What is the setting in Donne's poem, The Apparition?

There is only one dominant setting in the poem, and it is a future setting imagined by the speaker. He asserts that, after the lady has killed him from her rejections, he will return as a ghost to haunt her bedside. The speaker paints an eerie and haunting portrait of what this experience will be like—complete with a flickering candle and a cold sweat. That the speaker chooses to haunt her bed, where he imagines she will be sleeping with another man, also contributes to the erotic nature of the poem: the speaker casts doubt on the lady's virginity, calling her a "feign'd vestal," and imagines that the man with whom she sleeps will reject her advances the same way she has rejected his (5). Thus, the setting of the poem, though part of an imagined future, underscores the speaker's desire to seduce the woman in the present.