Since the publication of his `Songs and Sonets' in 1663, the intellectual wittiness of John Donne's love poetry has caused much speculation about the views of the poet himself. Donne took the traditional form and imagery of love poetry in his own day and forced it to "emerge reinvigorated and radically transformed by his hand, demanding from the reader an unprecedented level of mental alertness and engagement" Just as Donne threw himself eagerly into capturing the mood of the moment in his works, so he succeeds in sweeping the reader away in the intense emotions of his poetry.

Several critics have believed Donne's `Songs and Sonets' can be divided into two groups; an earlier group of cynical and promiscuous poems, and a later group of more idealistic poems (supposedly written after Donne's marriage) However, even categorizing the poems in this way cannot banish the sense of variety between the...