12273 ISSN 2286-4822 www.euacademic.org EUROPEAN ACADEMIC RESEARCH Vol. II, Issue 9/ December 2014 Impact Factor: 3.1 (UIF) DRJI Value: 5.9 (B+) A Brief Thematic Survey of the Discourse of Love in the Poetry of John Donne MUSTAPHA BALA RUMA Department of English & French Umaru Musa Yar’adua University Katsina, Katsina State Nigeria Abstract: There is no doubt that love constitutes the main text as well as the subtext of John Donne’s poetry. This paper scrutinizes some of his poems in order to uncover his treatment of the twin concepts of divine love and erotic love. As a tool for doing this, some of his poems as compiled in Helen Gardner’s book The Metaphysical Poets are analyzed in order to explore the confluence of the sacred and the profane in his poetry. The paper reveals that in his poetry the sacred and the profane are not independent and separate but rather form an unbreakable continuum. The paper further observes that in the poems studied John Donne has tried to avoid the metaphysical dualism that most often pitches the demands of the body against those of the spirit in the realms of love. The paper concludes that it is indeed in the cerebral metaphysical quest of a harmonious balance between these supposedly distinct demands that Donne demonstrates his exquisite mastery of the grammar of love. Moreover, in the poetry of John Donne the love of God ultimately merges with the love of wo/man. Key words: Divine love, erotic love, man-woman relationship, Ovid, Petrarch, Christian Platonism. Introduction From the Medieval right through the Renaissance, to the Modern, and Post-modern periods, love has always been an