Ecstasy John Donne
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John Donne was the very first of the Metaphysical poets. A metaphysical poet is one who investigates the world by rational discussion of its phenomena rather than by intuition or mysticism. We have studied two or three poems by John Donne, and I have enjoyed them. This six weeks we are analyzing the poem "The Ecstasy." I have always thought of ecstasy as a emotion or a feeling and was not sure how to put it into words, so I looked it up. Ecstasy was used by mystical writers as "the technical name for the state of rapture in which the body was supposed to become incapable of sensation, while the soul was engaged in the contemplation of divine things." It is also an "exalted state of feeling which engrosses the mind to the exclusion of thought; rapture, transport."
In the first stanza, the reader learns that two people are sitting on a hill or on a bank by a stream. They are holding hands and the narrator describes it as being "cemented." The fast balm that holds their hands together is the sweaty palms...