In "The Broken Heart," John Donne uses varied imagery to reveal the speaker's dismal perspective on the nature of love. This imagery includes many metaphors, similes, and personification to represent the nature of love, allowing the speaker to clearly describe the nature of love and his attitude towards it in many different facets.

In introducing love, a vivid metaphor describes love, `he," as "stark mad." This basic image continues throughout the poem in forms of destruction and dynamite as a basis to the nature of love. The speaker then enhances his perspective on love, by describing different characteristics of love that prove this opening statement, saying that "love so soon decays/ but that it can ten in less space devour;" the speaker expresses the thought that love is fickle, fast fading, and un-enduring. He further states, "Who would not laugh at me, if I should say,/ I saw...