The Flea

The Flea is John Donne's lyric built around an extravagant comparison: a speaker turns a flea that has bitten two people into an argument for intimacy. His claims grow more elaborate as the addressee resists, and her decisive action forces him to reverse his reasoning. The poem is therefore a small drama of persuasion rather than a straightforward statement of shared feeling. Its verbal ingenuity exposes how an argument can be reshaped to serve desire, leaving the speaker's confidence open to critical judgment.