The Speaker

The speaker of "The Apparition" is an unnamed man who attempts to convince a lady to stop rejecting his advances. He is a notably desperate but clever lover who cautions the woman that, in rejecting him now, she will regret it later. The speaker threatens to appear by the woman's bedside as a ghost after she has killed him with her scorn, telling her that the experience of that haunting will likely kill her, too. Like many of Donne's entreating lover-speakers, the speaker of "The Apparition" uses carpe diem language to stir the lady into anxiety about the future, thereby convincing her to act in the present.

The Lady

The addressee of the poem is a lady who has rejected the speaker's romantic pursuits. The speaker refers to her as "murd'ress" to emphasize his own pain over how her rejection has affected him (1); he suggests that she...