by John Donne
Into ten lesser strings; these fingers were.
And as a slumberer stretching on his bed,
This way he this, and that way scattered
His other leg, which feet with toes upbear.
Grew on his middle parts, the first day, hair,
To show that in love’s business he should still
A dealer be, and be used well or ill.
[150] His apples kindle, his leaves, force of conception, kill.
XVI.
A mouth, but dumb, he hath; blind eyes, deaf ears,
And to his shoulders dangle subtle hairs.
A young colossus there he stands upright,
And, as that ground by him were conquered,
A leafy garland wears he on his head
Enchased with little fruits, so red and bright
That for them you would call your love’s lips white.
So, of a lone, unhaunted place possessed,
Did this soul’s second inn, built by the guest,
[160] This living buried man, this quiet mandrake, rest.
XVII.
No lustful woman came this plant to grieve,
But ’twas because there was none yet but Eve;
And she (with other purpose) killed it quite.
Her sin had now brought in infirmities,
And so her cradled child, the moist, red eyes
Had never shut nor slept since it saw light.
Poppy she knew, she knew the mandrake’s might,
And tore up both, and so cooled her child’s blood.
Unvirtuous weeds might long unvexed have stood,
[170] But he’s short-lived that with his death can do most good.
XVIII.
To an unfettered soul’s quick nimble haste
Are falling stars and hearts’ thoughts but slow-paced.
Thinner than burnt air flies this soul, and she
Whom four new coming and four parting suns
Had found and left the mandrake’s tenant, runs
Thoughtless of change, when her firm destiny
Confined and enjailed her, that seemed so free,
Into a small blue shell, the which a poor
Warm bird o’erspread, and sat still evermore,
[180] Till her enclosed child kicked and picked itself a door.
XIX.
Out crept a sparrow, this soul’s moving inn,
On whose raw arms stiff feathers now begin,
As children’s teeth through gums, to break with pain;
His flesh is jelly yet, and his bones threads,
All a new downy mantle overspreads;
A mouth he opes, which would as much contain
As his late house, and the first hour speaks plain
And chirps aloud for meat. Meat fit for men
His father steals for him, and so feeds then
[190] One that within a month, will beat him from his hen.
XX.
In this world’s youth wise nature did make haste;
Things ripened sooner and did longer last.
Already this hot cock in bush and tree,
In field and tent, o’erflutters his next hen.
He asks her not who did so taste, nor when,
Nor if his sister or his niece she be;
Nor doth she pule for his inconstancy
If in her sight he change, nor doth refuse
The next that calls, both liberty do use;
[200] Where store is of both kinds, both kinds may freely choose.
XXI.
Men, till they took laws which made freedom less,
Their daughters and their sisters did ingress;
Till now unlawful, therefore, ill ’twas not.
So jolly that it can move, this soul is;
The body so free of his kindnesses
That self preserving it hath now forgot,
And slack’neth so the soul’s and body’s knot,
Which temperance straightens. Freely’on his she-friends
He blood and spirit, pith and marrow spends.
[210] Ill steward of himself, himself in three years ends.
XXII.
Else might he long have lived. Man did not know
Of gummy blood, which doth in holly grow,
How to make bird-lime, nor how to deceive
With feigned calls, hid nets, or enwrapping snare
The free inhabitants of the pliant air.
Man to beget, and woman to conceive
Asked not of roots, nor of cock-sparrows leave.
Yet chooseth he, though none of these he fears,
Pleasantly three, then straightened twenty years
[220] To live, and to increase his race himself outwears.
XXIII.
This cole, with overblowing quenched and dead,
The soul from her too active organs fled
To’a brook. A female fish’s sandy roe
With the male’s jelly newly leavened was,
For they had intertouched as they did pass,
And one of those small bodies, fitted so,
This soul informed and abled it to row
Itself with finny oars, which she did fit.
Her scales seemed yet of parchment, and as yet
[230] Perchance a fish, but by no name you could call it.
XXIV.
When goodly, like a ship in her full trim,
A swan so white that you may unto him
Compare all whiteness, but himself to none,
Glided along, and as he glided watched,
And with his arched neck this poor fish catched.
It moved with state, as if to look upon
Low things it scorned; and yet before that one
Could think he sought it, he had swallowed clear
This, and much such, and unblamed, devoured there
[240] All, but who too swift, too great, or well armed were.
XXV.
Now swam a prison in a prison put,
And now this soul in double walls was shut,
Till melted with the swan’s digestive fire,
She left her house the fish, and vapoured forth.
