To His Mistress Going to Bed Summary
John Donne

To His Mistress Going to Bed Overview

"To His Mistress Going to Bed" is the nineteenth elegy by metaphysical poet John Donne. Because of its sexually explicit content, it could not be published in his official posthumous collection, Poems, but was instead printed in the anthology "The Harmony of the Muses." It was not printed until 1654, several decades after the poet's death. While making use of many of the poetic tropes that Donne uses in his other, mostly religious, poetry, it is also a directly erotic text. It is influenced by Ovidian and Petrarchan sonnets, but is written in a form of Donne's own devising.