From joyful poems such as "The Flea", which transforms the image of a louse into the intimate and intense Holy Sonnets, the author breathed vigour into poetry by drawing lucid and often startling metaphors from the world in which he lived.

A selection of the finest works of John Donne, regarded by many as the greatest of the Metaphysical poets, and among the most intriguing figures of the Renaissance

John Donne was a complex and contradictory figure: a sensualist who composed erotic and playful love poetry in his youth, raised as a Catholic but later becoming one of the most admired Protestant preachers of his time. The Selected Poems reflects this wide diversity, and includes his youthful Songs and Sonnets, epigrams, elegies, letters, satires, and the profoundly moving Divine Poems composed towards the end of his life. From joyful poems such as 'The Flea', which transforms the image of a louse into something marvellous, to the intimate and intense Holy Sonnets, Donne breathed new vigour into poetry by drawing lucid and often startling metaphors from the world in which he lived. His poems remain among the most passionate, profound and spiritual in the English language.

With an introduction and notes by Ilona Bell