The (very) basic argument of "The Extasie" is: the lovers' two souls leave the body in love's ecstasy, uniting into one soul somewhere beyond. But this soul misses the body which is the proper home of souls in this world. Hence, the one becomes two again, descending into the lovers' bodies, and able to be a lesson to others. It's best to read "The Extasie" yourselves.
This poem alternates trochaic tetrameter stanzas with alexandrine stanzas. In the alexandrines the fourth syllable of the first line rhymes with the third to last and last syllables of the second line.
For another view of love, this time from those who haven't found it yet, read my "The Vigil of Venus," written in March 1981 and posted on this blog on 9 April 2012. It is linked here.
------------
(An Extrapolation from John Donne’s “The Extasie”)
Eye to eye and breast to breast,
You look east and I’ll look west;
Clasped, there’s no more “yours” and “my”s,
Looking babies in our eyes.
Pillowed or banked, and helpless as a violet,
We lay, hands twined, each lost in loving, flanked and shanked.
Well, the fleshed and feeling end
Love’s arched delvings all intend,
Nine months in the womb will hold,
Then squeeze out to stretch and scold!
Our bodies two'd, our single active soul create
Which, greater, homes our unfull selves, now newed and trued.
Strollered, then on foot, that one
Seizes life and’s never done;
Growing, mind work twins with world,
Conscious bodyhood’s unfurled.
Absent, soul turns, knows body is its daily place,
Descends, now our two souls, mixed in what yearns or spurns.
Hormones urge, when body’s ripe,
Mind agrees and looks for type;
Found, soul-swooned and eye to eye,
Love’s conceiving’s by and by.
Affects and sense, re-grammared in the body’s book,
Tell truths to seekers, tempered by love’s “whence” and “hence.”
====================
© November 2023
