Anniversary Poems

Elizabeth Drury, daughter of Donne's patron, Sir Robert Drury, died in 1610. A year later Donne laments her hyperbolically as the soul of the created universe. In "An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary," he poetically scrutinizes that year-old corpse, the world, as if he were performing an autopsy (an "anatomy"). He finds it corrupt in every part, the dead woman having carried with her every spark of goodness it once contained. To commemorate the second anniversary of Miss Drury's ...