The tone in this lyric is tricky. Not because it’s ambiguous: the anxiety and grief are palpable throughout. No, the tone is tricky because even in the keening pitch of sorrow, the poet sends the emotion through very tangled syntax that demands careful attention, and such syntactic manipulation seems somehow antithetical to a rush of emotion. The result is a curious and difficult mix of cerebration, terror, and frantic love, with a dash of anger at the beloved for the death she might well suffer soon.

A curiously and complexly wrought poem, then, that’s also nearly beside itself with emotion. It may reflect Donne’s grief over his wife Anne’s illness, or it may be written for someone else at another time in his life. The fever in question could be the result of childbirth, or infection, or any number of other mishaps. It could all be a dramatic construct, no less authentic for being fictional. But something tells me there’s biography here: “A Feaver,” by John Donne.

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