The Apparition

Sunday, August 21, 2011

THE APPARITION.


by John Donne

WHEN by thy scorn, O murd'ress, I am dead,


And that thou thinkst thee free


From all solicitation from me,


Then shall my ghost come to thy bed,


And thee, feign'd vestal, in worse arms shall see:


Then thy sick taper will begin to wink,


And he, whose thou art then, being tired before,


Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think                         .         Thou call'st for more,

And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink :

And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou

Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie,

          A verier ghost than I.

What I will say, I will not tell thee now,


Lest that preserve thee ; and since my love is spent,


I'd rather thou shouldst painfully repent,


Than by my threatenings rest still innocent.


Sometimes, when you’ve given all your best arguments and your lover still doesn’t listen, you might just give up and get nasty and bitter.  This is what seems to happen to Donne in this poem.  He’s so mean to the girl that it’s hard to imagine he is just teasing. His basic conceit is ...”Your  refusal to make out with me is killing me.  So, after  I’m dead, I’m going to haunt your bed. I’ll make things pretty awkward for you and whatever boy you’re sleeping with at the time.”

Duh! An apparition is a ghost.  Notice it kind of has the word appear in it.  So it’s something that suddenly appears.

Guys often called their girlfriends “Murderess” in these poems.  She can kill you with her smile, or her beauty, or her her eyes, or, in this case, her frigidity.


Calling her a “Feigned vestal” is nasty.  Old time temples used to have vestal virgins in them, so he’s saying she’s a fake virgin.  He implies that her reputation is a lot more slutty than the way she is acting.


The taper is a candle.  It’s pretty much standard for candles to flicker when ghosts show up.

This is really nasty.  He imagines that, when she sees the ghost, she’ll try to awaken her new lover, but the guy will think, “Oh my God, she wants to do it again!  She’s insatiable!” and will pretend to sleep to avoid having another round of sex with her . 


She’s “aspen” because aspen leaves quake in the breeze, so she’s shaking. She’ll look like a ghost because she’ll get all sweaty and pale.

Now we’re back in the present tense of the poem.  The girl wants to know what he is going to say when he comes to haunt her.  He says, “No! I don’t love you anymore, so I won’t do you that favor.  You can just worry about it and be sorry you hurt me.”  “Innocent” in this case means not knowing , like the way little kids are innocent because they don’t know any better.