The Apparition Summary & Analysis
by John Donne

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In John Donne's "The Apparition," a heartbroken, furious, rejected speaker tells his one-time beloved exactly how he's going to get his revenge on her. When he dies of heartbreak—as he's certain he will—his ghost will haunt her, making her so miserable she'll be sorry she ever rejected him. Readers might smell an irony here: the speaker, not his beloved, seems like the haunted one, so consumed is he by jealous fury. Like most of Donne's poetry, "The Apparition" was first published posthumously in the 1633 collection Poems.

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