Metaphysical Poetry is highly intellectualized poetry marked by bold and ingenious conceits, incongruous imagery, complexity and subtlety of thought, frequent use of paradox, and often by deliberate harshness or rigidity of expression.
In other words, Metaphysical poetry is marked by the use of elaborate figurative languages, original conceits, paradoxes, and philosophical topics.
Examples of Metaphysical Poems by famous poets, writers, speakers
Example #1: The Collar by George Herbert
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Me thought I heard one calling, Child!
And I replied My Lord.
The Collar is one of Herbert’s best-known poems. In this poem, the poet speaks about the “collar” that a Christian priest is recognized by. It’s interesting to note that Herbert was a priest himself. He depicts the collar as something that restricts one’s freedom in an intolerable way.
Example #2: The retreat by Henry Vaughan
Happy those early days! when I
Shined in my angel infancy.
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestial thought;
In ‘The Retreat’ the poet describes the loss of innocence as one grows older. This process takes one farther away from heaven and into the corrupted state of adulthood. As an adult, one is unable to access the divine world as easily.
Example #3: To his Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
This poem is second only to the ‘The Flea’ as commonly cited examples of metaphysical poetry go.
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day;
In this piece, the speaker, who may be Marvell, is talking to a woman he loves. He spends the poem trying to convince her that they need to go to bed together. Life, he declares, is much too short to waste it not enjoying oneself.
Example #4 A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne
“if they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun
The above poem appreciates the beauty of spiritual love. The poet has painted a vivid picture of his eternal bond that keeps him attached to his beloved even when they are apart. This is a very good example of metaphysical text in literature as Donne has used metaphysical conceits to show the comparison between the spiritual aspect of a person and a physical thing in the world. He has compared his spiritual and holy love with the feet of a geometrical compass.