SOURCE: Sabine, Maureen. “No Marriage in Heaven: John Donne, Anne Donne, and the Kingdom Come.” In John Donne's “Desire of More”: The Subject of Anne More Donne in His Poetry, edited by M. Thomas Hester, pp. 228-55. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Sabine discusses the importance of Donne's wife to his love poetry.

“In the last hour of his last day, as [Donne's] body melted away and vapored into spirit,”¹ Izaak Walton depicted the poet facing death with remarkable composure. However, Donne's own tormented poetry invites me to imagine another death-bed scenario. His “sad friends” open his shirt to see if his “breath goes now” (“A Valediction forbidding mourning,” ll.3-4), and bring an ear to the Dean of St. Paul's chest, only to discover there the letter ‘A’ that scored the flesh of another minister of God and transgressive lover, Arthur Dimmesdale.² For...