John Donne

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/John_Donne

John Donne was brought into this world on the twenty-first of January 1572 into the beautiful city of London, England.  Donne was the third of six children and his parents were John Donne and Elizabeth Heywood.  Donne's father died when he was only four, leaving his mother to care for her six children by herself, for a few months until she remarried.  From the age of eleven until he was in his early twenties, Donne was enrolled in several different schools.  At the age of twenty-five he was appointed Chief Secretary to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Thomas Egerton.  He fell in love with Egerton's niece, Anne More.  They were married and had ten children in sixteen years of marriage.  Th,e couple faced serious financial dispair, with so many mouths to feed and what little work Donne was recieving.  Anne died five days after giving birth to a still-born baby.  Surpriseingly, Donne never remarried.  He died on March thirty-first 1631, from what is believed to had been stomach cancer, and was buried in St.. Paul's Catherdral.  During his years he wrote many peoms including one of his most well known, "The Flea." 
http://www.online-literature.com/donne/

"MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
    Yet this enjoys before it woo,
    And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
    And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
    Though use make you apt to kill me,
    Let not to that self-murder added be,
    And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee."

This is a very suductive poem when you figure out what is actually being spoke of.  You have this guy trying to get laid and a woman who is unwilling.  He speaks of a flea to try to get her to give in.  Their blood was mixed inside the flea, so his reasoning is that there is no reason not to do what has already been done. Then she goes and kills the flea, spilling their blood. Now the guy comes back and says, since it was so easy to kill the flea, why can't it be just as easy to give in to me?  What I want to know is if this actually worked.  If you started talking about a flea nowadays people would be disgusted and the oppisite of being seduced would occur.  But I guess that is why this poem was wrote over four hundred years ago and not in this time period