Bees and Fleas: Been There, Donne That

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

Paul De Filippo wonders:
"Am I totally hallucinating, or do I recall from college course
on the Metaphysicals that John Donne wrote a lascivious version
of the Shakespeare poem, to wit:  Where the Flea sucks, there
suck I"?  Note:  two questions above not mutually exclusive."


Not hallucinating.  But not the quote either.

The poem is simply called "The Flea" and is by John Donne.

To paraphrase the 3 stanzas:
Poet asks lover to regard flea and "how little that [i.e. sex] which
thou deny'st me is".    Since the flea has sucked on both of them
and co-mingled their blood, and it is not a sin or shame for it
to have done so, "and this, alas, is more than we would do."

The poet then asks the lover not to kill the flea, since it would
be a triple murder: the flea + blood of the two of them--and it
would be suicide to boot!

But she kills it anyway, and he wonders what harm the poor flea did.
She points out that neither of the two of them is any weaker for the
death of the flea, but he rebounds: "Then learn how false fears be"--
you don't have to worry about losing your honor when you yield to me any
more than I had to worry about the flea's death taking life from her.

A nice example of "Metaphysical" wit--the kind that Samuel Johnson denounced
and TS Eliot resurrected.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)