By englishedition 
We have discussed here twelve most important short questions and answers from the poem A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day composed by John Donne.
1. What is ‘nocturnal’?
Ans. ‘Nocturnal’, a Latin word, is the adjective of night. Here nocturnal is a poem not about night but what is happening at the cold and dark night of ‘St. Lucy’s Day’.
2. Whiter, as to the bed’s – feet’ – Explain the image of ‘bed’s feet’.
Ans. This is an image of a dying man whose life has been shrunk into a mere insignificant bundle. Due to long suffering from a chronic disease usually the body of a patient gets shrunk and sometimes it so reduces that it looks like a small bundle put under the feet of the death bed. So also the death of the
beloved has transformed the body of the lover in A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day into a mere coil of nothingness.
3. … the lesser sun / At this time to the Goat is run’ – What is indicated by the underlined phrase?
Ans. In winter the sun moves to the tropic of Capricorn whose sign is the Goat, the tenth sign of the Zodiac. Further Goat is usually considered as the most lustful of animals, so that with the return of the spring the passion of other lovers would come back.
4. What is ‘Vigil’?
Ans. Vigil is the Christian ritual of fasting and prayer observed at the night of some religious festival. The optimist lover poet in A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day thinks that his dead beloved is waiting in the darkness of the grave for resurrection. And hence this holy night to him is the Vigil, that is, the period when he should observe the ritual of prayer and fasting because meet the beloved whose death had plunged him into an very soon he will extraordinary nothingness.
A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day Questions and Answers
5. ‘Of the first nothing, the Elixir grown’ – Give the meaning of ‘Elixir? With what science is this word connected?
Ans. ‘Elixir’ was a kind of precious metal by the touch of which base metals were supposed to be transformed into gold by the medieval alchemists. The word is connected with the medieval alchemical science.
6. Which day is marked as St. Lucy’s Day? Is it really the shortest day?
Ans. According to the old calendars, viz, the Gregorian and the Julian calendars, 13the December is the shortest day of the year. This, however, is not the real shortest day of the year. The real shortest
day, as per the modern calendars is 23rd December.
7. Give the meaning of the verse: “The general balm the hydroptic earth hath drunk’
Ans. Since the word ‘hydroptic’ means excessively thirsty, the simple rendering of the expression is that the excessively thirsty earth hath drunk the life blood of nature.
8. Define the ‘first nothing’?
Ans. The ‘first nothing’ as referred to in Donne’s A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day, is the feelings of loss, desolation and vacuity in the lover’s heart of darkness just after the physical death of his fiancée. This psychic state however is an experience of all earthly men at the death of their nearest and dearest ones.
9. Give two examples of metaphysical conceit from Donne’s A Nocturnal?
Ans. The most significant metaphysical conceit used in A Nocturnal is the alchemical reaction, which has exploited to enumerate the spiritual metamorphosis the lover undergoes after the death of his lady. The second one is the image of the epitaph, which express the relative of the lover’s psychic gloom.
10. For his art did express’ – Whose art is referred to here? What is the special art?
Ans. The ‘art’ of spiritual love is referred to in this line from Donne’s A Nocturnal. The creative power of pure love according to Donne, is a strange one. Unlike all other creators, say, the philosophers, poets, love can create a cosmos even out of complete chaos, ‘A quintessence even from nothingness’. This divine creativity of love is prominent by the word ‘art’.
11. He ruin’d me and I am re-begot’ – Explain the paradox.
Ans. This paradoxical statement very aptly explains the spiritual resurrection of the lover. After the death of his sweetheart the lover’s heart broke. He was, as it were, dead. But soon he undergoes spiritual trans formation with his love working like an atalyst. Actually, the lover dies on the physical plane only to be resurrected in the spiritual. This, however, is a dying in life.
12…. Who am their epitaph’ – Explain the conceit of ‘epitaph.’
Ans. After drawing a very desolate picture of nature in the first stanza, the lover states that his heart of darken is the epitaph on the tomb of dead nature. An epitaph is the read point to the identity of the man engraved. Similarly, so concrete is the gloom in the heart of the lover that it serves as the epitaph on the tombstone of dead nature.
Important links of articles on literature-THE NIGHT TRAIN AT DEOLI ANALYSIS