Read the stanza from John Donne's "The Flea."

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is;

It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.

Thou know'st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two;

And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

How does the flea function in this poem?

A)as an allusion to the relationship between the speaker and the women to whom he addresses the poem
B)as imagery describing the relationship between the speaker and the women to whom he addresses the poem
C)as a personification of the relationship between the speaker and the women to whom he addresses the poem
D)as a metaphor for the relationship between the speaker and the woman to whom he addresses the poem

The first six strains of “The Flea” establish the poem's conceit. The speaker starts the poem in frustration: his mistress has denied him. She refuses to have intercourse earlier than marriage. He makes a strange, surprising, and albeit quite a crude argument to strive to conquer her opposition.

The Flea” is a poem via way of means of the English poet John Donne, maximum possibly written withinside the 1590s. In “The Flea,” the speaker attempts to seduce his mistress with a surprising (and doubtlessly gross) prolonged metaphor: each he and she or he had been bitten via way of means of the identical flea, which means their separate blood now mingles withinside the flea's body.