Sexual Desire
The sexual desire of the narrator is obvious throughout the entire poem, during the course of which he is attempting to coax his mistress into bed. He gives a shockingly detailed verbal description of how she might disrobe, removing one article of clothing at a time, inserting clever and bawdy innuendoes in almost every line. The narrator's arousal is especially notable in his description of how he knows she is an angel and not a demon:
"By this these Angels from an evil sprite, Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright." (23-24)
Freedom and Discovery
The narrator compares his mistress to "America! my new-found-land, My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d" (27-28). This metaphor creates a striking image: the narrator sees his mistress('s body?) as a vast, mesmerizing, unexplored territory just waiting to be traveled. This image, along with the narrator's "striptease" progression of poetry, gives the poem a sense of progressive discovery. Throughout the poem, additionally, the narrator attempts to make his mistress more comfortable by insisting that she is acting in perfect freedom.
Possession
Donne certainly isn't trying to overturn any gender roles in this poem: the man is in charge, and he sees his mistress, if not as an object to be possessed, then certainly as the owner of a body to be enjoyed. Accordingly, he uses some language that signals a strong sense of possession: for example, the analogy to America implies that he intends to claim her unexplored territory. In line 29, the narrator calls her "My Mine of precious stones, My Empirie," which carries a connotation of possession. Finally, in lines 30-31, he writes, "To enter in these bonds, is to be free; Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be." This seems rather self-explanatory.
