The Relic by John Donne

First published: 1633, in Poems, by J. D.: With Elegies on Authors Death

Type of poem: Lyric

The Poem

“The Relic” is a lyric poem consisting of three stanzas of eleven lines each. As with numerous other English Metaphysical lyrics, the stanza form and rhyme scheme are unusual and perhaps unique. The pattern of five rhymes in each stanza is aabbcddceee, while the meter of lines is complex and somewhat irregular but basically iambic and effectively supplements the poem’s thematic development. The four weighty iambic pentameter lines that conclude each stanza reinforce a change of tone from flippant or cynical to serious.

John Donne relies heavily on a first-person speaker who comes across as both worldly and spiritual, each quality being carried to an extreme. At the beginning, the speaker projects himself into the future when, long after his death, his bones are disinterred to make room for another burial. The macabre image of a disturbed grave contrasts with another more pleasant image. The grave digger, Donne asserts, will discover a bracelet of bright hair about the bone of the speaker’s forearm. The hair represents the mistress, the “she” of the poem, just as the bones represent the speaker. Once the remains have been discovered, the perspective shifts from the speaker to the grave digger. The sexton may leave the grave without further disturbance, thinking that the “couple” is a pair of lovers who used the device of the hair so that at Judgment Day their souls might meet at the grave and enjoy a visit. This conceit is understood only if the reader knows the medieval and Renaissance conception of Judgment Day, in which believers thought that souls would go about seeking their scattered body parts at the time of the Apocalypse in order to reunite them and experience the resurrection with both body and soul intact.

The second stanza introduces another possibility more in keeping with the poem’s title. Donne suggests that the sexton may do his work during a time when “mis-devotion” rules, that is, when worship includes the adoration of relics. If that happens, he will take the bones and the hair to the bishop and the king, who will make them objects of adoration. The woman’s hair will remind a later age of Mary Magdalene, and the speaker’s bones will suggest “something else.” After they have become relics, they will be credited with miracles performed during their lives, and people of the later period will want to know what miracles they performed. At the stanza’s close, the speaker promises to explain them. The third stanza represents the speaker’s view of the miracles they accomplished, expressed for the enlightenment of a later age. He asserts that they loved well and faithfully but that their love had nothing to do with differences of sex. Their constant love was instead entirely chaste, subdued, and so mysterious that they themselves did not understand it. At the conclusion, however, another abrupt shift in thought occurs, changing the poem into a compliment. The speaker asserts that he would surpass all language if he told “what a miracle she was.”

Forms and Devices

The devices of “The Relic” are complex and intricate, with brilliant imagery and characterization. The macabre beginning and cynical tone suggest a poem that will conclude with wry pessimism or cynicism. Instead, the lyric offers a positive affirmation upholding the value of love. Personification is perhaps the most ingenious device that the poet employs. Objects such as the grave are personified, but Donne goes beyond his normally strained meanings by making the bones represent the speaker’s character and the wreath of hair represent the mistress. While the first-person speaker sees his bones becoming his character in a later age, he also retains his own authorial persona, asserting that his address in “this paper” (the poem) will explain the miracles they have wrought to the audience. The speaker’s alteration between a tone of hard worldliness and a spiritual, idealistic side creates a vivid, dramatic contrast. The grave digger also becomes an important personage in the poem, for he reacts to what he sees in different ways. Even a generalized audience is conjured up as the two lovers become objects of devotion, adored by “All women…and some men.”

The work reveals the typical obscurantism of Metaphysical poetry, including allusions to esoteric ideas and outmoded concepts such as the more extreme Renaissance concepts of the Apocalypse and the practice of removing bones from graves after a time and placing them in a charnel house in order to make room for a new tenant. Yet some allusions remain obscure to modern scholars. The reference to the chaste mistress as Mary Magdalene has led scholars to conjecture that the mistress may be Magdalene Herbert, Donne’s patron and the mother of the poet George Herbert. What Donne means by having the speaker refer to himself as a “something else thereby” cannot be clearly ascertained. Another crux occurs in lines 29-30 (“Our hands ne’er touched the seals/ Which nature, injured by late law, sets free”), a passage that has puzzled critics and editors for many years. The lines clearly proclaim that their love was chaste, but the precise meanings of the metaphor “seals” or the personification “nature, injured by late law, sets free” remain elusive. A possibility is that Donne had in mind the innocent sexuality of Eden before the Fall contrasted with a later time of law when human sexuality became laden with the concept of sin.

The lyric is, above all, a poem of sharp contrasts. In an early analysis, poet T. S. Eliot refers to the intellectual agility required of the reader, using the alliterative sixth line (“A bracelet of bright hair about the bone”) to illustrate the point. The imagery exerts special demands and offers special rewards. The initial image, a bracelet, is pleasant, and the phrase “of bright hair” that follows, though unusual and unexpected, still represents something pleasant. The completion of the image lends further surprise, even astonishment, for the expected “about the arm” veers into the macabre “about the bone.” The reader finds it necessary to adjust the normal and expected responses to conform with the juxtaposition of diverse images. The entire poem places exceptional demands upon the reader yet offers pleasant surprises. The stanzas themselves illustrate the need for shifts in perspective. As they begin, the worldly speaker offers cynical asides, sardonic references, and a tone of hard realism. In the course of each stanza, a transition to a contrasting idealism or a suggestion of idealism occurs by way of conclusion.