"Love's Alchemy" by John Donne?

Question

I need help understanding his poem!

If anyone can explain the most they can as best they can, that would be awesome =]

thnx!

Answer 1

Through  the death of the one he  loves he finds himself understanding that love and his relationship with her  was not what he assumed it was. His remaining existance  was proof of that. Everything he thought about love is lessened or proven to be wrong.  He had put her on a pedistal, treated her like God, and her loss should have reduced him to nothing... yet there he was still able to go on. In essence he believed his time with her be but a cheap copy of a masterpiece... to an extent a lie he told himself.

Answer 2

http://www.123helpme.com/preview.asp?id=...

I did a little looking and it does indeed seem to be an analogy between the Plaotonists and the Alchemists. Platonists, based on Plato's teachings, believed that all things can be known. Simply put, there is a perfect, or idealized state of things. Take love--we can know what a perfect love might be by reflecting on our own understanding of love. Plato is famous for doing this through his dioalogues.

Counter to this would be something like alchemy, which was the pursuit of making gold by mixing chemicals and metals. Basically, trial and error. So, if you think about the two, they both believe that there is somethign to keep working toward--perfected love, or gold. They go about in different ways.

Beyond that it gets tricky to dissect. Basically, one is saying I have thought it through and know what love means, the other side contends there si more to study.

I never liked Donne. ;)