John Donne - The Indifferent
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I can love both fair and brown,
Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays,
Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays,
Her whom the country formed, and whom the town,
Her who believes, and her who tries,
Her who still weeps with spongy eyes,
And her who is dry cork, and never cries;
I can love her, and her, and you, and you,
I can love any, so she be not true.
Will no other vice content you?
Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers?
Or have you old vices spent, and now would find out others?
Or doth a fear, that men are true, torment you?
Oh we are not, be not you so;
Let me, and do you, twenty know.
Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go.
Must I, who came to travel thorough you,
Grow your fixed subject, because you are true?
Venus heard me sigh this song,
And by Love's sweetest part, Variety, she swore
She heard not this till now; and that it should be so no more.
She went, examined, and returned ere long,
And said, "Alas, some two or three
Poor heretics in love there be,
Which think to 'stablish dangerous constancy.
But I have told them, Since you will be true,
You shall be true to them who're false to you."
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Added: on March 30th, 2006 at 11:09 PM | Viewed: 1670 times | Comments (5)
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The Indifferent - Comments and Information
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Poet: John Donne
Poem: The Indifferent
Comment 5 of 5, added on June 13th, 2008 at 7:38 PM.
on ground of sensational words and images of which Donne makes use, one cannot draw the conclusion that he is talking about being faithful to one`s partner. he is disapproving of social and moral boundaries and taking side with one night stand loves!!! the reason is that he is not converted to christianity yet.
Anahit Kazzazi from Iran
Comment 4 of 5, added on June 17th, 2006 at 1:22 PM.
John Donne is the speaker in his poem “The Indifferent”. I think Donne is addressing his poem, and his argument in it, to the Goddess of love, Venus. In the first two stanzas, Donne is saying that he loves women and he loves them without prejudice – those who are “fair and brown”, those who love wealth, those that are poor, those who live in city and those who live in country etc. However, because he can love all kinds of women this means that he doesn’t expect to be true in love to one woman, nor does he expect that women will be true to him. The central purpose of this poem is that Donne, probably tongue in cheek was trying to persuade Venus to allow a new kind of loving relationship between men and women. Actually Donne is arguing for “free love” – a kind of love in which there are no obligations, either emotionally or otherwise.
In the last stanza, when the Goddess of love hears Donne’s whining pleas, - “Venus heard me sigh this song” line 19, she responds by calling men like him “poor heretics in love”. She rejects Donne’s requests and commands that he, and men like him to be true in their love of women even though those women maybe false to their men.
Rinda Suparatana from Canada
Comment 3 of 5, added on March 30th, 2006 at 11:09 PM.
Great poem? Yeah, of coarse it is but it's John Donne and he is very hard. He eventually became a religious orator, but this is his early work, which included many poems about love, or rather, lust. When he says that "I can love any, so she be not true" it doesn't necessarily mean that that he can love her as long as she is not faithful, but that he can only love her if she understands that their relationship is superficial. It is for the lust, and not truly love. How well does this apply today? The world is becoming preoccupied with the perfected human body as the center to desire and sex. Relationships are more superficial than ever. It seems that Donne was way ahead of his time.
Lee
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on ground of sensational words and images of which Donne makes use, one cannot draw the conclusion that he is talking about being faithful to one`s partner. he is disapproving of social and moral boundaries and taking side with one night stand loves!!! the reason is that he is not converted to christianity yet.
Anahit Kazzazi from Iran