THE EXTASIE- A Transcendence from Two to One

John Donne is one of the great Metaphysical poets of the 17^th century; a period of poetry marked by abrupt and dramatic openings, familiar speech, an argumentative structure and an introspective quality.

Much of Donne’s poetry utilizes the interface of opposites (up/down, physical/spiritual, this/that).  This juxtaposition of disparate concepts creates a window into Supernatural or Metaphysical realm.  Later in the 19^th Century, William Wordsworth has this revelation that he refers to as “Spots of Time”.

The Extasie, by John Donne, describes lovers bound together in an embrace that joins two hands…. two bodies….. two souls.  This embrace takes the lovers from a physical union to a spiritual one; resulting in the creation of a third soul that transcends the sum of the two.

The Extasie, by John Donne

Where, like a pillow on a bed
A pregnant bank swell'd up to rest
The violet's reclining head,
Sat we two, one another's best.
Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm, which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;
So to'intergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As 'twixt two equal armies fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls (which to advance their state
Were gone out) hung 'twixt her and me.
And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.
If any, so by love refin'd
That he soul's language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,
He (though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same)
Might thence a new concoction take
And part far purer than he came.
This ecstasy doth unperplex,
We said, and tell us what we love;
We see by this it was not sex,
We see we saw not what did move;
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love these mix'd souls doth mix again
And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size,
(All which before was poor and scant)
Redoubles still, and multiplies.
When love with one another so
Interinanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are compos'd and made,
For th' atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But oh alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They'are ours, though they'are not we; we are
The intelligences, they the spheres.
We owe them thanks, because they thus
Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses' force to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.
On man heaven's influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air;
So soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.
As our blood labors to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot which makes us man,
So must pure lovers' souls descend
T' affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.
To'our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love reveal'd may look;
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change, when we'are to bodies gone.

DID YOU KNOW? Donne was born into a Roman Catholic family in 1572, when practice of that religion was outlawed in England. When he was 21 years old, his brother Henry was arrested for harbouring a Catholic priest, William Harrington, whom Henry betrayed under torture.  Harrington was tortured on the rack, hanged until not quite dead, then was subjected to disembowelment.  Henry Donne died in Newgate prison of bubonic plague.  This series of events lead to John Donne’s questioning of his Catholic faith and eventual conversion to the Anglican religion.