The poem "The Broken Heart", by John Donne, describes the lasting effects that love has on the heart and what it can do to a person's soul. Donne fills the verses with similes and metaphors that compare love with the uncaring yet destructive items he chooses. Through imagery, he reveals his mournful, passionate attitude toward the nature of love. The poem is about how Donne's heart was broken and therefore aptly titled. Each stanza is a progressive step in the downfall of his heart.
             In the beginning stanza loveis described as having a rapid onset, followed by an imminent demise. It sets the tone of a lamenting lover who has been crushed by the warrior of love. He begins the poem abruptly stating that any man who claims he has been in love for an hour is insane not because it can "decay" but because in an hour love can "devour" ten men. He presents two analogies that are used as comparisons to love. He states that any man who had heard him say he had a plague for a year would disbelief him because a plague kills quickly; and any man who heard him claim he saw a flask of gunpowder burn for an entire day would laugh, because the flask would explode immediately. Like the plague and the gunpowder flask, love works in a violent swift manner. This stanza sets the tone, and theme for this poem. Love is nothing but a thief that takes your heart and run with it.
             Love is later personified in stanza two, being describes as a monster that destroys human beings, trifling with hearts and swallowing men whole (he "never chaws"). Love is also personified as a "tyrant pike, our hearts the fry", devouring men as a pike devours smaller weaker fish. This stanza also compares the emotion of love to other feeling humans have. Unlike love, other feelings and "other griefs", do not demand the entire heart, they "allow a part". "Other grief's come to us"...