Twickenham Garden: A Poem by John Donne

 

Whenever you study John Donne’s poetry as students, you study to see whether Donne is a metaphysical poet or he is not a metaphysical poet. At more advance level, you want to see if being a metaphysical poet is a merit or demerit.

In order to see whether Donne is metaphysical poet or not, you have to go back to Samuel Johnson who first of all made comprehensive and rather baffling list of qualities of metaphysical poetry, and in order to see if being a metaphysical poet is merit or demerit, you have to study the whole pages of history how his work has been received by readers and how it has been affecting them for centuries—perhaps, more important than anything, how it affects them today when they study Donne’s poetry.

Now, let us see how Donne’s poem Twickenham Garden fulfils the criteria of being a metaphysical poem.

The poem sums up reactions of a lover after he has been rejected by some female friend who, he believes,  should have reciprocated and should have felt the same love for him as he feels for her and should have allowed him to have him his upper hand in their relationship. But, when he is rejected, he comes in the garden and indulges in a kind of self-exposition.

He reveals that after being shaken with signs and drowned by tears, he has come into the garden to find some cure of his love wounds. The spring season is at its peak and there are smells and sounds in the garden which could cure every ailment except the one he was suffering from. He declares himself to be a self-traitor—one who has not been deceived by anyone else but himself. He goes on, and tells his readers that it is love which has disgraced and humiliated him—he compares love to a spider which can change manna into gall—otherwise the place has paradise like solace and soothing qualities, but he himself carried the serpent in this paradise—love becomes a serpent which destroyed his peace of heart.

The first stanza of the poem has many ideas which seem very different from one another, but they have been brought together. But, has this been done forcefully? No. At least, we, the modern readers, do not feel so. What we feel is that these ideas have been developed with true artistic labor and fused with all the delicacy to make new wholes.

The second thing we notice when we go through this poem is that there are many literary and scholarly allusions and hints. Again, is this a demerit? Poetry has the fame of implying much more than it says on the surface. If so, how can it be demerit? All you need to enjoy this kind of poetry is to be well grounded in literature, and the most of the modern readers are familiar with the classical allusions and hints Donne uses in his poetry.

Similarly, all other elements of the list which Samuel Johnson made when he was discussing metaphysical poetry are not difficult to discern in this first stanza of the poem. Its tone is colloquial; it is argumentative; it blasts old myth about love and creates its own myth where women can be false in love: these aspects of Donne’s poetry become clearer in the succeeding two stanzas.

The second stanza of the poem begins with a very strange wish of the speaker. He wishes that winter should sweep over the spring and destroy all that was beautiful in the garden as he cannot bear happy trees which seem to be mocking and laughing at his miserable gloomy condition. Though he has been humiliated and disgraced by love, he cannot leave loving. Now he implores Love to make him some senseless object in the garden—a mandrake to grow there in the garden, looking human but devoid of human feelings which disgrace or humiliate men like him, or a fountain, always weeping at his misery for the rest of his life.

Notice the development of thought process in this stanza. This is what Eliot calls fusion of passion and thought and Keats calls negative capability and Coleridge calls willing suspension of unbelief. These concepts become clearer after we have gone through the final stanza of this poem.

Third stanza is more stunning and fantastic. Here the speaker tells what will happen if his wish of being made a fountain in the garden is fulfilled. He says that future lovers will come to him and take his tears in very fine and clear bottles. Those tears of his will serve as a test to measure whether or not their beloved love them faithfully and truly—if someone’s tears does not taste like his tears, she will not be true and faithful in love.

He concludes his argument with the assertion that women are great hypocrites and they are expert at hiding their true feelings—they have one thing in their eyes and they have another thing in their hearts. He further says that women tears are a false thing because they are controlled by great craft and cunning. To make his point clear he says that as shadow of a woman does not reveal what she is wearing, he tears do not tell what she has in her heart. Those who think that truthfulness of women can be gauzed should see the plight of the narrator of this poem: he was undone because he believed a woman because of her tears.

On the whole the poem is a powerful utterance of being rejected in love. There are ideas and images which on surface appear discordant, but they have been brought together all the possible artistic industry. Argument has been developed wittily and advanced cleverly. More important than anything is the fine finish of the poem which is logical and realistic. Male egotism and self-righteously finds very delicate exposition in this poem. Finally, the poem pleases us and pleasure is the great end of all the good literature: the poem pleases us infinitely and indefinitely by using all artistic devices at commands of master poets.