SOURCE: DiPasquale, Theresa M. “The Things Not Seen in Donne's ‘Farewell to Love.’” John Donne Journal: Studies in the Age of Donne 18 (1999): 243-53.

In the following essay, DiPasquale explores the theme of atheism in Donne's poem, “Farewell to Love,” from Songs and Sonnets.

Donne's “Farewell to Love” is based on an analogy between religion and love. The speaker traces his history as a lover, looks back on the time when he had yet to experience love and was a naive believer in its divinity, and professes his current rejection of such faith. His perspective is that of a disillusioned atheist who is all the more scornful toward religion because he once believed in a divinity only to conclude, on the basis of experience, that his creed was false and his god a non-entity. In describing his former, naive self, however, the speaker uses a simile—that of the...