Elegy 19: to His Mistress Going to Bed
Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed
by John Donne
A poem about anticipation. (Richard Gill)
Verse of wit[1] and impudence. (Clay Hunt)
Very loosely based on Ovid’s love elegy Amores 1.5.
Probably written in the early or mid-1590s, according to most critics.
For many this is by far[2] Donne’s most erotic poem (e.g. C.S. Lewis).
- However others question how sensual it really is, or is meant to be[3].
Donne doesn’t appeal to any sense apart from the unblinking eye
- even this does not tell us what she looks like.
- “Donne tells us very little about the beauty of “colour and skin” (Joan Bennett).
He asks permission for his roving hands to explore her body but there is no evidence that he actually[4] does grope[5] her.
Most of the sexuality seems to take place[6] in his mind.
- There is an undeniably comic side to the poem as the lover tries simultaneously to maintain his arousal[7] (and his erection) while trying to persuade her to hurry up!
The Title
This is only an ‘elegy’ in the sense that it celebrates the end of the woman’s resistance to the speaker’s sexual advances.
In addressing his beloved as ‘mistress’, the poet is following a mediaeval tradition in which lovers regarded the one they loved as exercising power over them and whom, therefore, they had to serve.
- Note: ‘mistress’ is the female equivalent of ‘master’ and did not have the modern connotation of a woman who has illicit sex with a married man.
The beloved could be his wife (perhaps on their wedding night), his mistress (in the modern sense) or a prostitute.
- Neither the title nor the poem reveal who she is.
The poetic voice watches a woman undress for bed and takes the opportunity to ridicule Petrarchan love poetry (you’ve got to find something to do while you wait, right?).
Petrarchan clichés say:
- love is war
- the beloved is an angel
- love is like religious devotion
- the beloved’s beauty is like the treasures of the Indies.
Come, Ma/dam[8], come, / all rest / my powers / defy[9],
Until / I la/bour[10], I / in la/bour[11]lie.
The foe[12] / oft-times[13] / having / the foe[14] / in sight,
Is tir’d[15] / with[16]stan/ding[17]though / he ne/ver fight.
Off with / that gir/dle[18], like / heav’n’sZone/[19]glist’ring[20], 5
But a / far[21]fai/rer[22]world[23]/ encom/passing.
Unpin[24]/ that span/gled[25]breast/plate[26]which/ you wear,
That[27]th’eyes/ of bu/sy[28]fools/ may be / stoppedthere.
Line 2: by introducing the theme of childbirth, is the speaker not unintentionally undermining his own argument?
Line 5: If the Milky Way is like a belt around the world, then your belt is like the Milky Way around a much more perfect world: you.
The ‘breast-plate’ reference could allude to Athena’s aegis – protective breast covering – a symbol of chastity and virtue.
Unlace[29]/ yourself, / for that/ harmo/nious chime[30],
Tells me / from you, / that now/ it is / bedtime. 10
Tells me / from you, / that now / ’tis your / bedtime.
Off with / that hap/py busk[31], / which I/ envý[32],
That still can be, and still/ can stand[33]/ so nigh[34]. anaphora
Your gown/ going off, / such beau/teous state[35]/ reveals,
As when/ from flow/’ry meads[36]/ th’hill’s sha/dow steals[37].
Off with / that wi/ryCo/ronet[38]/ and shew[39]15
The hai/ry Dia/deme[40]which/ on you/ doth grow[41]:
Now off/ with those/ shoes[42], and/ thensafe/lytread
Inthis/ love’shal/low’dtem/ple[43], this / softbed.
The Beloved as Angel (ll. 19-24)
In such/ white robes, / heav’n’s An/gels used/ to be
Receiv’d/ by men[44]; Thou[45]An/gel bringst[46]/ with thee20
A heav’n/ like M’ho/met’s Pa/radise[47]; / and though
Ill spi/rits walk/ in white[48]/, we eas’/ly know[49],
By this/ theseAn/gels[50]from/ an e/vil sprite[51],
Those set[52]/ our hairs/, but these[53]our flesh[54]/ upright[55].[56]
The speaker compares his beloved to an angel.
Angels symbolize the almost-divine status attained by beloveds in Donne’s love poetry. - As divine messengers, angels mediate between God and humans, helping humans become closer to the divine.
Here, the beloved, as well as his love for her, brings the speaker closer to God because with her, he attains[57] paradise on earth.
According to Ptolemaic astronomy, angels governed the spheres, which rotated around the earth, or the centre of the universe.
