Donne was born a Catholic, educated at Oxford and Cambridge, toured the continent, and in 1592 was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn for the study of law. In 1596 he volunteered to accompany Essex on the expedition to Cadiz and to the Azores. Returning to London, he gave himself to the pursuit of the pleasures that the city could afford. In 1601 he secretly married Anne More, the daughter of his employer and a descendent of Sir Thomas More; for this he was dismissed from his post, and he spent the next years in great poverty. He had slowly grown away from the Roman Catholic Church; and in 1615, partly because of the urging of his friends, he was ordained into the Church of England. In 1621 he was made dean of St. Paul’s; his death prevented his advancement to a bishopric.
Donne published only a few of his poems in his own lifetime, and regretted the appearance even of these. His poems did, however, circulate very widely in manuscript. They were collected and published two years after his death, in 1633.
Donne’s verse has been tremendously admired in the twentieth century, and few modern poets have altogether escaped his influence. He began writing at the height of the Petrarchan movement, and his verse demonstrates the method, if not the manner, of that movement. That is to say, the detail of his poetry is typically decorative, hyperbolic, metaphoric, and excessive; but his style is rough, harsh, nervous, and conversational in the manner of the earlier Native poets. It is the collision of the Petrarchan method and the Native manner, joined by Donne’s peculiar temperament and genius, that gives the poems their unique force, that makes for their greatest triumphs and their greatest failures.
TEXT:
Donne’s Poetical Works, in 2 vols., edited by H. J. C. Grierson (1912).
THE GOOD-MORROW
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did till we loved? Were we not weaned till then,
But sucked on country pleasures childishly?
Or snorted we in the seven sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world: each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest.
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp North, without declining West?
Whatever dies was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights
Till age snow white hairs on thee;
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
Nowhere
Lives a woman true, and fair.
If thou find’st one, let me know;
Such a pilgrimage were sweet—
Yet do not; I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet.
Though she were true when you met her,
And last till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False ere I come, to two or three.
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus
Through windows and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy, pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys and sour prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices.
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thy beams so reverend and strong,
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late tell me
Whether both the Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me;
Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear: All here in one bed lay.
She’s all states, and all princes I;
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.
For God’s sake, hold your tongue and let me love!
Or chide my palsy or my gout,
My five gray hairs or ruined fortune flout;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honor or his Grace,
Or the King’s real, or his stampëd face
Contemplate, what you will, approve—
So you will let me love.
Alas, alas, who’s injured by my love?
What merchant’s ships have my sighs drowned?
Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.
Call us what you will, we are made such by love:
Call her one, me another fly;
We’re tapers, too, and at our own cost die;
And we in us find the eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two, being one, are it.
So to one neutral thing both sexes fit;
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.
We can die by it, if not live by love;
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms
(As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs),
And by these hymns all shall approve
Us canonized for love,
And thus invoke us: “You whom reverend love
Made one another’s hermitage,
You to whom love was peace that now is rage,
Who did the whole world’s soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes
(So made such mirrors and such spies
That they did all to you epitomize),
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love!”
SONG
Sweetest love, I do not go
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
Must die at last, ’tis best
To use myself in jest
Thus by feigned deaths to die.
Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here today;
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way.
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!
But come bad chance,
And we join to it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o’er us to advance.
When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st not wind,
But sigh’st my soul away;
When thou weep’st, unkindly kind,
My life’s blood doth decay.
It cannot be
That thou lov’st me as thou say’st,
If in thine my life thou waste.
Thou art the best of me.
Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfill;
But think that we
Are but turned aside to sleep.
They who one another keep
Alive, ne’er parted be.
AIR AND ANGELS
Twice or thrice had I loved thee
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be.
Still, when to where thou wert I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtile than the parent is,
Love must not be, but take a body too;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.
Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiratión,
I saw I had love’s pinnace overfraught;
Every thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much; some fitter must be sought.
For nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme and scattering bright can love inhere.
Then, as an angel, face and wings
Of air not pure as it, yet pure, doth wear,
So thy love may be my love’s sphere.
