by John Donne
That why he cannot laugh and speak his mind
He wonders. Much with all, most he doth stay
With Adam’s fifth daughter, Siphatecia;
Doth gaze on her, and where she passeth, pass,
Gathers her fruits and tumbles on the grass,
[460] And wisest of that kind, the first true lover was.
XLVII.
He was the first that more desired to have
One than another; first that ere did crave
Love by mute signs and had no power to speak;
First that could make love faces, or could do
The vaulters’ somersaults, or used to woo
With hoiting gambols his own bones to break
To make his mistress merry, or to wreak
Her anger on himself. Sins against kind
They easily do, that can let feed their mind
[470] With outward beauty, beauty they in boys and beasts do find.
XLVIII.
By this misled, too low things men have proved,
And too high; beasts and angels have been loved.
This ape, though else through vain, in this was wise;
He reached at things too high, but open way
There was, and he knew not she would say nay.
His toys prevail not, likelier means he tries;
He gazeth on her face with tear-shot eyes,
And up lifts subtly with his russet paw
Her kidskin apron without fear or awe
[480] Of nature; nature hath no jail, though she hath law.
XLIX.
First she was silly’and knew not what he meant.
That virtue, by his touches, chaste and spent,
Succeeds an itchy warmth that melts her quite.
She knew not first, now cares not what he doth,
And willing half and more, more than half loth,
She neither pulls nor pushes, but outright
Now cries, and now repents. When Tethelemite,
Her brother, entered, and a great stone threw
After the ape, who thus prevented, flew.
[490] This house thus battered down, the soul possessed a new.
L.
And whether by this change she lose or win,
She comes out next where the’ape would have gone in.
Adam and Eve had mingled bloods, and now,
Like chimiques’ equal fires, her temperate womb
Had stewed and formed it; and part did become
A spongy liver, that did richly allow,
Like a free conduit on a high hill’s brow,
Life-keeping moisture unto every part;
Part hardened itself to a thicker heart,
[500] Whose busy furnaces life’s spirits do impart.
LI.
Another part became the well of sense,
The tender, well-armed feeling brain from whence
Those sinewy strings, which do our bodies tie,
Are ravelled out, and fast there by one end
Did this soul limbs, these limbs a soul attend,
And now they joined. Keeping some quality
Of every past shape, she knew treachery,
Rapine, deceit, and lust, and ills enow
To be a woman. Themech she is now,
[510] Sister and wife to Cain, Cain that first did plow.
LII.
Who ere thou beest that read’st this sullen writ,
Which just so much courts thee, as thou dost it,
Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me
Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,
Or most of those arts whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Cain’s race invented be,
And blest Seth vexed us with astronomy.
There’s nothing simply good nor ill alone;
Of every quality comparison,
[520] The only measure is, and judge, opinion.
Verse Letters
The Storm
To Mr Christopher Brooke
Thou which art I (’tis nothing to be so),
Thou which art still thyself, by these shalt know
Part of our passage; and a hand or eye
By Hilliard drawn is worth a history
By a worse painter made; and (without pride)
When by thy judgement they are dignified,
My lines are such. ’Tis the pre-eminence
Of friendship only to’impute excellence.
England, to whom we’owe what we be and have,
[10] Sad that her sons did seek a foreign grave
(For Fate’s or Fortune’s drifts none can soothsay;
Honour and misery have one face and way.)
From out her pregnant entrails sighed a wind
Which at th’air’s middle marble room did find
Such strong resistance that itself it threw
Downward again; and so when it did view
How in the port our fleet dear time did leese,
Withering like prisoners which lie but for fees,
Mildly it kissed our sails, and fresh and sweet,
[20] As to a stomach starved, whose insides meet,
Meat comes, it came; and swelled our sails, when we
So joyed, as Sara’her swelling joyed to see.
But ’twas but so kind as our countrymen,
Which bring friends one day’s way, and leave them then.
Then like two mighty kings, which dwelling far
Asunder, meet against a third to war,
The south and west winds joined, and as they blew,
Waves like a rolling trench before them threw.
Sooner than you read this line, did the gale,
[30] Like shot not feared till felt, our sails assail;
And what at first was called a gust, the same
Hath now a storm’s, anon a tempest’s name.
Jonah, I pity thee, and curse those men
Who, when the storm raged most, did wake thee then;
Sleep is pain’s easiest salve, and doth fulfil
All offices of death, except to kill.
But when I waked, I saw that I saw not.
I and the sun which should teach me’had forgot
East, west, day, night, and I could only say,
[40] If’the world had lasted, now it had been day.
