Anne Donne By Sylvia Townsend Warner

Anne Donne was the name of John Donne’s beloved wife. The marriage was greatly looked down upon by Anne’s uncle and father. Since Anne’s father was the Lieutenant of the Tower, he had John thrown in Fleet Prison for marrying his daughter. It took about eight years for Donne to reconcile with Anne’s father.

            I believe that the speaker of the poem is Anne Donne herself. “I lay in in London;/ And round my bed my live children were crying,” (Lines 1-2). These lines reinsure the fact that it might be Anne Donne speaking because she did have many children in her life. I also feel like the poem could be taken as a letter from one woman to a friend, the woman being the main speaker. The poem gives the sense of a woman having a miscarriage and how her world feels as though it is falling apart. “Carrying my dead child, so lost, so light a burden,” (Line 18).

            “As my blood left me it set the clapper swinging:/ Tolling, jarring, jowling, all the bells of London” (Lines 4-5). This line really gives the reader the loud and slow ringing of a big bell in London by using the words such as, “tolling”, ”jowling”, and “jarring”.

            “Ill-done, well-done, all-done.” (Line 8). In this line, Sylvia Townsend Warner used an anaphora by repeating the word “done” throughout the line. I interpreted this line as the speaker, Anne Donne or another woman, going through stages of sadness, denial, and acceptance after a miscarriage.   

            The end of the poem ends with the lines, “And showed him my ill news. That done,/ Went back, lived on in London” (Lines 20-21). This truly shows how the speaker has fully accepted a lost child and has moved on with her life.