Read it through once

The metaphysical tendency did not die with Donne. It has recurred at intervals in English poetry. In Dryden’s time it reappears in a different form; and again in Pope it takes on an epigrammatic cleanness. The later eighteenth century owed to the metaphysical movement a certain emphasis upon the balance of intellect and sensibility. Yet the genuine metaphysical poem is rare; it requires a temperament which can combine passion with thought, and a style which can express that combination without sacrificing spontaneity to pedantry.