Donne declares love a quick draw, a tyrant and a powerful master that can turn even the strongest hearts to glass. In the first stanza, the speaker compares love to the plague and to a powder blast using metaphor and hyperbole. He states: “Who will believe me, if I swear/ That I have had the plague a year?/ Who would not laugh at me, if I should say/ I saw a flash of powder burn a day?” He extends the metaphor to love saying that no one could possibly be in love for an hour, because love can only be felt quickly (he states it would only take 6 minutes [line 4]) before “devours” the lover and turns into heartache. The over exaggeration shows how he feels cynical about the love that he first felt for his lover. In the second stanza, the
