by John Donne
[60] And finds itself allowed ere it desire.
Love is wise here, keeps home, gives reason sway,
And journeys not till it find summer-way.
A weather-beaten lover but once known
Is sport for every girl to practise on.
Who strives through woman’s scorns, women to know,
Is lost, and seeks his shadow to outgo;
It must be sickness after one disdain,
Though he be called aloud to look again.
Let others sigh and grieve; one cunning slight
[70] Shall freeze my love to crystal in a night.
I can love first, and (if I win) love still,
And cannot be removed unless she will.
It is her fault if I unsure remain,
She only can untie, and bind again.
The honesties of love with ease I do,
But am no porter for a tedious woe.
But (Madame) I now think on you, and here
Where we are at our heights, you but appear;
We are but clouds, you rise from our noon-ray
[80] But a foul shadow, not your break of day.
You are at first hand all that’s fair and right,
And others’ good reflects but back your light.
You are a perfectness, so curious hit
That youngest flatteries do scandal it.
For what is more doth what you are restrain,
And though beyond, is down the hill again.
We’have no next way to you, we cross to it:
You are the straight line, thing praised, attribute,
Each good in you’s a light; so many’a shade
[90] You make, and in them are your motions made.
These are your pictures to the life. From far
We see you move, and here your zanies are,
So that no fountain good there is doth grow
In you, but our dim actions faintly show.
Then find I, if man’s noblest part be love,
Your purest lustre must that shadow move.
The soul with body is a heaven combined
With earth, and for man’s ease, but nearer joined.
Where thoughts the stars of soul we understand,
[100] We guess not their large natures but command.
And love in you that bounty is of light
That gives to all, and yet hath infinite.
Whose heat doth force us thither to intend,
But soul we find too earthly to ascend,
Till slow access hath made it wholly pure,
Able immortal clearness to endure.
Who dares aspire this journey with a stain
Hath weight will force him headlong back again.
No more can impure man retain and move
[110] In that pure region of a worthy love
Than earthly substance can unforced aspire,
And leave his nature to converse with fire;
Such may have eye and hand, may sigh, may speak,
But like swoll’n bubbles, when they’are high’st they break.
Though far-removed northern fleets scarce find
The sun’s comfort, others think him too kind.
There is an equal distance from her eye;
Men perish too far off, and burn too nigh.
But as air takes the sunbeam’s equal bright
[120] From the first rays to his last opposite,
So able men, blest with a virtuous love,
Remote or near, or howsoe’er they move,
Their virtue breaks all clouds that might annoy;
There is no emptiness, but all is joy.
He much profanes whom violent heats do move
To still his wandering rage of passion, love.
Love that imparts in everything delight,
Is feigned which only tempts man’s appetite.
Why love among the virtues is not known
[130] Is that love is them all contract in one.
To the Countess of Huntingdon
Madame,
Man to God’s image, Eve to man’s, was made,
Nor find we that God breathed a soul in her;
Canons will not church functions you invade,
Nor laws to civil office you prefer.
Who vagrant transitory comets sees,
Wonders, because they’are rare; but a new star,
Whose motion with the firmament agrees,
Is miracle, for there no new things are;
In woman so perchance mild innocence
[10] A seldom comet is, but active good
A miracle, which reason ’scapes and sense;
For art and nature this in them withstood.
As such a star the Magi led to view
The manger-cradled infant, God below,
By virtue’s beams, by fame derived from you,
May apt souls – and the worst may – virtue know.
If the world’s age and death be argued well
By the sun’s fall, which now towards earth doth bend,
Then we might fear that virtue, since she fell
[20] So low as woman, should be near her end.
But she’s not stooped, but raised; exiled by men
She fled to heaven, that’s heavenly things, that’s you;
She was in all men thinly scattered then,
But now amassed, contracted in a few.
She gilded us, but you are gold, and she;
Us she informed, but transubstantiates you;
Soft dispositions which ductile be,
Elixir-like, she makes not clean, but new.
Though you a wife’s and mother’s name retain,
[30] ’Tis not as woman, for all are not so,
But virtue, having made you virtue,’is fain
T’adhere in these names, her and you to show,
Else, being alike pure, we should neither see,
As water being into air rarefied,
Neither appear, till in one cloud they be,
So, for our sakes you do low names abide;
Taught by great constellations, which being framed
Of the most stars, take low names, Crab and Bull,
When single planets by the gods are named,
[40] You covet not great names, of great things full.
So you, as woman, one doth comprehend,
And in the veil of kindred others see;
To some ye are revealed as in a friend,
And as a virtuous prince far off, to me.
To whom, because from you all virtues flow,
And ’tis not none to dare contemplate you,
I, which do so, as your true subject owe
Some tribute for that, so these lines are due.
If you can think these flatteries, they are,
[50] For then your judgement is below my praise,
If they were so, oft flatteries work as far
As counsels, and as far th’endeavour raise.
So my ill reaching you might there grow good,
But I remain a poisoned fountain still;
But not your beauty, virtue, knowledge, blood
Are more above all flattery, than my will.
And if I flatter any, ’tis not you
But my own judgement, who did long ago
Pronounce that all these praises should be true,
[60] And virtue should your beauty,’and birth outgrow.
