Selected Poems by John Donne

The Apparition

The essential theme of this poem (‘You will regret your youthful intransigence when you are old and have to accept what love you can get’) is a traditional one in the genre of love poetry. Donne gives the idea an effective twist by imagining his speaker haunting his former love and speaking to her in such terrifying terms that to reveal them now would immediately cause the woman to change her mind and beg the speaker to forgive her. There is an odd contradiction in the explanation at the end of the poem that the speaker’s love is ‘spent’ and that he wants the woman to ignore him, realise what she has missed and ‘repent at leisure.’ His motive for this can only be spite, and suggests that his love has truly died. This seems strange, when the opening line of the poem suggests that the speaker is about to die from his unrequited passion. It is possible to reconcile the two positions, however: the speaker is, perhaps, still besotted with his former love, and prepared to try anything (including the affectation of indifference and spite) in his attempt to recover her. Alternatively, his love truly is ‘spent,’ but the effects of her scorn in themselves are enough to bring about his death.

Details

‘And thee, feign’d vestal, in worse arms shall see’ – That is, the speaker will see the woman embraced by a less loving and worthy man. The implication is that such is the best she can hope for once her youth has departed. She is a ‘feign’d vestal’ is that she once denied the speaker in her ‘scorn’ by pretending to a desire to preserve her virginity. The ‘vestals’ where sacred virgins of Rome in classical times.

‘Then thy sick taper will begin to wink,’ – A taper is a candle, and its ‘winking,’ or guttering, was believed to indicate the presence of a ghost.

‘think/Thou call’st for more,’ – Her partner mistakenly believes she is aroused again, but is already tiring of her body and ignores her. This is intended as an ironic reversal of the original situation in which the woman refuses to satisfy the speaker’s own desires.

‘poor aspen wretch’ – aspens are a type of poplar, the leaves of which are well known for trembling at the slightest breeze.

‘Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat’ – quicksilver, or mercury, was used in the cure of syphilis and caused the body to sweat.