Julia M. Walker, while noting that Sharp's work is "essential to an intelligent discussion of this extended image",[1] disagrees with his conclusions and argues that Donne is actually referring to a map showing one world.

Elizabeth was soon remarried to a wealthy doctor, ensuring that the family remained comfortable; as a result, despite being the son of an ironmonger and portraying himself in his early poetry as an outsider, Donne refused to accept that he was anything other than a gentleman.

[4] It was at Lincoln's Inn that Donne first began writing poetry, looking upon it as "a life-sign or minor irritation" rather than something which defined him.

[6] This was interlinked with the idea of courtly love, in which the goal of a romance is not simply passion, but a more significant moral perfection.

[9] This refers to the Seven Sleepers, the Catholic legend of seven Christian children, persecuted for their faith during the reign of the Roman emperor Decius, who fled to the shelter of a cave where they slept for more than 200 years.

Donne, one of six or seven children and a baptised Catholic during a time of strong anti-Catholic sentiment from both the populace and the government, would certainly have been familiar with the story.

Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;[9] This passage shows the speaker communicating to his lover that they have proceeded from their former "childish" pleasures to this moment, where their souls have finally awakened; something "miraculous" has happened, because the speaker feels the sort of love that Paul the Apostle claimed would only be encountered in heaven.

[14] Donne's emphasis on the importance of spiritual love can be seen from the biblical allusions; Achsah Guibbory states that the tone and wording of the poem is an intentional reference to Paul the Apostle's description of divine, agapic love; "At moments like these...eros merges with agape.

[18] Julia M. Walker, writing in The Review of English Studies, notes that Sharp's work is "essential to an intelligent discussion of this extended image", but disagrees with his conclusions.

[1] Instead, Walker suggests that Donne was basing his work on William Cunningham's Cosmographical Glasse, a 1559 book which showed a single-leafed cordiform map.