What are the major stylistic and thematic differences between John Donne and John Dryden? 500 to 1000 words

Donne is, and has been since Samuel Johnson's evaluation of him in the 1770's, considered one of the "Metaphysical" poets. Like his contemporaries and successors Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, and Abraham Cowley (and many others), Donne wrote a type of intellectual, subtle, and "difficult" verse, the most obvious feature of which is the use of "conceits." These are extended comparisons between unlike things in which Donne uses all his poetic power to show that the things being compared really are similar, though no one would have thought so to start out with. In "A Valediction: of Weeping" he begins

Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth,
For thus they be,
Pregnant of thee.

Here we have two striking metaphors probably no one but Donne would have thought of. A lover's tears, reflecting the image of his woman, are first likened to coins (and because they are coins, they have monetary value!), and then are likened to pregnant women. It could be incredible, but Donne presents it so lucidly and realistically that it makes perfect sense. This technique is used everywhere in his work. I would divide his poetic work into three categories: love poetry, satire, and devotional or religious verse. He frequently is concerned with sexuality and uses sexual imagery even in the religious poems, such as Holy Sonnet 14, "Batter my Heart, Three-Personed God." There is a tension everywhere in his work between sacred and profane and despite his piety, an impudent flouting of authority. He also has been considered by some critics such as C.S. Lewis to have had a rather derogating attitude to women, even by the standards of the early 1600's.
John Dryden was born in 1631, the year of Donne's death. By the time of Dryden's early adulthood England had gone through enormous turmoil with the Civil War, the Commonwealth, and the Restoration. Poetry changed enormously as well. Two minor poets of the mid 1600's, John Denham and Edmund Waller, have often been given credit for spearheading the use of the heroic couplet, rhymed iambic pentameter in which each couplet generally expresses a single thought or sometimes a tension between a duality within one thought. Dryden acknowledged the influence of these men and became the first great poet of the English neo-classical or "Augustan" age. Dryden's ideals were those of elegance of language and metrical form, proportion, balance, and a generally restrained manner of expressing emotion. All of these qualities are quite different from the hallmarks of Donne's poetry. Donne's use of conceits, by Dryden's time, was considered eccentric, and Donne's language and meter were considered lacking in smoothness or even "harsh," so that Dryden's successor Alexander Pope re-wrote two of Donne's Satires in order to "smooth out" the "rough numbers." In addition the similarly "rough" explicitness of Donne's love poetry was considered unrefined by Dryden's time.
Regarding content and theme, Dryden and Donne have more in common. Both men wrote satires concerning religion: Dryden's "The Hind and the Panther" is a satirical allegory In which animals represent the Roman Catholic and the Anglican Churches. But the age of the fervent devotional poetry of Donne and others was over by the late 1600's. England had been exhausted by religious warfare. After the Restoration, partly encouraged by the rather hedonistic Charles II, a somewhat more secular orientation began, though Dryden and other writers cointinued to express their Christian beliefs in a less personal way. Usually this was done in the form of satirical works such as the one mentioned above, and another of Dryden's, "Absalom and Achitophel." Increasing emphasis was placed on literary and political disputes in Dryden's work. His satiric poem "Mac Flecknoe" is an attack on his contemporary, the poet Thomas Shadwell. And, as a part of his (and others') finding inspiration and models in the poetry of antiquity, especially that of Emperor Augustus's period--hence the term Augustan--Dryden translated Virgil's Aeneid into English. This was then a model for Pope's similar translations of Homer several decades later. Both Dryden and Pope established the heroic-couplet form as a standard, making their era's poetry instantly recognisable to succeeding generations.
In summary, Donne's poetry deals with sex, religion, and satire in a highly intellectual form with complex metaphorical devices we call conceits. He uses a variety of metrical forms and styles. Fifty to 75 years later Dryden uses a more restrained, emotionally controlled, and formally uniform (the heroic couplet) style, focusing increasingly on satire and a self-conscious referencing of the poets of antiquity, especially those of the period of Augustus (27 BC- AD 14), such as Virgil and Horace.