The Discovery (ll. 25-32)
Licence[58]/ my ro/ving[59]hands, / and let/ them go, 25
Before, / behind, / between, / above, / below.
O my / Ame/rica! / my new-/found-land[60],
My king/dom, safe/liest when/ with one/ man mann’d[61],[62]
My Mine[63]/ of pre/cious stones, My Em/pirie[64],
How blest[65]/ am I/ in this/ disco/v’ring[66]thee! 30
To en/ter in / thesebonds[67], / is to / befree;
Then where / my hand/ is set, / my seal[68]/ shall be.[69]
Notice the contradictory nature of the line 31 with the antithesis of ‘bonds’ and ‘free’.
Discovery and Conquest
The conceit in ll. 25-32 comes from the pun on ‘discovery’:
= a. exploration of new lands
= b. undressing
The comparison of the physical beauty of the mistress to the riches of the Indies was a Renaissance commonplace.
- compare Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet 32 and Spenser’s Amoretti, Sonnet 15.
The lover addresses the mistress in the specific role of an explorer who is requesting a royal patent (‘licence’) which will permit him to discover a new land.
Particularly[70] in Donne’s love poetry, voyages of discovery and conquest illustrate the mystery and magnificence of the speakers’ love affairs.
The speaker of To His Mistress Going to Bed calls his beloved’s body “my America! my new-found land”, thereby[71]linking[72] the conquest of exploration to the conquest of seduction.
To convince his beloved to make love, he compares the sexual act to a voyage of discovery.
The comparison also serves as the speaker’s attempt[73] to convince his beloved of both the naturalness and the inevitability of sex.
- Like the Americas, the speaker explains, she too will eventually[74] be discovered and conquered.
Understandably, these metaphors are not popular with feminists.
The woman’s body becomes a new colony, owned and protected by the invading power and exploited for wealth.
- if we take the metaphysical conceit seriously, this betrays the imperialist attitude that foreign lands are acquired for the colonizers’ own use.
A Myth Rewritten (ll. 33-38)
Full na/kedness! / Alljoys/ are due/ to thee,
As souls/ unbo/died, bodies / uncloth’d/ must be, polyptoton
To taste/ whole joys.[75]/ Gems which / you wo/men use35
Are like/ At’lan/ta’s balls[76], / cast in / men’s views,[77]
That when / a fool’s/ eyeligh/teth on[78]/ a Gem,
His earth/ly soul/ may co/vet theirs[79], / not them. polyptoton
The Philosophical Debate (ll. 39-48)
Like pic/tures, or/ like books’/ gay[80]co/v’rings made
For lay-/men[81], are / allwo/men thus/ array’d[82]; 40
Themselves/ are mys/tic[83]books, / which on/ly we
(Whom their/ impu/ted grace[84]/ will dig/nify[85])
Must see/ revea/lèd.[86]Then,/ since I/ may know[87];
Must see / reveal’d. / Then that / since I / may know
As lib’/rally[88], / as to / a Mid/wife, shew[89]
Thy self: / cast all, yea, this/ white li/nen[90]hence, 45
There is / nope/nance due/ to in/nocence.[91]
To teach/ thee, I/ am na/ked first; whythan[92]
What needst/ thou have/ more co/v’ring than/ a man?[93]
Line 44 formally argues for the naturalness of nakedness and sex but by introducing the theme of childbirth, is the speaker not unintentionally undermining his own argument (as in line 2)?
Neoplatonic Love
Donne draws on the Neoplatonic conception of physical love and religious love as being two manifestations of the same impulse.
In the Symposium (3rdor 4th Century BCE), Plato describes physical love as the lowest rung of[94] a ladder.
According to the Platonic formulation, we are attracted first to a single beautiful person, then to beautiful people generally, then to beautiful minds, then to beautiful ideas, and, ultimately[95], to beauty itself, the highest rung of the ladder.
Centuries later, Christian Neoplatonists adapted this idea such that the progression of love culminates in a love of God, or spiritual beauty.
Donne assert the superiority of the speakers’ love to quotidian, ordinary love by presenting the speakers’ love as a manifestation of purer, Neoplatonic feeling, which resembles[96] the sentiment felt for the divine.
In the 1590s the dominant e intellectual debate was about the nature of the body and the soul
- expressed in the Ovidian and Platonic traditions of Elizabethan love poetry.
The Renaissance Platonists saw the body as inessential temporal clothing for the eternal reality of the soul.
- the rational lover should not only aspire to rise above sensuality but might hope to advance beyond even a purely spiritual union with the soul of a woman, progressing up the steps of the Stair of Love until his love was finally consummated by the union of his soul with God in the Mystic Experience.