Just such disparity
As is twixt air and angels’ purity,
Twixt women’s love and men’s will ever be.
BREAK OF DAY
’Tis true, ’tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because ’tis light?
Did we lie down because ’twas night?
Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither
Should in despite of light keep us together.
Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say:
That being well, I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honor so
That I would not from him that had them go.
Must business thee from hence remove?
Oh, that’s the worst disease of love;
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business and makes love doth do
Such wrong as when a married man doth woo.
A VALEDICTION: OF MY NAME IN THE WINDOW
I
My name engraved herein
Doth contribute my firmness to this glass,
Which, ever since that charm, hath been
As hard as that which graved it was;
Thine eye will give it price enough to mock
The diamonds of either rock.
II
’Tis much that glass should be
As all-confessing and through-shine as I;
’Tis more, that it shows thee to thee
And clear reflects thee to thine eye.
But all such rules, love’s magic can undo;
Here you see me, and I am you.
III
As no one point nor dash,
Which are but accessaries to this name,
The showers and tempests can outwash,
So shall all times find me the same;
You this entireness better may fulfil,
Who have the pattern with you still.
Or if too hard and deep
This learning be for a scratched name to teach,
It as a given death’s head keep
Lovers’ mortality to preach,
Or think this ragged bony name to be
My ruinous anatomy.
V
Then, as all my souls be
Emparadised in you (in whom alone
I understand and grow and see),
The rafters of my body, bone
Being still with you, the muscle, sinew, and vein
Which tile this house will come again.
VI
Till my return, repair
And recompact my scattered body so.
As all the virtuous powers which are
Fixed in the stars are said to flow
Into such characters as gravëd be
When these stars have supremacy,
VII
So, since this name was cut
When love and grief their exaltation had,
No door ’gainst this name’s influence shut.
As much more loving as more sad
’Twill make thee; and thou shouldst, till I return,
Since I die daily, daily mourn.
When thy inconsiderate hand
Flings ope this casement with my trembling name
To look on one whose wit or land
New battery to thy heart may frame,
Then think this name alive, and that thou thus
In it offendst my Genius.
IX
And when thy melted maid,
Corrupted by thy lover’s gold and page,
His letter at thy pillow hath laid,
Disputed it, and tamed thy rage,
And thou beginst to thaw towards him, for this,
May my name step in and hide his.
X
And if this treason go
To an overt act, and that thou write again,
In superscribing, this name flow
Into thy fancy from the pane.
So, in forgetting thou remembrest right,
And unaware to me shall write.
XI
But glass and lines must be
No means our firm substantial love to keep;
Near death inflicts this lethargy,
And this I murmur in my sleep:
Impute this idle talk to that I go,
For dying men talk often so.
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;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more:
When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore;
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.
On a round ball
A workman that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
And quickly make that which was nothing, all;
So doth each tear
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mixed with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolvëd so.
O more than moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,
Weep me not dead in thine arms, but forbear
To teach the sea what it may do too soon.
Let not the wind
Example find
To do me more harm than it purposeth;
Since thou and I sigh one another’s breath,
Whoe’er sighs most is cruelest, and hastes the other’s death.
A NOCTURNAL UPON ST. LUCY’S DAY, BEING THE SHORTEST DAY
’Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world’s whole sap is sunk;
The general balm the hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interred; yet all these seem to laugh
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.
Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world—that is, at the next spring—
For I am every dead thing
In whom Love wrought new alchemy;
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations and lean emptiness.
He ruined me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.
All others from all things draw all that’s good:
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
I, by love’s limbeck, am the grave
Of all that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drowned the whole world—us two. Oft did we grow
To be two Chaoses when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls and made us carcasses.
But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest
And love; all, all some properties invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light and body must be here.
But I am none, nor will my Sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all;
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival,
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil and her eve, since this
Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight is.
