Readings and interpretations of seven poems by the 17th-century metaphysical poet John Donne, namely "Elegy: To his Mistress Going to Bed"; "The Good Morrow"; "The Sun Rising"; "Valediction to his Book"; "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"; "The Canonization"; and "The Relic".

Readings are from Colin Burrow’s 2006 Penguin anthology Metaphysical Poetry. Supplemental glosses are from A. J. Smith’s erudite and wonderful Complete English Poems (Penguin, 1971); and from Donald R. Dickson’s John Donne’s Poetry (Norton, 2007).