Love as Elevation

“The Ecstasy” has two principal themes that reflect the duality of the poem’s conception of love as needing to be both spiritual and physical. The more explicit of these themes is related to the spiritual side of love and can best be summed up as the elevating, purifying, refining influence of romantic love. Throughout the poem Donne describes love as a cleansing and edifying force that refines those who experience its mysteries through ecstasy. If a man has been “by love refin’d” (21) and happens to observe two other lovers in ecstasy, he “Might thence a new concoction take / And part far purer than he came” (27-28). Donne presents love as a mystical, almost alchemical potion that purifies whoever takes it. This purification is somewhat paradoxical, as it results not from a process of isolation or filtration, but rather from one of combination...