This Modern Library edition contains all of John Donne's great
metaphysical love poetry. Here are such well-known songs and sonnets as
"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," "The Extasie," and "A Nocturnall
Upon S. Lucies Day," along with the love elegies "Jealosie," "His
Parting From Her," and "To His Mistris Going to Bed." Presented as well
are Donne's satires, epigrams, verse letters, and holy sonnets, along
with his most ambitious and important poems, the Anniversaries. In
addition, there is a generous sampling of Donne's prose, including many
of his private letters; "Ignatius His Conclave, " a satiric onslaught on
the Jesuits; excerpts from "Biathanatos, " his celebrated defense of
suicide; and his most famous sermons, concluding with the final "Death's
Duell." "We have only to read [Donne]," wrote Virginia Woolf, "to
submit to the sound of that passionate and penetrating voice, and his
figure rises again across the waste of the years more erect, more
imperious, more inscrutable than any of his time."
