Lovers Infiniteness John Donne

John Donne: Poems Summary and Analysis of "Lovers' Infiniteness"

The poet complains that he does not yet have all of his beloveds
love, despite using all of his resources to woo her. She should not
leave some love for others, nor should she leave herself open to
wooing by others later. Yet, he also wants her to keep some of her
love for him in reserve so that they can enjoy a constantly growing
relationship.
Analysis
This poem, titled variously as Lovers' Infiniteness, Love's
Infiniteness, or Lovers Infinitenesse depending on the edition, is a
three-part argument in three stanzas. This type of poem, in which the
lover is arguing with his beloved and trying to convince her of
something (as in The Flea), is common with Donne. Appeals to
reason, often combined with non-rational assertions, are common in
Donne's shorter poems
With three eleven-line stanzas, the form of Lovers' Infiniteness is
unusual for Donne. Each stanza contains ten lines of four to five feet
plus an eleventh line incorporating a different meaning of the word
all. There is a sense of refrain in the end of each stanza (lines, 11,
22, and 33): Dear I shall never have Thee All./.../Grow there, dear, I
should have it all./.../Be one, and one anothers All. The refrain
recalls the more musical of Donne's poems, such as Song
(Sweetest love, I do not go).
The subject of the poem, at least on the surface, is the poet
addressing his beloved, but it is important to remember that Donne, a
metaphysical poet, often includes a deeper meaning in his discussions
of love. The puns, metaphors, and allusions can point toward a more
philosophical meaning.
Donne begins with If yet I have not all thy love, /Dear, I shall never
have it all. The tone suggests gentleness, but the lover also seems
jealous: he wants claim to all of this woman's love. He has been her
suitor; he has tried to purchase her with Sighs, tears, and oaths,
and letters. He has not yet been wholly successful, and he seems to
think that he is entitled to the lady's love because of his efforts,

rather than because he has fully persuaded her. Even if he has been
mostly successful, he is creating the paradoxical metaphysical
situation of giving herself entirely while remaining herself.
For the lover to demand this much from his lady is against poetic
conventions, but Donne, unconventionally, is not asking for simply a
marriage union. He also has abstract ideas about what love is, and,
particularly, what is the totality of love. As is so often in Donne, he is
aware of the paradox. He wants a totality of love, but he has also
reached the limit of his capacity to feel (Stein 33); he wants more to
look forward to. We will see in the third stanza how Donne resolves
the paradox.
The theme of possession and, specifically, commercial transactions
underscores the inadequacy the lover feels when he thinks of or
discusses the all of love that he requires from the lady. He talks of
purchase and what he has spent and is therefore due. He has
spent his emotional capital, and he worries that new suitors have
their own stock to cash in as they outbid him. In the third stanza,
he imagines their growing love as a kind of deposit with interest.
Yet, he knows that love cannot literally be bought. While the poem
may strike the reader as a straightforward courtship plea, the
paradoxes show how inadequate stock phrases such as winning
love or giving one's heart are. The poet is humbled before the
inadequacy of his understanding of love, and by his limitless desire
for it. The comparison between love via finance and true love opens
up a higher comparison, that between earthly love and divine love.
Lines 29-30, Love's riddles are that though thy heart departs/It stays
at home, and thou with losing safest it, allude to Matthew 16,
Whosoever would save his life shall lose it. The paradox of love
remains on the theological level; somehow we must fully love the
divine without giving up ourselves as the ones who love.
Despite loves paradoxes, the poem affirms its mysteries with
reverence and celebration. If desire is infinite, it cannot be satisfied on
a finite earth. Thou canst not every day give me thy heart because
in a financial transaction, the property is lost once it is given away.
How can the lover get her heart back in order to give it again? Only if
he returns it back to her with interest, perhaps. Yet, the lover himself
does not have an infinite love, and he has used up his stock of
resources for wooing. He is human and thus lives within the rules of
the finite world. No matter how idealized the love, the love is still
human; it must have a limit.

The third stanza unravels the paradox with But we will have a way
more liberal. On the human level, he suggests marriage and sexual
union. The physical and mystical union of himself and his lover helps
them share together as one, and one another's all. This is concrete
and understandable and, at least in one aspect, satisfies the longing
of the lover for infinity. They can merge into one another and yet
leave room to grow together, increasing the area of the circle of their
union.
On the spiritual level, beyond the roles of lover and beloved, Donne, a
devout Protestant and the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, suggests a
similar growth in the spiritual devotion of a person for the divine.
Since we are creatures of God, we may participate in the love of God
even if we do not understand it. Donne was fond of expounding in his
sermons not only on the nature of God, but also the impossibility of
understanding certain divine mysteries. It is a common tenet of faith
that the divine is in key ways unknowable, being infinite and eternal
(outside of time) and ineffable. Donnes poems, such as this one,
even though they may not at first appear to be religious, often
express such spiritual themes.

Poem extra Analysis

John Donne's "Lovers' Infiniteness," consisting of three eleven-line
stanzas, begins as a rather unconventional love poem. The speaker is
telling his lady-love that he cannot weep or plead with her anymore to
gain her affection. Paradoxically, Donne says in the first two lines,
"If yet I have not all thy love, / Dear, I shall never have it all." He is,
unlike the conventional poetic lover, giving up on his lady. He has
no faith in her ability love him, and he is getting tired of all
the work he has done to try to convince her to do so. The
speaker, too, is convinced that, because she does not love him totally,
she must love others: "If then thy gift of lover were partial, / that
some to me, some should to others fall." The play on "all" and
"infiniteness" starts in this first stanza, and goes throughout the
poem. Donne is saying that love must be all, like the

infiniteness of God's love, and cannot be partial. Any partition

of love makes it less.
There is also a play on the standard all/nothing sexual pun, present in
English since at least Shakespeare's time, beginning the next stanza
"Or if then thou gavest me all, / All was but All...", but the speaker is
also talking about the totality of love, and his unwillingness to
accept less than that. This three-part argument, a standard pattern
for Donne, addresses first the lover's failure, then a hypothetical
expression of what could happen, and finally a poetic refusal: "Yet I
would not have all yet, / He that hath all can have no more."
The lover cannot bring himself to have "all" (which could
mean her virginity, or, conversely, a pure and total love) from
her "since my love doth every day admit / New growth." In a typical
Donnean logical twist, the lover cannot stop the growth of his love,
and, if he did have the "all" he demands from his lady, and then the
growth of love must stop. These are not just pretty phrases and clever
twists of the mind, but a reflection of the real suffering of the
unrequited love.
The poem ends on a somewhat philosophical, though still anguished,
note. Again the lover acknowledges the paradox involved in "all" or
"total" love, because it cannot be sustained, or even really possible,
because in the giving of it love becomes diminished. Donne uses a
scriptural reference, Matthew 16:25, ("whosoever will save his life
shall lose it") which not only sharpens and defines the paradox and
makes its meaning all the more grave, but also alludes obliquely to
the "die" sexual pun. Donne's ability to combine both sacred and
profane metaphors is perhaps unparalleled in English literature; in
"Lovers' Infiniteness" he uses them to great effect. The ability of
human lovers to match the infiniteness of God's love will always be
hampered by their existence as temporal beings, Donne is saying.
While the lover may strive desperately for it, it will never be attained:
the "all" is really nothing but a dream or a desire, rather than a reality.