Fate, not affording bodies of more worth
For her as yet, bids her again retire
T’another fish, to any new desire
Made a new prey; for he that can to none
Resistance make, nor complaint, sure is gone.
[250] Weakness invites, but silence feasts oppression.
XXVI.
Pace with her native stream this fish doth keep,
And journeys with her towards the glassy deep,
But oft retarded, once with a hidden net,
Though with great windows; for when need first taught
These tricks to catch food, then they were not wrought
As now, with curious greediness to let
None ’scape, but few and fit for use to get,
As in this trap a ravenous pike was ta’en,
Who, though himself distressed, would fain have slain
[260] This wretch; so hardly are ill habits left again.
XXVII.
Here by her smallness she two deaths o’erpast;
Once innocence ’scaped, and left the’oppressor fast.
The net through-swum, she keeps the liquid path,
And whether she leap up sometimes to breathe
And suck in air, or find it underneath,
Or working parts like mills or limbecks hath
To make the water thin and air-like, faith
Cares not; but safe the place she’s come unto,
Where fresh with salt waves meet, and what to do
[269] She knows not, but between both makes a board or two.
XXVIII.
So far from hiding her guests water is,
That she shows them in bigger quantities
Than they are. Thus doubtful of her way,
For game and not for hunger a sea pie
Spied through this traitorous spectacle from high,
The seely fish where it disputing lay,
And t’end her doubts and her, bears her away.
Exalted she’is, but to the exalter’s good,
As are by great ones men which lowly stood.
[280] It’s raised to be the raiser’s instrument and food.
XXIX.
Is any kind subject to rape like fish?
Ill unto man, they neither do nor wish:
Fishers they kill not, nor with noise awake.
They do not hunt, nor strive to make a prey
Of beasts, nor their young sons to bear away.
Fowls they pursue not, nor do undertake
To spoil the nests industrious birds do make.
Yet, them all these unkind kinds feed upon;
To kill them is an occupation,
[290] And laws make fasts and lents for their destruction.
XXX.
A sudden, stiff land wind in that self hour
To seaward forced this bird, that did devour
The fish; he cares not, for with ease he flies,
Fat gluttony’s best orator. At last
So long he hath flown, and hath flown so fast,
That leagues o’er-past at sea, now tired he lies,
And with his prey, that till then languished, dies.
The souls, no longer foes, two ways did err;
The fish I follow, and keep no calendar
[300] Of the other; he lives yet in some great officer.
XXXI.
Into an embrion fish our soul is thrown,
And in due time thrown out again, and grown
To such vastness, as if unmanacled
From Greece, Morea were, and that by some
Earthquake unrooted, loose Morea swum,
Or seas from Afric’s body had severed
And torn the hopeful promontory’s head;
This fish would seem these, and when all hopes fail,
A great ship overset or without sail
[310] Hulling might (when this was a whelp) be like this whale.
XXXII.
At every stroke his brazen fins do take,
More circles in the broken sea they make
Than cannons’ voices when the air they tear.
His ribs are pillars, and his high arched roof
Of bark, that blunts best steel, is thunder-proof.
Swim in him swallowed dolphins without fear,
And feel no sides, as if his vast womb were
Some inland sea, and ever as he went,
He spouted rivers up, as if he meant
[320] To join our seas, with seas above the firmament.
XXXIII.
He hunts not fish, but as an officer,
Stays in his court at his own net, and there
All suitors of all sorts themselves enthral;
So on his back lies this whale wantoning,
And in his gulf-like throat sucks everything
That passeth near. Fish chaseth fish, and all,
Flyer and follower, in this whirlpool fall.
O might not states of more equality
Consist? And is it of necessity
[330] That thousand guiltless smalls, to make one great, must die?
XXXIV.
Now drinks he up seas, and he eats up flocks;
He jostles islands, and he shakes firm rocks.
Now in a roomful house this soul doth float,
And like a prince she sends her faculties
To all her limbs, distant as provinces.
The sun hath twenty times both crab and goat
Parched, since first launched forth this living boat.
’Tis greatest now, and to destruction
Nearest; there’s no pause at perfection.
[340] Greatness a period hath, but hath no station.
XXXV.
Two little fishes whom he never harmed
Nor fed on their kind, two not throughly armed
With hope that they could kill him, nor could do
Good to themselves by’his death (they did not eat
His flesh, nor suck those oils which thence outstreat)
Conspired against him, and it might undo
The plot of all, that the plotters were two,
But that they fishes were and could not speak.
How shall a tyrant, wise strong projects break
[350] If wretches can on them the common anger wreak?
