Twicknam Garden

Twicknam Garden

Explanation

1.             The spider Love, which transubstantiates all,

                 And can convert manna to gall ;

Answer: These lines have been taken from the poem “Twicknam Garden” by John Donne begins with his personal predicament. The central idea of the poem is to show a broken heart, a man who loves a girl dearly but cannot receive back the same from her, and the emotions it goes through.

   The lines: “The spider love, which transubstantiates all, and can convert manna to gall,” have three keywords, ‘transubstantiates’, ‘Manna’, and ‘gall’. The first two words impart scriptural reverberations to the poem.

    Transubstantiation is the doctrine in Eucharist church which means that bread is the flesh of Christ and wine is His blood. It is an important ritual in church. The partaking of bread and wine recalls minding the crucifixion of Christ and Judas, one of Christ’s disciples instrumental in putting Christ on the cross. This is nothing but betrayal of love. Manna is food provided by God for Israelites during their long stay in the desert, when love and trust are not there sustaining the bond subsisting between man and man.

2. Make me a mandrake, so I may grow here,

     Or a stone fountain weeping out my year.

Answer: These lines have been taken from the poem “Twicknam Garden” by John Donne. The central idea of the poem is to show a broken heart, a man who loves a girl dearly but cannot receive back the same from her, and the emotions it goes through.

 The poet wants to be some senseless piece of the garden. He wants to be a andrake or stone fountain, and this impulse of regression to the world of rocks and plants is prompted by something in the poet that he fails to come to grips with. He finds that the trees glistening with bright foliage mock him and the poet makes a very despairing disclosure:

"Twickenham Garden" offers a memorable example of this as the poet projects himself into a mandrake and a statue. The  metamorphosis into a weeping statue, a product of human artifice, suggests that, for Donne, the beauty of art can supplement the inhuman beauty of the garden.

3. Hither with crystal phials, lovers, come,

     And take my tears, which are love's wine,

    And try your mistress' tears at home,

   For all are false, that taste not just like mine.

Answer: These lines have been taken from the poem “Twicknam Garden” by John Donne begins with his personal predicament. The central idea of the poem is to show a broken heart, a man who loves a girl dearly but cannot receive back the same from her, and the emotions it goes through.

  The third stanza is an intensification of the probing and analytic mind of Donne making an inquisition on the experience of frustration in love. This stanza abounds in hyperbole when he says that lovers with crystal vials would come to him for collecting his tears with the injunction from the poet to compare his tears with tears of their mistresses at home. The poet cannot forbear himself going into high-faulting utterances that tears of all are false that taste not just like his. He indulges himself in making extravagant claims of being pure and steadfast in love and makes a brutal exposure of sham and pretence underneath the veneer of naïveté.

4. O perverse sex, where none is true but she,

Who's therefore true, because her truth kills me.

Answer: These lines have been taken from the poem “Twicknam Garden” by John Donne.The central idea of the poem is to show a broken heart, a man who loves a girl dearly but cannot receive back the same from her, and the emotions it goes through.

The speaker laments the inability to look through a woman’s heart. They do not shine in their eyes nor can they be judged by a few tears. Just like we cannot decipher by her shadow what she wears, their thoughts too are undecipherable by such means. There is a deep meaning in the shadow and dress phrase. The dress can be as complicated as it can be, woken with the finest of silk and laden with intricate designs, but in its shadow, all it is but a simple and even darkness.

He calls the sex perverse. He says that because he believes in love, nothing is true but she. He believes so because it is said that ‘truth brings pain’. And she is true, because she brings a lot of pain to her lover.

John Donne writes a simple and beautiful piece of verse with some deep meanings, and shows the emotions and thoughts a true broken-hearted love feels.