This article is about the beginning of the XYII century, a period of extraordinary flowering of English culture, primarily literature and poetry. In the first decades of this century, Shakespeare created his best plays; his young contemporaries one after another came to theatrical activity; the philosophical, moral, socio-political prose of those years is very interesting and has its own characteristics, and the lyrics (poetry) of the era are very rich and diverse. At the origin of English lyrics in the XYII century, two major figures of the masters of the art of speech - John Donne and Ben Jonson - are representatives who contrasted their poetry with the poetic style of the Elizabethan era. But there are also poets whose work, despite all the changes, has retained its unique flavor of novelty and the foundation of glory in the reign of poets for centuries. Among them in the history of English poetry, undoubtedly, is John Donne.