THE APPARITION
When by thy scorn, O murderess, I am dead,
And that thou think’st thee free
From all solicitatión from me,
Then shall my ghost come to thy bed,
And thee, feigned vestal, in worse arms shall see;
Then thy sick taper will begin to wink,
And he whose thou art then, being tired before,
Will, if thou stir or pinch to wake him, think
Thou call’st for more,
And in false sleep will from thee shrink,
And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected, thou
Bathed in a cold, quicksilver sweat wilt lie
A verier ghost than I.
What I will say, I will not tell thee now,
Lest that preserve thee; and since my love is spent,
I’d rather thou shouldst painfully repent
Than by my threatenings rest still innocent.
A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now; and some say, No;
So let us melt and make no noise,
No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move;
’Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of the earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers’ love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined
That ourselves know not what it is,
Interassurëd of the mind,
Care less eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls, therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansión,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth if the other do.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
THE ECSTASY
Where, like a pillow on a bed,
A pregnant bank swelled up to rest
The violet’s reclining head,
Sat we two, one another’s best.
Our hands were firmly cementéd
With a fast balm which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;
So to intergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagatión.
As twixt two equal armies Fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls, which to advance their state
Were gone out, hung twixt her and me.
And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day the same our postures were
And we said nothing all the day.
If any (so by love refined
That he soul’s language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind)
Within convenient distance stood,
He (though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same)
Might thence a new concoction take,
And part far purer than he came.
This Ecstasy doth unperplex,
We said, and tell us what we love;
We see by this it was not sex,
We see we saw not what did move;
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love these mixed souls doth mix again
And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the color, and the size
(All which before was poor and scant)
Redoubles still and multiplies.
When love with one another so
Interinanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are composed and made,
For the atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But O, alas, so long, so far
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They’re ours, though they’re not we; we are
The intelligences, they the sphere.
We owe them thanks because they thus
Did us to us at first convey,
Yielded their forces, sense, to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.
On man heaven’s influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air;
So soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.
Spirits as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot which makes us man,
So must pure lovers’ souls descend
To affections and to faculties
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.
To our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love revealed may look;
Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us; he shall see
Small change when we’re to bodies gone.
LOVE’S DEITY
I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost
Who died before the god of love was born.
I cannot think that he who then loved most
Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn.
But since this god produced a destiny,
And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be,
I must love her that loves not me.
Sure, they which made him god meant not so much,
Nor he in his young godhead practiced it.
But when an even flame two hearts did touch,
His office was indulgently to fit
Actives to passives. Correspondency
Only his subject was. It cannot be
Love, till I love her that loves me.
But every modern god will now extend
His vast prerogative as far as Jove.
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend,
All is the purlieu of the god of love.
O were we wakened by this tyranny
To ungod this child again, it could not be
I should love her who loves not me.
Rebel and atheist too, why murmur I
As though I felt the worst that love could do?
Love might make me leave loving, or might try
A deeper plague, to make her love me too,
Which, since she loves before, I’m loath to see.
Falsehood is worse than hate, and that must be
If she whom I love should love me.
THE FUNERAL
Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm
Nor question much
That subtle wreath of hair which crowns my arm;
The mystery, the sign, you must not touch,
For ’tis my outward soul,
Viceroy to that, which then to heaven being gone,
Will leave this to control
And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolutión.
For if the sinewy thread my brain lets fall
Through every part
Can tie those parts and make me one of all,
These hairs, which upward grew, and strength and art
Have from a better brain,
Can better do it; except she meant that I
By this should know my pain,
As prisoners then are manacled, when they’re condemned to die.
Whate’er she meant by it, bury it with me,
For since I am
Love’s martyr, it might breed idolatry
If into others’ hands these relics came.
As ’twas humility
To afford to it all that a soul can do,
So ’tis some bravery
That since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.
THE RELIC
When my grave is broke up again
Some second guest to entertain
(For graves have learned that womanhead
To be to more than one a bed),
And he that digs it spies
A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,
Will he not let us alone,
And think that there a loving couple lies,
Who thought that this device might be some way
To make their souls at the last busy day
Meet at this grave, and make a little stay?
