the Donne of
"I long to talk with some old lover's ghost,
Who died before the God of Love was born,"
of
"I wonder by my troth what thou and I
Did till we loved?"
of the
"Bracelet of bright hair about the bone,"
that attracts the ordinary man and woman of to-day.
In spite of repeated incentives to listen, we turn deaf ears to sermons: towards poetry we are inclined to be perhaps too kind.
Donne is all the more important as a poet because he treats of the universal passion of love in more phases than any other poet. He was the complete experimentalist in love, both in actual life and in his work. He is frankly in search of bodily experiences:
"Whoever loves, if he do not propose
The right true end of love, he's one that goes
To sea for nothing but to make him sick."