Since she whom I loved

Plot: The speaker ponders the death of a loved one, exploring his feelings of loss and grief, and his thoughts on mortality and the afterlife.
Structure & Language Techniques: The poem is written in a complex, metaphysical style with heavy use of imagery, paradoxes, and metaphysical conceits, reflecting the speaker’s complex emotional state.
Themes & Linking Poems: The poem explores themes of love, grief, and death, linking it with other Donne poems like “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and “Death Be Not Proud.”
Key Quotes: Key quotes include “Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt / To Nature” and “And she, not mix’d, but all epitaph”, which encapsulate the speaker’s feelings of loss and grief.
Poet & Context: John Donne was a 17th-century metaphysical poet known for his complex and richly layered poems that often revolved around themes of love, death, and spirituality, reflecting his own complex life and the tumultuous times he lived in.