Like th' other foot, obliquely runne;
Thy firmnes makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begunne.
The poet who wrote such verses as these did not believe any longer that 'love ... represents the principle of perpetual flux in nature'.
But Donne's poetry is not so simple a thing of the heart and of the senses as that of Burns and Catullus. Even his purer poetry has more complex moods—consider The Prohibition—and it is metaphysical, not only in the sense of being erudite and witty, but in the proper sense of being reflective and philosophical. Donne is always conscious of the import of his moods; and so it is that there emerges from his poems a philosophy or a suggested philosophy of love to take the place of the idealism which he rejects. Set a song of the joy of love by Burns or by Catullus such as I have cited beside Donne's Anniversarie,
All Kings, and all their favorites,
All glory of honors, beauties, wits,
The Sun itselfe, which makes times, as they passe,
Is elder by a year, now, than it was
When thou and I first one another saw,