John Donne

by John Donne

  From his original, and a fair beam

  Of the same warm and dazzling sun, though it

  Must in another sphere his virtue stream,

  After those learned papers which your hand

  [10] Hath stored with notes of use and pleasures too,

  From which rich treasury you may command

  Fit matter whether you will write or do,

  After those loving papers, where friends send

  With glad grief, to your seaward steps, farewell,

  Which thicken on you now, as prayers ascend

  To heaven in troops at’a good man’s passing bell,

  Admit this honest paper, and allow

  It such an audience as you yourself would ask;

  What you must say at Venice this means now,

  [20] And hath for nature, what you have for task:

  To swear much love, not to be changed before

  Honour alone will to your fortune fit;

  Nor shall I then honour your fortune more

  Than I have done your honour wanting it.

  But ’tis an easier load (though both oppress)

  To want, than govern, greatness, for we are

  In that our own and only business,

  In this, we must for others’ vices care;

  ’Tis therefore well your spirits now are placed

  [30] In their last furnace, in activity,

  Which fits them (schools and courts and wars o’erpast)

  To touch and test in any best degree.

  For me (if there be such a thing as I)

  Fortune (if there be such a thing as she)

  Spies that I bear so well her tyranny

  That she thinks nothing else so fit for me;

  But though she part us, to hear my oft prayers

  For your increase, God is as near me here;

  And to send you what I shall beg, His stairs

  [40] In length and ease are alike everywhere.

  To Mr Rowland Woodward

  Like one who’in her third widowhood doth profess

  Herself a nun, tied to retiredness,

  So’affects my muse now a chaste fallowness,

  Since she to few, yet to too many,’hath shown

  How love-song weeds and satiric thorns are grown

  Where seeds of better arts were early sown.

  Though to use and love poetry, to me,

  Betrothed to no’one art, be no’adultery,

  Omissions of good, ill as ill deeds be.

  [10] For though to us it seem’and be light and thin,

  Yet in those faithful scales, where God throws in

  Men’s works, vanity weighs as much as sin.

  If our souls have stained their first white, yet we

  May clothe them with faith and dear honesty

  Which God imputes as native purity.

  There is no virtue but religion:

  Wise, valiant, sober, just are names which none

  Want, which want not vice-covering discretion.

  Seek we then ourselves in ourselves; for as

  [20] Men force the sun with much more force to pass

  By gathering his beams with a crystal glass,

  So we, if we into ourselves will turn,

  Blowing our sparks of virtue may out-burn

  The straw which doth about our hearts sojourn.

  You know, physicians, when they would infuse

  Into any’oil the souls of simples, use

  Places where they may lie still warm to choose.

  So works retiredness in us; to roam

  Giddily and be everywhere but at home,

  [30] Such freedom doth a banishment become.

  We are but termers of ourselves, yet may,

  If we can stock ourselves and thrive, uplay

  Much, much dear treasure, for the great rent day.

  Manure thyself then, to thyself be’approved,

  And with vain outward things be no more moved,

  But to know that I love thee’and would be loved.

  To Mr R. W.

  Zealously my muse doth salute all thee,

  Enquiring of that mystic trinity

  Whereof thou’and all to whom heavens do infuse

  Like fire, are made: thy body, mind, and muse.

  Dost thou recover sickness, or prevent?

  Or is thy mind travailed with discontent?

  Or art thou parted from the world and me

  In a good scorn of the world’s vanity?

  Or is thy devout muse retired to sing

  [10] Upon her tender elegiac string?

  Our minds part not, join then thy muse with mine,

  For mine is barren thus divorced from thine.

  To Mr R. W.

  Muse not that by thy mind thy body’is led,

  For by thy mind, my mind’s distempered.

  So thy care lives long, for I bearing part,

  It eats not only thine, but my swoll’n heart.

  And when it gives us intermission,

  We take new hearts for it to feed upon.

  But as a lay man’s genius doth control

  Body and mind, the muse being the soul’s soul

  Of poets, that methinks should ease our anguish,

  [10] Although our bodies wither and minds languish.

  Wright then, that my griefs, which thine got, may be

  Cured by thy charming sovereign melody.

  To Mr R. W.

  If, as mine is, thy life a slumber be,

  Seem, when thou read’st these lines, to dream of me;

  Never did Morpheus nor his brother wear

  Shapes so like those shapes, whom they would appear,

  As this my letter is like me, for it

  Hath my name, words, hand, feet, heart, mind and wit;

  It is my deed of gift of me to thee,

  It is my will, myself the legacy.

  So thy retirings I love, yea envy,

  [10] Bred in thee by a wise melancholy,

  That I rejoice, that unto where thou art,

  Though I stay here, I can thus send my heart,

  As kindly’as any’enamoured patient

  His picture to his absent love hath sent.

