Metaphysical poets headed by John Donne wrote their eccentric poems that are quite beyond common readers.

The main themes of the metaphysical poets are love, death and religion.

Their style was characterized by wit and metaphysical conceits（玄想比喻）— far-fetched or unusual similes or metaphors, such as in Andrew Marvell’s comparison of the soul with a drop of dew.

歌（去，抓住颗流星）          约翰·多恩 John Donne（1572-1631）

Go and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me where all past years are,

Or who cleft the Devil’s foot,

Teach me to hear mermaid’s singing,

Or to keep off envy’s stinging

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind,

To His Coy Mistress                  Andrew Marvell 

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love's day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side

 Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

 Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the Flood;

 And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

 Vaster than empires, and more slow.

      An hundred years should go to praise

   Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

 Two hundred to adore each breast;

      But thirty thousand to the rest;

   An age at least to every part,

  And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state;

Nor would I love at lower rate.

 

But at my back I always hear

   Time's winged chariot hurrying near;

              And yonder all before us lie

              Deserts of vast eternity.

 

 Thy beauty shall no more be found.

  Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

   My echoing song. 

Then worms shall try

              That long preserved virginity;

 And your quaint honour turn to dust;

              And into ashes all my lust.

    The grave's a fine and private place,

    But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now, therefore, while the youthful hue

 Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

   At every pore with instant fires.

  Now let us sport us while we may;

              And now, like amorous birds of prey,

    Rather at once our time devour

  Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

  Let us roll all our strength and all

  Our sweetness up into one ball;

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

     Through the iron gates of life.

 Thus, though we cannot make our sun

              Stand still, yet we will make him run.