The+Flea

"The Flea" by John Donne

Oh stay! three lives in one flea spare Where we almost, yea more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage-bed and marriage-temple is.

An example of conceit is the metaphor from John Donne's "The Flea," in which a flea that bites both the speaker and his lover becomes a conceit arguing that his lover has no reason to deny him sexually, although they are not married. The flea also serves the purpose that since their two bloods are mixed in the flea they should be mixed outside it as well. At the time the poem was written, it was thought that blood mixed during sexual intercourse.