  All news I think sooner reach thee than me;

  Havens are heavens, and ships, winged angels be,

  The which both gospel and stern threat’nings bring;

  Guiana’s harvest is nipped in the spring

  I fear; and with us (me thinks) Fate deals so

  [20] As with the Jew’s guide God did; he did show

  Him the rich land, but barred his entry in.

  O, slowness is our punishment and sin;

  Perchance, these Spanish business being done,

  Which as earth between the moon and sun

  Eclipse the light which Guiana would give,

  Our discontinued hopes we shall retrieve;

  But if (as all th’All must) hopes smoke away,

  Is not almighty virtue’an India?

  If men be worlds, there is in every one

  [30] Some thing to answer in some proportion

  All the world’s riches; and in good men, this

  Virtue our form’s form and our soul’s soul is.

  To Mr R. W.

  Kindly’I envy thy song’s perfection,

  Built of all th’elements as our bodies are.

  That little’of earth that’is in it is a fair

  Delicious garden where all sweets are sown.

  In it is cherishing fire which dries in me

  Grief which did drown me, and half quenched by it

  Are satiric fires which urged me to have writ

  In scorn of all, for now I admire thee.

  And as air doth fulfill the hollowness

  [10] Of rotten walls, so it mine emptiness,

  Where tossed and moved it did beget this sound

  Which as a lame echo’of thine doth rebound.

  O, I was dead, but since thy song new life did g
ive,

  I recreated even by thy creature live.

  To Mr T. W.

  All hail sweet poet, more full of more strong fire

  Than hath or shall enkindle any spirit,

  I loved what nature gave thee, but this merit

  Of wit and art I love not but admire;

  Who have before or shall write after thee,

  Their works, though toughly laboured, will be

  Like infancy or age to man’s firm stay,

  Or early and late twilights to midday.

  Men say, and truly, that they better be

  [10] Which be envied than pitied; therefore I,

  Because I wish thee best, do thee envy;

  O would’st thou, by like reason, pity me,

  But care not for me; I, that ever was

  In nature’s, and in fortune’s gifts, alas

  (Before thy grace got in the Muses’ school),

  A monster and a beggar, am a fool.

  O how I grieve, that late borne modesty

  Hath got such root in easy waxen hearts,

  That men may not themselves, their own good parts

  [20] Extol, without suspect of surquedry,

  For, but thyself, no subject can be found

  Worthy thy quill, nor any quill resound

  Thy worth but thine: how good it were to see

  A poem in thy praise, and writ by thee.

  Now if this song be too’harsh for rhyme, yet, as

  The painter’s bad god made a good devil,

  ’Twill be good prose, although the verse be evil,

  If thou forget the rhyme as thou dost pass.

  Then write, that I may follow, and so be

  [30] Thy debtor, thy’echo, thy foil, thy zany.

  I shall be thought, if mine like thine I shape,

  All the world’s Lyon, though I be thy ape.

  To Mr T. W.

  Haste thee harsh verse as fast as thy lame measure

  Will give thee leave, to him, my pain and pleasure.

  I have given thee, and yet thou art too weak,

  Feet and a reasoning soul and tongue to speak.

  Plead for me, and so by thine and my labour,

  I am thy Creator, thou my Saviour.

  Tell him, all questions, which men have defended

  Both of the place and pains of hell, are ended;

  And ’tis decreed our hell is but privation

  [10] Of him, at least in this earth’s habitation:

  And ’tis where I am, where in every street

  Infections follow, overtake, and meet.

  Live I or die, by you my love is sent,

  And you’are my pawns, or else my testament.

  To Mr T. W.

  Pregnant again with th’old twins, Hope and Fear,

  Oft have I asked for thee, both how and where

  Thou wert, and what my hopes of letters were,

  As in our streets sly beggars narrowly

  Watch motions of the giver’s hand and eye,

  And evermore conceive some hope thereby.

  And now thy alms is given, thy letter’is read,

  The body risen again, the which was dead,

  And thy poor starveling bountifully fed.

  [10] After this banquet my soul doth say grace,

  And praise thee for’it, and zealously embrace

  Thy love, though I think thy love in this case

  To be as gluttons, which say ’midst their meat,

  They love that best of which they most do eat.

  To Mr T. W.

  At once, from hence, my lines and I depart,

  I to my soft still walks, they to my heart,

  I to the nurse, they to the child of art;

  Yet as a firm house, though the carpenter

  Perish, doth stand, as an ambassador

  Lies safe, how e’er his king be in danger,

  So, though I languish, pressed with melancholy,

  My verse, the strict map of my misery,

  Shall live to see that for whose want I die.

  [10] Therefore I envy them, and do repent

  That from unhappy me, things happy’are sent;

  Yet as a picture, or bare sacrament,

  Accept these lines, and if in them there be

  Merit of love, bestow that love on me.

  To Mr C. B.