The Renaissance Ovidians believed that love was a bodily passion unhampered[97] by reason. True love, in their view, was the irrational and satisfying experience of pure lust.
With breezy blasphemy Donne conflates the two arguments to equal spiritual ecstasy with sexual ecstasy.
- if the Beatific Vision[98] is like taking off your clothes to experience full joy, then taking off your clothes to experience full joy is like the Beatific Vision.
- so, the full intellectual joys of the naked soul are equated with the full sensual joys of the naked body.
This argument is expanded in the passage as a pseudo-theological validation for nakedness and lust.
So, the pleasures of the flesh equate to the pure bliss of heaven
- loving a woman’s naked body is philosophically equivalent to loving her soul
- consummation in sexual intercourse and consummation in the Mystic Experience are basically equivalent.
Comments
Against: the poetic voice sees the woman primarily as a sexual partner for the man.
In favour: the language and the range of references assume that she is intelligent, witty[99] and confident, and that she is as enthusiastic and experienced as he is.
The poem was banned[100] from publication in 1633.
Probably influenced Herrick’s The Vine.
Love vs. Religion
As the Donne expert, Helen Gardner, has thoroughly[101]discussed[102], Donne’s love poetry greatly exceeds his religious poetry in style and presentation.
While the religious poetry grew from self-conflict
- the love poetry does not focus on whether the speaker is right to feel what he does; it focuses on the process of feeling.
He seeks to[103] explore a full range of emotions
- free of the judgement of Christianity (or any other religious creed).
Gardner writes, “As a love poet he seems to owe nothing to what any other man in love had ever felt or said before him; his language is his own.”
- unlike[104] religious truths, the truths Donne uncovers in his love poetry belong to him alone.
Semantic field: accoutrements, mythology, exploration, philosophy
A good reading, though the text is slightly different at:
[1] wit – intellectual humour
[2] by far – easily, undoubtedly
[3]is meant to be – is supposed to be
[4]actually – (false friend) really, in fact
[5] to grope sb. – explore sb’s body with one’s hands
[6] to take place (take-took-taken) – occur, happen
[7] arousal – sexual excitement
[8] the term ‘madam’ implies that the speaker is not dealing with an inexperienced virgin (in contrast to the typical seduction poem)
[9] to defy – (in this case) scorn. His sexual energies prevent him from going to sleep
[10] to labour – work hard, (in this case) start to havesex
[11] in labour – suffering preliminary pain. He waits impatiently, like a woman waiting to give birth, be in the torment of anticipation
[12] the foe – (literally) the enemy
[13]oft-times – often
[14] the foe... the foe – the male and female sexual organs, envisaged as rivals in battle. Military language was often used in love poetry.
[15] tir’d – tired; flaccid (in the erection innuendo)
[16] with – (in this case) as a result of
[17]standing – a. staying still; b. having an erection. This and the reference at ll. 23-24 seem to suggest more anxiety about losing the erection than eroticism.There may be further wordplay on ‘withstanding’ (= resisting, defending)
[18]girdle – belt. Thomas Docherty points to the word ‘girl’ hidden in the kangaroo word ‘girdle’.
[19] I would add a pause here to allow the three consecutive stressed syllables
[20]glistering – glittering, glistening. ‘Heaven’s zone glistering’ is a reference to the Milky Way (= Via Lactea)
[21] far – (in this case) much
[22]fairer – morebeautiful
[23] world – universe, (in this case) the woman’s body. An expression of his desire to discover, explore, exploit and conquer
[24] to unpin – open, unfasten
[25]spangled – (in this case) covered in jewels
[26]breastplate – (in this case) stomacher, an ornamental covering for the chest
[27] that – (in this case) so that
[28]busy – interfering, nosy, prying
[29] to unlace – undo, open, unfasten
[30] harmonious chime – either this is a reference to the harmony of the spheres or the woman is wearing a fashionable chiming watch
[31] busk – corset
[32] envy /en’vai/ (historic rhyme to coincide with ‘nigh’ /nai/)
[33]still can stand – the ‘busk’ is stiffened with wooden stays or whalebone. In contrast to his erection, it will remain rigid permanently
[34] nigh – near, close
[35] state – splendour
[36] meads – meadows, fields
[37] steals – goes quietly away, leavesfurtively
[38]wiry coronet – fashionable wreathmade of goldwireworn around the forehead
[39] shew – (archaic) show, reveal
[40] diademe – diadem (head-band – often decorated with jewels)
[41] doth grow – (archaic) grows
[42]off with those shoes – removing shoes is a religious act (performed when entering a holy place).
