shroud on a funeral urn.

The distinguishing general characteristic of Donne's poetry is the
remarkable combination of an aggressive intellectuality with the lyric form
and spirit. Whether true poetry or mere intellectual cleverness is the
predominant element may reasonably be questioned; but on many readers
Donne's verse exercises a unique attraction. Its definite peculiarities are
outstanding: 1. By a process of extreme exaggeration and minute elaboration
Donne carries the Elizabethan conceits almost to the farthest possible
limit, achieving what Samuel Johnson two centuries later described as
'enormous and disgusting hyperboles.' 2. In so doing he makes relentless
use of the intellect and of verbally precise but actually preposterous
logic, striking out astonishingly brilliant but utterly fantastic flashes
of wit. 3. He draws the material of his figures of speech from highly
unpoetical sources--partly from the activities of every-day life, but
especially from all the sciences and school-knowledge of the time. The
material is abstract, but Donne gives it full poetic concrete
picturesqueness. Thus he speaks of one spirit overtaking another at death
as one bullet shot out of a gun may overtake another which has lesser
velocity but was earlier discharged. It was because of these last two
characteristics that Dr. Johnson applied to Donne and his followers the
rather clumsy name of 'Metaphysical' (Philosophical) poets. 'Fantastic'
would have been a better word. 4. In vigorous reaction against the
sometimes nerveless melody of most contemporary poets Donne often makes his
verse as ruggedly condensed (often as obscure) and as harsh as possible.
Its wrenched accents and slurred syllables sometimes appear absolutely
unmetrical, but it seems that Donne generally followed subtle rhythmical
ideas of his own. He adds to the appearance of irregularity by
experimenting with a large number of lyric stanza forms--a different form,
in fact, for nearly every poem. 5. In his love poems, while his sentiment