Selected Poems by John Donne

Unusually, this poem is divided into just two stanzas. Thematically it deals with love in the first, through the idea of alchemy, whereas the second, with its mention of the ‘bridegroom’s play’ is more down-to-earth in subject matter.


The Flea

In The Flea the reader encounters a relatively straightforward set of ideas, which nonetheless can be seen to work on numerous different and complex levels. The speaker is trying to persuade his beloved that to agree to the physical consummation of their relationship is such a tiny thing , a mere flea-bite, in truth. His argument develops cleverly until the flea seems to encompass both ‘marriage bed, and marriage Temple.’ On another level, however, his argument is itself undermined by the very grotesque nature of the comparison itself. There must be more to love-making, to marriage and holy wedlock than a minute blood-sucking insect. The beloved’s destruction of the flea appears to symbolise her refusal to listen to these unconvincing arguments, that reduce human love to the mingling of bloods within an insect’s carapace, and although the speaker gets the last word, the poem, taken as a whole, seems to suggest that he does not get his way.

Details

‘Mark but this flea, and mark in this,’ – ‘mark = ‘notice, remark.’

‘How little that which thou deniest me is;’ – His beloved is refusing to consummate the relationship with the speaker.

‘And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.’ – Sexual intercourse was believed to mingle the bloods of the two participants, thus creating new life.

‘A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;’ – maidenhead = virginity.

‘And this, alas! is more than we would do.’ – The speaker and his beloved do not wish the ‘swelling’ of pregnancy to take place.