[43]off with those shoes... temple – it would be a profanation to have sex with your shoeson, while removing her shoesturns their sex into a sacred act
[44]John 20: 10, Acts 1: 10
[45] for the rest of the poem the woman is imagined in underwear, so the poetic voice no long uses the respectful form ‘you’ but changes to the intimate ‘thou-thee-thy-thine’
[46] thou bringest – (archaic) you bring
[47]Mahomet’s Paradise – the Islamic concept of paradise in which 72 virgins ensure that (male) believers have constant organisms
[48]Corinthians 11:14-15 which refers to Satan dressing as an angel
[49] to know – (in this case) can distinguish
[50] these Angels – women
[51] sprite – spirit
[52] to set – (set-set-set) – (archaic) set sth. on end, cause sth. to be erect
[53] these – (ellipsis) theseangels set
[54] our flesh – (in this case) his penis
[55] upright – erect
[56] evil spirits cause the hairs to stand on end, women provoke erections
[57] to attain – achieve, reach
[58] to license – allow, permit. ‘Licence’ also carried the innuendo of licentiousness in Elizabethan usage (Cf. As You Like It, II.vii.68)
[59]roving – wandering, exploring
[60] the toponym Newfoundland dates from 1585, so it was a very recent coinage if this poem was written in the 1590s.
[61] man’d – manned, (in this case) politically occupied, sexually occupied
[62] most safe when possessed by one man only
[63] sexual innuendo
[64] Empiry/Emperie – Empire; status, dignity or dominion of an emperor
[65] blest – blessed, fortunate
[66] discovering – uncovering, undressing (and, obviously, colonizing)
[67] bonds – a. commitments, b. arms
[68] seal – deviceused to imprintwax to signify ownership; here with sexual innuendo (seal = genitalia)
[69] he has put his hand on her as if signing a contract between them, and he will now consummate their love, as if confirming a contract with the imprint of his seal
[70] particularly – (false friend) especially
[71]thereby – in thisway
[72] to link – connect
[73] attempt – effort
[74] eventually – (false friend) in the end
[75] As souls... whole joys – as souls must free themselves of their bodies in order to taste the joys of heaven, so lovers’ bodies must be free of their clothes to gain the fullest bliss
[76] At’lanta’s balls – golden apples dropped by Hippomenes, a suitor, in a footrace to distract and delay the fleet-footed huntress Atalanta in a Greekmyth. Donne alters the story.
[77] in the story by Ovid, Atlanta would only marry a man who could beat her in a foot-race, Hippomenes distracted her by throwing three golden balls down in front of her, and so won the race.
[78]lighteth on – (archaic) lights on, lands on, discovers
[79] theirs – what merely belongs to them
[80] gay – (in this case) showy, gaudy, conspicuous, ostentatious
[81]lay-men – the uneducated majority
[82] arrayed – adorned, decorated
[83]mystic – containing secrets that only a few can discover
[84] imputed grace – (a Calvinistic concept) merits that are notstrictly one’s own (Romans 4:6-8)
[85] to dignify – makeworthy
[86] Simple men are content to admire outward show, such as a woman’s jewellery or the bright covers of a book. Thus they fail to appreciate the greater value of the woman herself, or the contents of the book.
[87] to know – (in the Biblical sense) knowsexually
[88]liberally – freely, licentiously, unreservedly
[89] shew – (archaic) show
[90] white linen – underclothes (or perhapssheets)
[91] the colour white was associated with penitence and with virginity (think: white wedding dresses). The lady in the poem, therefore, has no reason to keep on her white underclothes
[92] than – (archaic) then
[93] What needst... a man? – a. why do you need to wear more clothing than (naked) me?, b. whywearclothes when I can be a substitute for your clothes? c. why do you need to look for sex (‘covering’) other than with a man? There was some anxiety at the time – and within Donne – about the rival charms of dildos and other women, according to Robin Robbins (The Poetry of John Donne, Volume 1).
[94]rung of – step on
[95]ultimately – (false friend) finally
[96] to resemble – be similar to
[97] unhampered – not impeded
[98]Beatific Vision – (visio beatifica) direct and ecstatic communion with God
[99]witty – intelligently humorous
[100] to ban – prohibit
[101]thoroughly – exhaustively
[102] to discuss – (in this case) explore, explain
[103] to seek to (seek-sought-sought) – want to
[104]unlike – in contrast to