Symbol Analysis
With a title like "The Broken Heart" (check out "What's Up With the Title?"), you know that you're in for some major breakage. This poem doesn't disappoint. All kinds of stuff is getting destroyed in this poem, like human health (line 6), gunpowder (line 8), and, of course, the old ticker.
Apparently, hearts should all come with a "Fragile" warning, since by the end of the poem the speaker is looking down at a big pile of heart shards.
Donne gets major mileage out of the old cliché of a heart metaphorically breaking, but don't judge him too harshly. Remember that he was writing this hundreds of years before cheesy songs like this one drove the phrase "broken heart" into the ground.
- Line 24: The speaker's heart, thanks to a handy-dandy simile, breaks ("shiver[s]") like glass.
- Lines 27-28: The speaker finds a silver lining in having his heart shattered: he still has all the pieces left. Sure, they may be in a huge pile of debris, but at least he's got something, right? Right?
- Lines 29-32: What does a broken heart mean for the speaker emotionally? Well, he can kiss love good-bye—forever. He may be able to want things and even "adore" them now, but thanks to his broken heart he'll never be able to love again—sad.