John Donne is a leading representative of the English metaphysical
poets. He wrote sonnets, love poems, religious poems,
epigrams,
elegies, songs, satires and sermons. He also did some translations from
Latin. The Flea is one of the many works describing physical
intercourse between man and woman. It consists of three stanzas,
containing nine lines each. The lines are written in iambic tetrameter
and iambic pentameter in 454545455 pattern in each stanza. The pattern of rhymes is also regular - AABBCCDDD.In
the first stanza poet shows his lover a flea perched on the bed and
notes
that the thing he wants is similarly little. Moreover, he calms
the woman down as for the fact that
their intercourse (the mingling of
lovers'''' blood has been a symbol of making love since Aristotle''''s times)
might not be sinful as they are united in the flea through their blood
that the insect had sucked. In the second stanza the poet is
asking the woman to spare the flea. Doing so Donne calls the insect
''''
marriage bed, and marriage temple''''. He also claims that
killing the flea would be a sin and a triple one as not only the flea
would die but also the lovers inside it.From the third stanza we
find out that in spite of her lover''''s pleading the woman decided to
kill the flea. The poet asks about the flea''''s gulit ,
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck''''d from thee?Yet,
the woman replies that her ''''misdeed'''' harmed no one and the lovers are
the same as before thus providing yet another argument for the man
confirming his belief that premarital sex is nothing to be ashamed of.The
poem presents a fine argument between two lovers - on the one hand they
fall out ovet some trivia, on the other the man is trying to find any
comfirmation of sinlessness of their intercourse.Some critics
assume that the flea in this poem symbolises a child (parents blood in
it) and the act of killing the insect they see abortion.Whatever
the interpretation, the truth is that the Flea is one of the finest
examples of sixteenth-century love poems, emanating eroticism yet not a
bit abusive. Some experts believe that in this poem Donne expressed
himself with conciseness and clarity he never managed to achieve in
later works.