If this fall in a time or land
Where mis-devotion doth command,
Then he that digs us up will bring
Us to the bishop and the king
To make us relics; then
Thou shalt be a Mary Magdalen, and I
A something else thereby.
All women shall adore us, and some men;
And since at such time miracles are sought,
I would have that age by this paper taught
What miracles we harmless lovers wrought.
First, we loved well and faithfully,
Yet knew not what we loved, nor why;
Difference of sex no more we knew
Than our guardian angels do;
Coming and going, we
Perchance might kiss, but not between those meals;
Our hands ne’er touched the seals
Which nature, injured by late law, sets free.
These miracles we did; but now, alas,
All measure and all language I should pass,
Should I tell what a miracle she was.
A LECTURE UPON THE SHADOW
Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, Love, in love’s philosophy.
These three hours that we have spent
Walking here, two shadows went
Along with us, which we ourselves produced;
But, now the sun is just above our head,
We do those shadows tread,
And to brave clearness all things are reduced.
So whilst our infant loves did grow,
Disguises did, and shadows, flow
From us and our cares; but now ’tis not so.
That love hath not attained the highest degree
Which is still diligent lest others see.
Except our loves at this noon stay,
We shall new shadows make the other way.
As the first were made to blind
Others, these which come behind
Will work upon ourselves and blind our eyes.
If our loves faint and westwardly decline,
To me thou falsely thine,
And I to thee mine actions shall disguise.
The morning shadows wear away,
But these grow longer all the day.
But O, love’s day is short if love decay!
Love is a growing, or full constant light,
And his first minute after noon is night.
ELEGY V: HIS PICTURE
Here, take my picture; though I bid farewell,
Thine in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell.
’Tis like me now, but I dead, ’twill be more,
When we are shadows both, than ’twas before.
When weather-beaten I come back, my hand
Perhaps with rude oars torn, or sunbeams tanned,
My face and breast of haircloth, and my head
With care’s rash sudden storms being o’erspread,
My body a sack of bones, broken within,
And powder’s blue stains scattered on my skin;
If rival fools tax thee to have loved a man
So foul and coarse as, O, I may seem then,
This shall say what I was, and thou shalt say:
“Do his hurts reach me? doth my worth decay?
Or do they reach his judging mind that he
Should now love less what he did love to see?
That which in him was fair and delicate
Was but the milk which in love’s childish state
Did nurse it, who now is grown strong enough
To feed on that which to disusëd tastes seems tough.”
ELEGY XIX: GOING TO BED
Come, Madam, come! All rest my powers defy;
Until I labor, I in labor lie.
The foe ofttimes, having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven’s zones glittering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate, which you wear
That the eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bedtime.
Off with that happy busk, which I envý,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals
As when from flowery meads the hill’s shadow steals.
Off with that wiry coronet, and show
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow.
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this Love’s hallowed temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes heaven’s angels used to be
Received by men; thou, angel, bringst with thee
A heaven like Mahomet’s paradise. And though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know
By this these angels from an evil sprite:
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
License my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my empery,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee!
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are as Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views
That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made
For laymen, are all women thus arrayed;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we,
Whom their imputed grace will dignify,
Must see revealed. Then, since that I may know,
As liberally as to a midwife, show
Thyself; cast all, yea, this white linen hence;
Here is no penance due to innocence.
To teach thee, I am naked first. Why, then,
What needst thou have more covering than a man?
HOLY SONNETS:
1.
Thou hast made me; and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
I dare not move my dim eyes any way;
Despair behind, and death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me
That not one hour myself I can sustain.
Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.
5.
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite,
But black sin hath betrayed to endless night
My world’s both parts, and, O, both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drowned no more.
But O, it must be burnt! Alas, the fire
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore
And made it fouler. Let their flames retire,
And burn me, O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.
7.
At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God and never taste death’s woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For if above all these my sins abound,
’Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent, for that’s as good
As if thou’dst sealed my pardon with thy blood.
9.
If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damned, alas, why should I be?
