road gone past John Donne
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-> In the fiIn the next two couplets we are reminded of a view expressed in 'The Extasie', that while the two lovers' souls are engaged in a divine interaction 'If any, so by love refin'd, that he soules language understood, and by good love were grown all minde, within convenient distance stood, he... might thence a new concoction take, and part farre purer than he came.'. Donne thought that divine love had a purifying effect on those who experienced it. Here he addresses the object of his love, 'If [my heart] had gone to thee, I know mine would have taught thine heart to show more pity unto me'. It is clear that Donne considers this unrequited love spiritual, as the quality of pity, which he believes is in his heart, is a divine one.
The last line of the penultimate stanza introduces the image of his heart being made of fragile glass which love, not ,interestingly, the object of his desires, has shattered. This again is an example of the Petrarchan strain found in Donne's work, that depicts love as an undesirable disease.
The idea of the glass heart is characteristically developed into a conceit in the concluding stanza, but to fully understand the inspiration behind this feature we must first understand the thoughts that lie behind the first two lines...