Consider the view that “spiritual or otherwise, Donne’s poems are consistently grounded in the physical world of his time.” [40]

In ‘Hymn to God, My God in my Sickness’, the poet reflects on past experience to prepare for a metaphysical future beyond the grave. Whilst the speaker’s mediations on his identity through the extended metaphor of a ‘map’ might suggest a concern with the wider world, the ‘spare and surprisingly colourless’ description of the stanza supports John Carey’s assertion that Donne’s fascination with maps lay not in ‘foreign parts’ but in their potential to enrich his own personal understanding through conceit. Similarly, whilst the fourth stanza’s semantic field of geography (‘Jerusalem’, ‘Pacific Sea’, ‘Eastern’) might serve to ground the poem in the physical world, the form of list evokes a sense of continuity, suggesting that life is merely a progression towards a spiritual future- a concept summarised by the phrase ‘per fret febris’ (through the raging fever) used to depict life as a series of trials. This untranslated Latin in addition to the poem’s Biblical theme re-contextualises Donne outside of 17th century British culture, foreshadowing ultimate detachment from his physical surroundings in the form of death. Izaac Walton dates the poem at eight days before Donne’s death in 1631, and the first stanza’s future tense mirrors the poet’s own anticipation of a metaphysical future with his creator, as does the imperative ‘Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me’ in which plosives connect the speaker with the character’s spiritual rank. Indeed, the personal pronoun ‘my’ in the title is closeted through reference to God, and whilst this might align the poet’s concern with his future, the tone of desperation conveyed by the repeated name implies that he cannot escape the fear surrounding the physical suffering of death. Indeed, diction such as ‘sweat’ and ‘blood’ act as reminders of the poet’s physical human nature and the final line describing the Lord’s capacity to ‘throw down’ positions absolute focus on physical suffering. Overall, whilst ‘Hymn to God’ does not prioritise the theme of the physical world, the poet is certainly concerned with human physicality in relation to a spiritual afterlife. 
The catalogue of references to the material world in ‘The Canonisation’, from the ‘King’s real’ to the ‘merchant’s ships’ works to establish through contrast the spiritual superiority of the poet and his lover. In the third stanza, a semantic field of flight (‘fly’, ‘dove’, ‘eagle’) symbolises the lovers’ elevation into a higher plane of existence above the earthly characters of the ‘soldiers’ and ‘litigious men’- which reflects Florentine Dante’s concept of love as a spiritual force removed from earthly reality, and thus centres Donne’s verse in a literary sphere far before his time. The dual pronouns in the phrase ‘us, we two being one’ further amplifies the poet’s rejection of the material world in preference of his lover’s comforts and indeed, the decision to frame each stanza with the noun ‘love’ paired with the poetic form of love elegy reinforces romance's ability to overcome physical limitations, establishing the Metaphysical poets’ partiality towards intense emotion. Conversely, the poem’s iambic pentameter, through echoing the rhythm of the human heart, provides a contrary interpretation that the poet and his lover are linked through mutual physical desire thus cannot completely disconnect from humanity, a concept mirrored in the final rhyming couplet’s implications that the pair’s romance will ever be subject to public spectacle: ‘Countries, towns, courts, beg from above/ A pattern of your love’. By listing global co-ordinates, and to do so emphatically in the final stanza, the poet grounds the pair’s love in a public sphere inaccessible to the ‘canonised’ lovers. Through assertion that the ‘whole world’s soul contracts’ in ‘your eyes’, the narrator further reinforces the link between his lover and the external world, and the emphasis placed on the noun ‘world’ through prior linear placement to personal pronoun ‘your’ warns of the futility of the lover’s desire for a divine future beyond the grave. Thus, despite description of a metaphysical afterlife, the relationship between the characters and the physical world is clearly at the heart of this poem.