Love is the intransigent thorn in literature’s side, an issue that makes, breaks, cripples, and glorifies all writers and would-be poets. Of the plethora of perspectives and opinions to be had and discussed, love is an uniting chasm, its inspired products ranging from trite to tear-jerking. Phrases such as “broken heart” have presumably come into such common usage because of such poems as John Donne’s “The Broken Heart.” But unlike the flowery tributes that persist today, “The Broken Heart” uses varied, negative imagery to convey his fatalistic but still melodramatic attitude towards love.

Using the image of a burning powder flask, Donne shows that love is a disease, a madness, a consumption: “[…] that it can ten in less space devour.” The pain love brings the speaker is like a sickness: “Who will believe me, if I swear / That I have had the plague a year?” Not only is physical pain present, but the feeling of not being understood or sympathized with – emotional pain – is expressed: “Who would not laugh at me, if I should say / I saw a flask of powder burn a day?”

The second stanza classifies Love as a predator by using the image of a pike that swallows hearts like fish; a heart is trivial to Love in comparison with other feelings. According to the speaker, Love gulps us down many at a time: “He swallows us, and never chews: / By him, as by chain’d shot, whole ranks do die, / He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.” Other feelings and emotions are comparatively generous and come to us, but Love draws us in and traps us: “All other griefs allow a part / To other griefs, and ask themselves but some; / They come to us, but us Love draws […]”

The strongest image that carries the poem’s title is that of a broken mirror, which can now only reflect a flawed image, as the speaker’s heart can never truly love again. The idea begins slowly through the third stanza, almost an anecdote of the meeting between the speaker and the object of the speaker’s affections: “I brought a heart into the room / But from the room, I carried none with me […]” However, following lines indicate the feelings were not returned: “If it had gone to thee, I know / Mine would have taught thine heart to show / More pity […]” Yet, the speaker muses, “nothing can to nothing fall” — he/she still has his/her heart, it is merely in pieces: “Therefore I think my breast hath all / These pieces still, though they be not unite […]” Like a broken mirror, his/her heart can still feel the same – still reflect – but can no longer love: “But after such love, can love no more.”

The feelings and emotions we sanctify with the term love have always had a place in literature, from the Bible’s “Song of Songs” or “Song of Solomon” to today’s most puerile pop tune. Even bitter diatribe and sordid pieces are common, enough to satisfy cynics and the disillusioned. Language and style imply, however, that “The Broken Heart” was among the few first widely-known poems to hold such negative imagery as disease, predators, or a broken mirror. The idea that love devours and destroys could not have been new, but still a sense of injured innocence pervades the third stanza – giving the overwhelming sense that love could be otherwise, despite the evidence presented of love’s capricious, greedy nature.