Thousands our noises were, yet we ’amongst all
Could none by his right name, but thunder call;
Lightning was all our light, and it rained more
Than if the sun had drunk the sea before;
Some coffined in their cabins lie,’equally
Grieved that they are not dead, and yet must die.
And as sin-burdened souls from graves will creep
At the last day, some forth their cabins peep,
And tremblingly’ask what news, and do hear so,
[50] As jealous husbands, what they would not know.
Some sitting on the hatches would seem there,
With hideous gazing, to fear away fear.
Then note they the ship’s sicknesses, the mast
Shaked with this ague, and the hold and waist
With a salt dropsy clogged, and all our tacklings
Snapping, like too-high-stretched treble strings.
And from our tattered sails, rags drop down so,
As from one hanged in chains a year ago.
Even our ordnance, placed for our defence,
[60] Strive to break loose, and ’scape away from thence.
Pumping hath tired our men, and what’s the gain?
Seas into seas thrown, we suck in again;
Hearing hath deaf’d our sailors; and if they
Knew how to hear, there’s none knows what to say.
Compared to these storms, death is but a qualm,
Hell somewhat lightsome, the’Bermudas calm.
Darkness, light’s elder brother, his birthright
Claims o’er this world, and to heaven hat
h chased light.
All things are one, and that one none can be,
[70] Since all forms uniform deformity
Doth cover, so that we, except God say
Another Fiat, shall have no more day.
So violent, yet long, these furies be,
That though thine absence starve me,’I wish not thee.
The Calm
Our storm is past, and that storm’s tyrannous rage,
A stupid calm, but nothing it doth ’suage.
The fable is inverted, and far more
A block afflicts now than a stork before.
Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves, or us;
In calms heaven laughs to see us languish thus.
As steady’as I can wish that my thoughts were,
Smooth as thy mistress’ glass or what shines there,
The sea is now. And as the isles which we
[10] Seek when we can move, our ships rooted be.
As water did in storms, now pitch runs out,
As lead when a fired church becomes one spout.
And all our beauty and our trim decays,
Like courts removing or like ended plays.
The fighting place now seamen’s rags supply;
And all the tackling is a frippery.
No use of lanterns; and in one place lay
Feathers and dust, today and yesterday.
Earth’s hollownesses, which the world’s lungs are,
[20] Have no more wind than the’upper vault of air.
We can nor lost friends nor sought foes recover,
But meteor-like, save that we move not, hover.
Only the calenture together draws
Dear friends which meet dead in great fishes’ jaws;
And on the hatches, as on altars, lies
Each one, his own priest and own sacrifice.
Who live, that miracle do multiply
Where walkers in hot ovens do not die.
If in despite of these we swim, that hath
[30] No more refreshing than our brimstone bath;
But from the sea into the ship we turn,
Like parboiled wretches on the coals to burn.
Like Bajazet encaged, the shepherds scoff,
Or like slack-sinewed Samson, his hair off,
Languish our ships. Now as a myriad
Of ants durst th’Emperor’s loved snake invade,
The crawling galleys, sea-jails, finny chips,
Might brave our pinnaces, now bed-rid ships.
Whether a rotten state and hope of gain,
[40] Or, to disuse me from the queasy pain
Of being beloved and loving, or the thirst
Of honour or fair death, out pushed me first,
I lose my end: for here as well as I
A desperate may live and a coward die.
Stag, dog, and all which from or towards flies,
Is paid with life, or pray, or doing dies.
Fate grudges us all, and doth subtly lay
A scourge, ’gainst which we all forget to pray;
He that at sea prays for more wind, as well
[50] Under the poles may beg cold, heat in hell.
What are we then? How little more, alas,
Is man now than before he was? He was
Nothing; for us, we are for nothing fit;
Chance or ourselves still disproportion it.
We have no power, no will, no sense; I lie,
I should not then thus feel this misery.
To Mr Henry Wotton
Here’s no more news than virtue;’I may as well
Tell you Calis or St Michael’s tale for news, as tell
That vice doth here habitually dwell.
Yet, as to’get stomachs, we walk up and down,
And toil, to sweeten rest, so may God frown,
If but to loathe both, I haunt court or town.
For here no one is from the’extremity
Of vice by any other reason free,
But that the next to’him still is worse than he.
[10] In this world’s warfare they whom rugged Fate
(God’s commissary) doth so throughly hate
As in’the court’s squadron to marshal their state,
If they stand armed with seely honesty,
With wishing prayers and neat integrity,
Like Indians ’gainst Spanish hosts they be.
