lence and deceit is further expressed in lines 3-6 along with further sexual implications. The explicit sexual “get” and “got” convey his experiences with physical love, but he is upset that he has not found that so-called “spiritual love,” even though he has followed a number of steps in a specific sequence, like an alchemist with a formula would do. He has (1) loved (2) got and (3) told (here meaning kept count). And since nothing that he has done or will do in his search has worked or will ever work, he concludes that everything Platonists claim is falsified.The conceit of Platonists being like alchemists is made more explicit in the second half of the stanza. Donne says that just as no alchemist ever discovered the “Elixir” so too does the Platonist never find that ideal and pure love that he claims to exist. He further explains that the alchemists and Platonists both glorify things that are and will always remain physical. The alchemist ridiculously lauds over his “pregnant pot” and the Platonist over the woman’s womb, both being things that will never allow for perfection, purity or anything ideal to appear from within them.Similarly, lover’s who try to find the “hidden mystery” imagine a full, warm and long ideal relationship, but in reality it turns out to be a “winter-seeming summer’s night” meaning that it is a cold and short one. And with the sexual implications in these lines, not only can the lover not find this spiritual love; he also cannot find the lasting pleasure in the physical aspect.The second half of the poem begins with the idea that men are just wasting their lives and sacrificing their “ease”, “thrift” and “honor” by chasing after some non-existent pleasure in love (“vain bubbles shadow”). In the lines that follow, Donne brushes aside the Platonists ideas that only...
