"The Broken Heart" by poet John Donne reveals the speaker's experiences and his consequent attitude towards a personified love, through his sophisticated appliances of language, imagery and form. The language of the poem helps to personify love as a monstrous beast who takes no concern or pity. Lexical patterns such as "devour" and "chaws" repeat and solidify a picture the reader eventually formulates of Love - that of a living, tangible, extremely negative presence. The use of mostly figurative images illustrates the effects of love on those who succumb to its grasp. The form of the poem is essential to the message that is revealed. The reader, by the end of the poem, knows firmly well that, through personal experience and much thought, the speaker has carefully formulated pessimistic, hateful opinions of the nature of love.

Donne's use of language further constructs the living, breathing beast that is...