Suspicious boldness to this place belongs,
And to’have as many ears as all have tongues,
Tender to know, tough to acknowledge wrongs.
Believe me, sir, in my youth’s giddiest days,
[20] When to be like the court was a play’s praise,
Plays were not so like courts, as courts’are like plays.
Then let us at these mimic antics jest,
Whose deepest projects and egregious gests
Are but dull morals of a game at chess.
But now ’tis incongruity to smile;
Therefore I end, and bid farewell a while,
At Court, though From Court were the better style.
To Mr Henry Wotton
Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls,
For thus friends absent speak. This ease controls
The tediousness of my life; but for these
I could ideate nothing which could please,
But I should wither in one day, and pass
To’a bottle’of hay, that am a lock of grass.
Life is a voyage, and in our life’s ways
Countries, courts, towns are rocks or remoras;
They break or stop all ships, yet our state’s such
[10] That, though than pitch they stain worse, we must touch.
If in the furnace of the even line,
Or under th’adverse icy poles thou pine,
Thou know’st two temperate regions girded in
Dwell there, but O, what refuge canst thou win,
Parched in the court and in the country frozen?
Shall cities built of both extremes be chosen?
Can dung or garlic be’a perfume? Or can
A scorpion or torpedo cure a man?
Cities are worst of all three; of all three
[20] (O knotty riddle)’each is worst equally.
Cities are sepulchres; they who dwell there
Are carcasses, as if no such there were,
And courts are theatres where some men play
Princes, some slaves, all to one end and of one clay.
The country is a desert where no good,
Gained as habits, not born, is understood.
There men become beasts and prone to more evils;
In cities, blocks, and in a lewd court, devils.
As in the first Chaos confusedly
[30] Each element’s qualities were in th’other three,
So pride, lust, covetise, being several
To these three places, yet all are in all,
And mingled thus, their issue’incestuous.
Falsehood is denizened. Virtue’is barbarous.
Let no man say there, Virtue’s flinty wall
Shall lock vice in me, I’ll do none, but know’all.
Men are sponges which to pour out, receive;
Who know false play, rather then lose, deceive.
For in best understandings, sin began;
[40] Angels sinned first, then devils, and then man.
Only perchance beasts sin not; wretched we
Are beasts in all but white integrity.
I think if men, which in these places live,
Durst look for themselves and themselves retrieve,
They would like strangers greet themselves, seeing then
Utopian youth grown old Italian.
Be thou thine own home, and in thyself dwell;
Inn anywhere, continuance maketh hell.
And seeing the snail, which everywhere doth roam
[50] Carrying his own house still, still is at h
ome,
Follow (for he is easy paced) this snail,
Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.
And in the world’s sea do not like cork sleep
Upon the water’s face, nor in the deep
Sink like a lead without a line, but as
Fishes glide, leaving no print where they pass
Nor making sound, so closely thy course go;
Let men dispute whether thou breathe or no.
Only’in this one thing, be no Galenist. To make
[60] Court’s hot ambitions wholesome, do not take
A dram of country’s dullness; do not add
Correctives, but as chemics, purge the bad.
But, sir, I’advise not you; I rather do
Say o’er those lessons which I learned of you,
Whom, free from German schisms, and lightness
Of France, and fair Italy’s faithlessness,
Having from these sucked all they had of worth,
And brought home that faith which you carried forth,
I throughly love. But if myself I’have won
To know my rules, I have, and you have,
[70] DONNE.
H. W. in Hiber. Belligeranti
Went you to conquer? and have so much lost
Yourself that what in you was best and most
Respective friendship should so quickly die?
In public gain my share’is not such that I
Would lose your love for Ireland; better cheap
I pardon death (who though he do not reap,
Yet gleans he many of our friends away)
Than that your waking mind should be a prey
To lethargies. Let shots, and bogs, and skeins
[10] With bodies deal, as fate bids or restrains;
Ere sicknesses attack, young death is best,
Who pays before his death doth ’scape arrest.
Let not your soul (at first with graces filled,
And since and through crooked limbecks, stilled
In many schools and courts which quicken it)
Itself unto the Irish negligence submit.
I ask not laboured letters which should wear
Long papers out, nor letters which should fear
Dishonest carriage or a seer’s art,
[20] Nor such as from the brain come, but the heart.
To Sir H. W. at His Going Ambassador to Venice
After those reverend papers, whose soul is
Our good and great King’s loved hand and feared name,
By which to you he derives much of his,
And (how he may) makes you almost the same,
A taper of his torch, a copy writ
