donne never saw! There are good lines such as
Her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks,
and the satiric remarks on
A spongy slack divine,
who