Themes in Twicknam Garden

Spurned lover

The main theme of Twicknam Garden appears to be unfaithfulness and destructiveness . The theme of the spurned lover was a typical one in much sixteenth and early seventeenth century love poetry. In the convention, love is also destructive of all happiness. Donne's typical dramatic stance is always ‘all or nothing', so clearly this links with A Nocturnall upon St. Lucies Day as being a poem of ‘nothing', of utter desolation.

• Donne has to be the epitome or criterion of true, faithful love
• his mistress, the epitome of the hard-hearted mistress, which, paradoxically, is her consistency.

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