Student Revision Guide
This Revision Guide offers 7 clear sections: Overview; Form and Structure; Close Analysis; Key Themes; Context; Critical Perspectives; Study Questions and Extension Activities.
The Close Analysis section follows three ten-line stanzas: love’s immunity to time while kings, favourites and the sun itself grow a year older; the grave, which divides bodies but cannot divide souls, and the fear that in heaven the lovers will be only as blessed as all the rest; and the return to earth, where they are kings and none can do treason to them except one of the two. Form and Structure examines the ten-line stanza, the couplet rhyme and the lengthened closing line. Context covers the court of kings and favourites, Christian belief about the soul after death, and Donne’s marriage to Ann More. Critical Perspectives asks whether the closing reckoning of the second year strengthens the claim to permanence or quietly undercuts it.

Quotation Quilt
A selection of key quotations from ‘The Anniversary’, arranged to support the themes and concepts an essay on this poem is most likely to need.
Quotations are grouped by kings, favourites and the sun; only our love hath no decay; no tomorrow and no yesterday; two graves and souls where nothing dwells but love; we are kings; treason except one of us two; and the second of our reign.