What do the following lines reveal about the work of John Donne? Although the metaphysical poets derived inspiration from the rich legacy of Elizabethan verse, their poetry was in part a reaction against the stylized conventions of the sixteenth-century sonnet sequence. Instead of using regular meters and “poetic” images drawn from nature, poets such as Donne often used irregular rhythms and unusual, often startling, figurative language. Donne’s tone is less formal and his word choice is simpler than those of most Elizabethan poets, but his verse makes far greater demands on the reader’s intellect.