Why should intent or reason, born in me,
Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?
And mercy being easy and glorious
To God, in his stern wrath why threatens he?
But who am I that dare dispute with thee,
O God? Oh! of thine only worthy blood
And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,
And drown in it my sins’ black memory.
That thou remember them, some claim as debt;
I think it mercy if thou wilt forget.
10.
Death, be not proud, though some have callëd thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then, from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke. Why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep passed, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more. Death, thou shalt die.
14.
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but Oh, to no end!
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you and would be lovëd fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste except you ravish me.
GOOD FRIDAY, 1613. RIDING WESTWARD
Let man’s soul be a sphere, and then in this
The intelligence that moves, devotion is;
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motions, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey;
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirled by it.
Hence is it that I am carried towards the West
This day, when my soul’s form bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget;
But that Christ on this cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees God’s face, that is self-life, must die;
What a death were it then to see God die!
It made his own lieutenant, Nature, shrink;
It made his footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?
Could I behold that endless height which is
Zenith to us, and our antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our souls, if not of his,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for his apparel, ragg’d and torn?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was God’s partner here, and furnished thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransomed us?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They’re present yet unto my memory.
For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards me,
O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O think me worth thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rusts and my deformity,
Restore thine Image so much, by thy grace,
That thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face.
A HYMN TO CHRIST, AT THE AUTHOR’S LAST GOING INTO GERMANY
In what torn ship soever I embark,
That ship shall be my emblem of thy Ark;
What sea soever swallow me, that flood
Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood.
Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise
Thy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes,
Which, though they turn away sometimes,
They never will despise.
I sacrifice this island unto thee,
And all whom I loved there, and who loved me;
When I have put our seas twixt them and me,
Put thou thy sea betwixt my sins and thee.
As the tree’s sap doth seek the root below
In winter, in my winter now I go
Where none but thee, the eternal root
Of true love, I may know.
Nor thou nor thy religion dost control
The amorousness of an harmonious soul,
But thou wouldst have that love thyself. As thou
Art jealous, Lord, so am I jealous now;
Thou lov’st not, till from loving more, thou free
My soul. Whoever gives, takes liberty.
O, if thou car’st not whom I love,
Alas, thou lov’st not me.
Seal then this bill of my divorce to all
On whom those fainter beams of love did fall;
Marry those loves which in youth scattered be
On Fame, Wit, Hopes (false mistresses), to thee.
Churches are best for prayer that have least light;
To see God only, I go out of sight;
And to ’scape stormy days, I choose
An everlasting night.
HYMN TO GOD, MY GOD, IN MY SICKNESS
Since I am coming to that holy room
Where with thy choir of saints for evermore
I shall be made thy music, as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.
Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my Southwest discovery
Per fretum febris, by these straits to die,
I joy that in these straits I see my West.
For though their currents yield return to none,
What shall my West hurt me? As West and East
In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,
So death doth touch the resurrectión.
Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are
The Eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
Anyan and Magellán and Gibraltár,
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them,
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham or Shem.
We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ’s Cross and Adam’s tree, stood in one place.
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.
So, in his purple wrapped, receive me, Lord;
By these his thorns give me his other crown;
And as to others’ souls I preached thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:
Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down.
HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER
I
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin by which I’ve won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
III
I have a sin of fear, that when I’ve spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself that at my death thy son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And having done that, Thou hast done;
I fear no more.
seven sleepers: seven Christian youths of Ephesus, walled in a cave by the tyrant Decius, where they slept for more than 200 years.
real: literally, a small silver coin; also, a pun on “royal.”
limbeck: alembic, i.e., distillation.
allay: alloy.
Adamant: a legendary rock of impregnable hardness, with magnetic powers.
Per fretum febris: through the raging of fever.
Anyan: Hakluyt in the Principal Navigations speaks of the “strait of Anian,” conjectured to lie between America and Asia, allowing sea passage to Japan and the riches of the East; in 1728 this strait was “discovered” by Vitus Bering and afterwards named the Bering Strait.