e emotions of love and religion their penchant for the novel and the shocking their use of the metaphysical conceit (highly ingenious kind of conceit widely used by the metaphysical poets, who explored all areas of knowledge to find in the startlingly esoteric or the shockingly commonplace telling and unusual analogies for their ideas) the extremes to which they sometimes carried their techniques, resulting frequently in obscurity, rough verse, and strained imagery. The Best Metaphysical Poetry is: Intellectual, analytical, psychological, disillusioning, bold Absorbed in thoughts of death, physical love, religious devotion ANDThe diction is simple and echoes common speech.The imagery is drawn from the commonplace or the remote, actual life or erudite sources.The form is often that of an argument with the poet’s lover, with God, or with himself.The verse is often rough (Ben Jonson thought Donne "deserved hanging" for not observing accent). Rough verse could suggest that thought dominated the strict form. Ruggedness or irregularity of movement goes naturally with a sense of the seriousness and perplexity of life, with the realistic method, with the spirit of revolt, and with the sense of an argument cast in speech rather than song. Throughout the history of mankind, the concepts of time and death have been present in prose and poetry. Often, especially in earlier writings, they were personified as one in the same entity. This entity has been assigned different personas, some of which were value based, such as good or evil, and some of which were objectified, such as sand through an hourglass or the cycle of growth and death as seen in the harvest. In the religious poetry of the seventeenth century, one can find many different views on this aspect of literature. Among the most prominent are those of John Donne and George Herbert. In Donne’s tenth Holy Sonnet, he personifies Death...
