Friday, February 17, 2017

The Bait by Donne

After the first few lines this poem has created a scene for me of a relationship between two people where they are moving away and having a fresh start on life. He talks of golden sands, clear brooks, silken lines and silver hooks which I believe is his idea of a sort of paradise that he wants to share with someone. Then he refers to the ocean as a live bath and talks about the fish swimming to this unknown partner he is speaking too, saying they will choose that person instead of him. This is where I'm going to interpret this as the fish having a deeper mean or even representing an emotion such as happiness. Image result for happy fish
The lines "By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both, And if myself have leave to see, 
I need not their light having thee." This to me sounds like if he would need to leave that place or was to be consumed by darkness in this case being distress, depression, or even pain, then he would not want the person he's referring too, too give up or sacrifice any happiness or "light" they have, for him. The last few stanzas threw me off completely, but I think maybe  "For thee, thou need'st no such deceit, For thou thyself art thine own bait: That fish, that is not catch'd thereby, Alas, is wiser far than I." could mean that the person attracts happiness on their own, being their own "bait". Then he goes on to say the fish is wiser than him and that could mean happiness alludes him. So in all I think it's about a man proposing a perfect place to this other person, and would be willing to do the most for this person as well if things were to ever not be as great as expected.  And yes this was interesting to try and decode because I went stanza by stanza and that made it more challenging instead of reading the poem as a whole and then trying to interpret. That's because the story and scenery literally changed completely after each stanza but I was still trying to correlate as good as possible to my initial theory.
Image result for donne

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