XXXVI.
The flail-finned thresher and steel-beaked swordfish
Only attempt to do what all do wish.
The thresher backs him, and to beat begins.
The sluggard whale yields to oppression,
And t’hide himself from shame and danger, down
Begins to sink. The swordfish upward spins
And gores him with his beak. His staff-like fins,
So well the one, his sword the other plies,
That now a scoff and prey, this tyrant dies,
[360] And (his own dole) feeds with himself all companies.
XXXVII.
Who will revenge his death? Or who will call
Those to account, that thought and wrought his fall?
The heirs of slain kings, we see are often so
Transported with the joy of what they get,
That they revenge and obsequies forget;
Nor will against such men the people go,
Because he’is now dead, to whom they should show
Love in that act. Some kings by vice being grown
So needy’of subjects’ love, that of their own
[370] They think they lose, if love be to the dead prince shown.
XXXVIII.
This soul, now free from prison and passion,
Hath yet a little indignation
That so small hammers should so soon down beat
So great a castle. And having for her house
Got the straight cloister of a wretched mouse
(As basest men that have not what to eat,
Nor enjoy ought, do far more hate the great
Than they who good, reposed estates possess),
This soul, late taught that great things might by less
[380] Be slain, to gallant mischief doth herself address.
XXXIX.
Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant,
The only harmless great thing, the giant
Of beasts, who thought no more had gone to make one wise
But to be just and thankful, loth to offend
(Yet Nature hath given him no knees to bend)
Himself he up-props, on himself relies,
And foe to none, suspects no enemies,
Still sleeping stood; vexed not his fantasy
Black dreams; like an unbent bow, carelessly
[390] His sinewy proboscis did remissly lie.
XL.
In which, as in a gallery, this mouse
Walked and surveyed the rooms of this vast house,
And to the brain, the soul’s bedchamber, went
And gnawed the life cords there. Like a whole town
Clean undermined, the slain beast tumbled down;
With him the murderer dies, whom envy sent
To kill, not ’scape; for only he that meant
To die did ever kill a man of better room,
And thus he made his foe, his prey and tomb.
[400] Who cares not to turn back may any whither come.
XLI.
Next, housed this soul a wolf’s yet unborn whelp
Till the best midwife, Nature, gave it help
To issue. It could kill as soon as go.
Abel, as white and mild as his sheep were
(Who in that trade, of church and kingdoms there
Was the first type), was still infested so
With this wolf, that it bred his loss and woe;
And yet his bitch, his sentinel attends
The flo
ck so near, so well warns and defends,
[410] That the wolf (hopeless else) to corrupt her intends.
XLII.
He took a course which since, successfully,
Great men have often taken to espy
The counsels, or to break the plots of foes.
To Abel’s tent he stealeth in the dark,
On whose skirts the bitch slept; ere she could bark,
Attached her with straight grips, yet he called those
Embracements of love. To love’s work he goes,
Where deeds move more than words; nor doth she show,
Nor much resist, nor needs he straighten so
[420] His prey, for, were she loose, she would nor bark nor go.
XLIII.
He hath engaged her; his, she wholly bides,
Who, not her own, none others’ secrets hides.
If to the flock he come, and Abel there,
She feigns hoarse barkings, but she biteth not;
Her faith is quite, but not her love forgot.
At last a trap, of which some everywhere
Abel had placed, ends all his loss and fear
By the wolf’s death; and now just time it was
That a quick soul should give life to that mass
[430] Of blood in Abel’s bitch, and thither this did pass.
XLIV.
Some have their wives, their sisters some begot,
But in the lives of emperors you shall not
Read of a lust the which may equal this.
This wolf begot himself and finished
What he began alive, when he was dead.
Son to himself, and father too, he is
A riddling lust for which schoolmen would miss
A proper name. The whelp of both these lay
In Abel’s tent, and with soft Moaba,
[440] His sister, being young, it used to sport and play.
XLV.
He soon for her too harsh and churlish grew,
And Abel (the dam dead) would use this new
For the field. Being of two kinds thus made,
He, as his dam, from sheep drove wolves away,
And as his sire, he made them his own prey.
Five years he lived and cozened with his trade;
Then hopeless that his faults were hid, betrayed
Himself by flight, and by all followed,
From dogs, a wolf, from wolves a dog, he fled,
[450] And like a spy, to both sides false, he perished.
XLVI.
It quickened next a toyful ape, and so
Gamesome it was that it might freely go
From tent to tent, and with the children play.
His organs now so like theirs he doth find,
