The poem, ¡°The Broken Heart¡± is one of John Donne¡¯s famous poems that shows his typical metaphorical style clearly. It has a relatively simple idea that love destroys the hearts that feel it but John Donne transforms it into an amazing images and implications. There are 4 stanzas, 8 lines in each stanza and there is a rhyme scheme of ABABCCDD. Speaker is John Donne himself and audience is a 3rd person at first and by addressing the audience clearly in 3rd stanza, audience is changed to his beloved. Structurally, the poem looks at its theme from a different angle in each of its stanzas.
             The first stanza is metaphorical and explanatory, establishing the idea of the poem by showing that to be in love for an entire hour would be like having the plague for a year or seeing a flask of gunpowder burn for an entire day. He basically criticizes ¡°love an hour¡± by stating two impossible claims. The plague and a flask of powder he used to describe an instant love are strong enough to see Donne¡¯s idea of thinking love as a violent and swift. A flask of powder gives even further analogy as it is very strong to convey how Donne thinks about love as an explosion.
             In the second stanza, John Donne uses personification and metaphors and describes love as a kind of monster that destroys human beings (¡°He swallows us, and never chaws¡±), a chain-shot that kills whole ranks (¡°as by chain-shot, whole ranks do die¡±), and a pike that devours smaller fish (¡°He is the tyrant pike, our hears the fry¡±). By stating 3 imagery metaphors to describe love and people who feel love, John Donne tries to state his situation that he is ¡°destroyed¡± by ¡°tyrant¡± love. Throughout the poem, the word ¡°heat¡± symbolizes love. In the first metaphor of describing love as a monster, John Donne clearly states the way the monster destroys people to show
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