John Donne - A Jet Ring Sent - Revision Notes in A Level and IB English Literature

In ‘A Jet Ring Sent,’ the speaker addresses an inanimate object, a jet ring that his former lover has returned to him.
In the first stanza, the speaker apostrophizes the ring with reference to what it is not: “Thou art not so black, as my heart,/Nor half as brittle, as her heart, thou art”.
The ring is a device to frame criticism of his lover.
The poet varies line length and meter, writing the first line in iambic tetrameter and the second and fourth lines in iambic pentameter.
The third line in each stanza extends to fourteen syllables.
In the fourteen syllable line in the first stanza – shaped as a rhetorical question addressed to the ring – the speaker challenges the ring, asking if it…

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