Show how Donne achieves a fusion of thought and feeling in his love poetry?

Donne's love poetry is remarkable for its concentrated passion, intellectual agility and dramatic power. He is given to introspection and self-analysis. He writes of no imaginary shepherds and shepherdesses as his predecessors did but of his own intellectual, spiritual and amorous experiences. His poetry, specially love poetry, bears a tone of realism, even cynicism but it is always forceful and startling. His poetry is a revolutionary step against the conventional and chivalric love and in doing this he brings about a peculiar blend of passion and thought, feeling and ratiocination.

Each of Donne's love poems arises out of a particular emotion but he explains that emotion with the help of his intellect. That is, he approaches every occasion of his love emotionally but he gives rise to the intellect and understanding in order to express his peculiar experience of love. His experience of being in love is expressed in a witty language in different moods of a lover, his sensuality is elevated by a brilliant wit, fascination and scornful anger are inextricably blended together.

Most varied concepts are brought together in his poetry by means of an intellectual analysis of the most delicate shades of psychological experiences. In the "Sun Rising", we find a self sufficient nature of love. It is a successful union of passion and thought, ingenuity and wit. The mood and the sun is called, " busy old fool, unruly sun, saucy pedantic wretch", etc. While Donne is in a passionate mood, he takes recourse to wit or conceit which, sometimes, seem to be highly fantastic and exaggerated.

"She's all states, and all princes I, Nothing else is Princes do but play us, compared to this All honours mimic, all wealth alchemy,Thou sun art half as happy as we, In that the world's contacted thus."

The world of love and the external world are juxtaposed and the little world of the lovers is said to be a microcosm of the outside world. The lovers concentrate within themselves all the glory and riches of the outside world. Thus the world of love has been glorified by means of a conceit which proves Donne's faculty in the fusion of intellect and emotion. To think of an unusual and fantastic comparison is a matter of intellect but to glorify the world of love is a matter of emotion.

To sum up, Donne has effectively combined thought and feeling, emotion and intellect or logical arguments in his love poetry. By using wonderful and far-fetched similes, wits, conceits and arguments, he has brought out concentrated passion, intellectual agility and dramatic power which have given his poetry a kind of novelty and distinction from his predecessors. Because of this his poetry, specially love poetry, bears a tone of realism even cynicism but it is always forceful and startling.