Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Donne’s Incarnating Words 60
describes himself as an anti-incarnate being, and the imagery turns from an incarnation of
life seeking life to an anti-incarnation of life creating death through the indwelling of the
spirit. In ‘Twickenham Garden’ the desire for union, despite physical separation, is shown
to be completely untenable. Here the poet acknowledges that he cannot create physical
and spiritual unity where it does not already exist. Rather than being an embodiment of
the divine, whether through the acknowledgement of a divine lover taking human form or
a writer creating a sacred and sacramental script, the poet is mortal, and as he has written,
‘since my soul, whose child Love is, | Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing doe’, so
he must live and act within the confines of his physical existence.
‘Twickenham Garden’ begins with the poet in a state of deep lament entering a
garden. He is
Blasted with sighs, and surrounded with tears,
Hither I come to seek the Spring,
And at mine eyes, and at mine ears,
Receive such balms as else cure everything. (1-4)
However, rather than ‘balms’ he finds that he is a curse upon his surroundings, or as the
poet says:
But oh, self-traitor, I do bring
The spider love, which transubstantiates all,
And can convert manna to gall;
And that this place may thoroughly be thought
True Paradise, I have the serpent brought. (5-9)