'Annihilate all that has been done / To a green thought in green shade.' - Marvell Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay "I am re-generated / from absence, from darkness, from death; things that are not." - Women'Nothing', as a concept has plasticity; can be used in many different ways and refer to any number of different things. Nothing can be an adjective denoting something of little value, a noun referring to nonexistence, or literally meaning "nothing." Although W. Bradford Smith states that metaphysical poetry "is concerned with the analysis of experience", surely nothingness cannot be an experience, for every experience must surely consist of something. In metaphysical poetry we must therefore interpret “nothing” in a broad, and perhaps not entirely literal, sense. Using the metaphysical poetry of John Donne and Andrew Marvell as examples, this essay will outline the different kinds of nothingness and nothingness that permeate their work, and the fear and frustration associated with it. Death is a recurring "nothingness" in all the works of metaphysical poets, and is the most obvious way in which we approach the concept of 'nothingness'. it is John Donne in particular who is fascinated by death in his work or, as Ramie Targoff suggests, who is "gripped by a tremendous love of death, his writings returning again and again to strategies for conquering this fear". In a modern context, this fear of death can be understood as the fear of being rendered non-existent or nothing by it. however, living in a devoutly Christian climate, (Donne was first Catholic and then Protestant) death meant moving on to a sort of afterlife, and it is clear from reading Donne's duel to the death sermon that his fear of death is not due to spiritual nothingness: The ways of our exit from this life are in his hands and he will take care of us at the moment of death[.]' Donne's linguistic choices here are indeed comforting, 'in his hands' evokes the image of God caring for the dead, assuring the listener that death is neither solitary nor arbitrary but is in capable "hands". Donne's fear of death seems to lie instead in the fear of physical decay, or in "an overwhelming concern with the material decay of the corpse", and in this way becoming physically nothing. This is perhaps a reflection of the sensual nature of Donne's poetry, which is concerned with physical touch and sight; the decay of the body would completely eliminate these senses. This fear of decaying into nothingness is exemplified in the funeral which effectively gives instructions from Donne to anyone who buries him after his death: 'Do not harm […] the thin wreath of hair, which crowns my arm; the mystery, the sign, you must not touch'Donne describes how she wants her lover's hair braided around his arm to preserve his limbs "from dissolution", preserving his physical body. In this line his imperatives "do no harm", "shall not touch" are imperious and clear, as if firmly convinced that this preservation will work. In addition to this, Donne uses the words "tied" and "cuffed" in reference to the braided hair, expressing the desperate need to be physically held together and remain intact, but also suggesting his desire to remain "bound" to the world of the living . The poem's final line, "I bury some of you," implies a kind of anchoring in the world of the living or, as Targoff says, a "strategy" for overcoming his fear of death. By entwining his dead and decaying body with a living woman, Donne cannot physically become "nothing" because some part of him will still be associated with a living person. This“strategy” employed by Donne raises questions about identity in relation to death and nothingness. . Targoff states that one of the reasons Donne was so afraid of death was the thought of the "violation of bodily integrity whereby one person's remains are confused with those of another". Thus becoming anonymous and therefore "nothing" in terms of identity. To conquer this, Donne wrote a series of poems in which he said goodbye to various things; Goodbye to love, for example. Judith Schoerer Herz sees these farewell poems as "another way of saying 'I am here'". Forget me not, he insists to his mistresses and, more urgently, to God[.]' This kind of foundation is evident in A Valediction: Of my Name, in the Window: 'My name engraved here, contributes my steadfastness to this glass[.]'The act of engraving is one of great permanence as it implies strength, and in this case a name; the most important indicator of identity one possesses. The choice of a window here is also important in Donne's desire for permanence; in the second stanza Donne writes "here you see me, and I am you", describing the reflection that the woman he addresses will see of herself in the window. By carving his name on the window, Donne makes himself part of the woman's reflection, so that when he looks into the window, he sees his name and his reflection as one. In this way, Donne has made himself permanent on three different levels in the poem, the first is the carving of the name on the window, the second is his subsequent reflection on the living woman, and the very act of writing the poem, which could be argued to immortalize the poet. Donne's fear of nothingness (in terms of lost identity) is clear in this way, because it is clearly not enough for him to simply leave the poem behind, but even within the poem he anchors himself to various concrete objects and actions. Death in metaphysical poetry is not limited exclusively to the poet's reflections on his own death but also on that of others; their absence is a kind of nothingness. If we return to Smith's conception of metaphysical poetry as concerned with "experience," one might suggest that the fear of one's own death is something that metaphysical poets approach with fear since it is an experience they cannot understand. However, in the case of Donne's holy sonnets, written after his wife's death, while he naturally mourns her death, he seems to take comfort in the idea that she is in heaven: "And her soul soon to heaven ravished[.] " For Donne here, the subject of the poem (most likely his wife) has not been reduced to nothingness because he fears for himself, but his soul, his essential being, continues to live in paradise. Marvell writes similarly about the death of others, an example of this is An Epitaph Upon – which describes a woman who remained chaste until her death, a source of disappointment or dissatisfaction for Marvell: "She summed up her life every day; modest as the morning ; like the bright noon; gentle as the evening, cool as the night; it is true: but said all so faintly; "If it were more significant, it is dead." ; Marvell presents us with the goodness of the woman's "modesty" and "kindness," but in the blunt final sentence he emphasizes that these virtues are worth nothing now that she is dead , but her virtues and worth have failed because she has not given herself to a man, or more specifically to Marvell. Marvell's epitaph, however, seems less to lament the woman's absence than to express regret and even anger for the unreciprocated feelings that Marvell felt towards him, introducing a different kind of "nothing", into frustrated and unrequited affections and love. As Herz suggests, writing about Donne's poetry, "love".