  Thy friend, whom thy deserts to thee enchain,

  Urged by this inexcusable’occasion,

  Thee and the saint of his affection

  Leaving behind, doth of both wants complain;

  And let the love I bear to both sustain

  No blot nor maim by this division.

  Strong is this love which ties our hearts in one,

  And strong that love pursued with amorous pain;

  But though besides thyself I leave behind

  [10] Heaven’s liberal and earth’s thrice-fairer sun,

  Going to where stern winter aye doth won,

  Yet, love’s hot fires, which martyr my sad mind,

  Do send forth scalding sighs, which have the art

  To melt all ice, but that which walls her heart.

  To Mr E. G.

  Even as lame things thirst their perfection, so

  The slimy rimes bred in our vale below,

  Bearing with them much of my love and heart,

  Fly unto that Parnassus, where thou art.

  There thou o’ersee’st London. Here I have been,

  By staying in London, too much overseen.

  Now pleasures’ dearth our city doth possess,

  Our theatres are filled with emptiness.

  As lank and thin is every street and way

  [10] As a woman delivered yesterday.

  Nothing whereat to laugh my spleen espies

  But bearbaitings or law exercise.

  Therefore I’ll leave it, and in the country strive

  Pleasure, now fled from London, to retrieve.

  Do thou so too, and fill not like a bee

  Thy thighs with honey, but as plenteously

  As Russian merchants, thy self’s whole vessel load,

  And then at winter retail it here abroad.

  Bless us with Suffolk’s sweets, and as it is

  [20] Thy garden, make thy hive and warehouse this.

  To Mr S. B.

  O thou, which to search out the secret parts

  Of the India, or rather paradise

  Of knowledge, hast with courage and advice

  Lately launched into the vast sea of arts,

  Disdain not in thy constant travailing

  To do as other voyagers, and make

  Some turns into less creeks, and wisely take

  Fresh water at the Heliconian spring.

  I sing not, Siren-like, to tempt, for I

  [10] Am harsh, nor as those schismatics with you,

  Which draw all wits of good hope to their crew;

  But seeing in you bright sparks of poetry,

  I, though I brought no fuel, had desire

  With these articulate blasts to blow the fire.

  To Mr I. L.

  Of that short roll of friends writ in my heart

  Which with thy name begins, since their depart,

  Whether in the English provinces they be

  Or drink of Po, Sequan, or Danubie,

  There’s none that sometimes greets us not, and yet

  Your Trent is Lethe; that past, us you forget.

  You do not duties of societies,

  If from the’embrace of a loved wife you rise,

  View your fat beasts, stretched barns, and laboured fields,

  [10] Eat, play, ride, take all joys which all day yields,

  And then again to your embracements go.

  Some hours on us, your friends, and some bestow

  Upon your muse, else both we shall repent,

  I that my love, she that her gifts on you are spent.

  To Mr I. L.

  Blest are your north parts, for al
l this long time

  My sun is with you, cold and dark’is our clime.

  Heaven’s sun, which stayed so long from us this year,

  Stayed in your north (I think) for she was there,

  And hither by kind nature drawn from thence,

  Here rages, chafes, and threatens pestilence.

  Yet I, as long as she from hence doth stay,

  Think this no south, no summer, nor no day.

  With thee my kind and unkind heart is run,

  [10] There sacrifice it to that beauteous sun.

  And since thou art in paradise and need’st crave

  No joy’s addition, help thy friend to save.

  So may thy pastures with their flowery feasts,

  As suddenly as lard, fat thy lean beasts.

  So may thy woods oft polled, yet ever wear

  A green and, when thee list, a golden hair.

  So may all thy sheep bring forth twins, and so

  In chase and race may thy horse all out go.

  So may thy love and courage ne’er be cold,

  [20] Thy son ne’er ward, thy lov’d wife ne’er seem old.

  But may’st thou wish great things and them attain,

  As thou tell’st her and none but her my pain.

  To Mr B. B.

  Is not thy sacred hunger of science

  Yet satisfied? Is not thy brain’s rich hive

  Fulfilled with honey which thou dost derive

  From the arts’ spirits and their quintessence?

  Then wean thyself at last, and thee withdraw

  From Cambridge, thy old nurse, and, as the rest,

  Here toughly chew and sturdily digest

  The’immense vast volumes of our common law;

  And begin soon, lest my grief grieve thee too,

  [10] Which is that, that which I should have begun

  In my youth’s morning, now late must be done.

  And I, as giddy travellers must do,

  Which stray or sleep all day, and having lost

  Light and strength, dark and tired must then ride post.

  If thou unto thy muse be married,

  Embrace her ever, ever multiply;

  Be far from me that strange adultery

  To tempt thee and procure her widowhood.

  My muse (for I had one), because I’am cold,

  [20] Divorced herself, the cause being in me