John Donne vs. The Elizabethan lyricist John Donne made, like all the other great poets of the Renaissance era, an invaluable contribution to English literature. However, it is the uniqueness of this contribution that sets it apart from others. This statement seems somewhat ironic when analyzing the context of his life and the nature of his writing, since Donne is clearly the rebel in English poetry. He is the only poet who deliberately turned his back on the mores and trends of the time to offer the reader something so different that he will forever be remembered as a radical and unconventional genius. This is most likely how he would have wanted to be remembered. John Donne lived in a time when opera was at its peak. Poets wrote well-rounded, almost musical poems on topics ranging from all kinds of love to an enchantment with nature. Donne couldn't help but rebel against this excess of fluidity and melody. John Donne's style is in such stark contrast to the accepted Elizabethan lyric style that it becomes difficult to accept the fact that his works date from the same era. To highlight this statement, we need to compare a typical Elizabethan lyric poem with one of Donne's works. In Damelus' Song to His Diaphenia, by Henry Constable, the typical features of Elizabethan poetry are abundant. The poem is written in iambic pentameter with a solid, almost musical rhythm throughout the poem. The musical quality is enhanced by the prominent AABCCB rhyme scheme in each of the three equal-length verses. The language is specially adapted to the poem to fit the unyielding rhythm and rhyme scheme. All these mentioned characteristics speak of a set of concrete rules and guidelines that the poet had followed while writing this text. The tone set is that of joy and pleasure in love and life, another characteristic of Elizabethan lyrics. The anonymous speaker has an optimistic feeling and communicates it through the text. The repetition of "how much I love you!" lines three, nine, and fifteen summarize the message of this poem: The speaker uses basic images of nature in a simple way to state how much he loves his “Diaphenia.” It is terribly predictable and very easy to interpret and it is these characteristics that give Elizabethan texts their immediate appeal..