Now that my prophecies are all fulfilled,
Rather than God should not be honoured too,
And all these gifts confessed, which he instilled,
Yourself were bound to say that which I do.
So I but your recorder am in this,
Or mouth, and speaker of the universe,
A ministerial notary, for ’tis
Not I, but you and fame, that make this verse;
I was your prophet in your younger days,
[70] And now your chaplain, God in you to praise.
A Letter to the Lady Carey, and Mistress Essex Rich, from Amiens
Madame,
Here, where by all, all saints invoked are,
T’were too much schism to be singular,
And ’gainst a practice general to war;
Yet, turning to saints, should my’humility
To other saint, than you, directed be,
That were to make my schism heresy.
Nor would I be a convertite so cold
As not to tell it; if this be too bold,
Pardons are in this market cheaply sold.
[10] Where, because faith is in too low degree,
I thought it some apostleship in me,
To speak things which by faith alone I see:
That is, of you; who are a firmament
Of virtues, where no one is grown, nor spent;
They’are your materials, not your ornament.
Others, whom we call virtuous, are not so
In their whole substance, but their virtues grow
But in their humours, and at seasons show.
For when through tasteless flat humility,
[20] In dough-baked men, some harmlessness we see,
’Tis but his phlegm that’s virtuous, and not he.
So is the blood sometimes; who ever ran
To danger unimportuned, he was then
No better than a sanguine virtuous man.
So cloistral men who in pretence of fear,
All contributions to this life forbear,
Have virtue in melancholy, and only there.
Spiritual choleric critics, which in all
Religions, find faults, and forgive no fall,
[30] Have, through this zeal, virtue, but in their gall.
We’are thus but parcel-gilt; to gold we’are grown,
When virtue is our soul’s complexion;
Who knows his virtue’s name, or place, hath none.
Virtue is but aguish, when ’tis several;
By’occasion waked, and circumstantial;
True virtue is soul, always in all deeds all.
This virtue, thinking to give dignity
To your soul, found there no infirmity;
For your soul was as good virtue as she.
[40] She therefore wrought upon that part of you,
Which is scarce less than soul, as she could do,
And so hath made your beauty virtue too;
Hence comes it, that your beauty wounds not hearts
As others, with profane and sensual darts,
But, as an influence, virtuous thoughts imparts.
But if such friends, by the’honour of your sight
Grow capable of this so great a light,
As to partake your virtues, and their might,
What must I think that influence must do,
[50] Where it finds sympathy, and matter too,
Virtue, and beauty, of the same stuff, as you:
Which is, your noble worthy sister; she,
Of whom, if what in this my ecstasy
And revelation of you both, I see,
I should write here, as in short galleries
The master at the end large glasses ties,
So to present the room twice to our eyes,
So I should give this letter length, and say
That which I said of you, there is no way
[60] From either, but by th’other, not to stray.
May therefore this be’enough to testify
My true devotion, free from flattery.
He that believes himself, doth never lie.
To the Honourable lady the lady Carew.
To the Countess of Salisbury, August, 1614
Fair, great, and good, since seeing you, we see
What heaven can do, and what any earth can be.
Since now your beauty shines, now when the sun
Grown stale, is to so low a value run,
That his dishevelled beams and scattered fires
Serve but for ladies’ periwigs and ’tires
In lovers’ sonnets, you come to repair
God’s book of creatures, teaching what is fair.
Since now, when all is withered, shrunk, and dried,
[10] All virtues ebbed out to a dead low tide,
All the world’s frame being crumbled into sand,
Where every man thinks by himself to stand,
Integrity, friendship, and confidence
(Cements of greatness) being vapoured hence,
And narrow man being filled with little shares,
Court, city, church are all shops of small-wares,
All having blown to sparks their noble fire,
And drawn their sound gold-ingot into wire;
All trying by a love of littleness
[20] To make abridgements, and to draw to less
Even that nothing, which at first we were;
Since in these times, your greatness doth appear,
And that we learn by it, that man to get
Towards Him, that’s infinite, must first be great;
Since in an age so ill as none is fit
So much as to accuse, much less mend it,
(For who can judge or witness of those times
Where all alike are guilty of the crimes?)
Where he that would be good, is thought by all
[30] A monster, or at best fantastical;
Since now you durst be good, and that I do
Discern by daring to contemplate you,
That there may be degrees of fair, great, good,
Through your light, largeness, virtue understood;
If in this sacrifice of mine be shown
Any small spark of these, call it your own.
And if things like these have been said by me
Of others, call not that idolatry.
For had God made man first, and man had seen
[40] The third day’s fruits, and flowers, and various green,
He might have said the best that he could say
Of those fair creatures, which were made that day.
And when next day he had admired the birth
Of sun, moon, stars, fairer than late-praised earth,
He might have said the best that he could say,
And not be chid for praising yesterday.
So though some things are not together true,
As, that another is worthiest, and that you;
Yet, to say so, doth not condemn a man,
[50] If when he spoke them, they were both true then.
How fair a proof of this in our soul grows?
We first have souls of growth, and sense, and those,
When our last soul, our soul immortal, came,
Were swallowed into it and have no name.
Nor doth he injure those souls, which doth cast
The power and praise of both them, on the last.
No more do I wrong any; I adore
The same things now, which I adored before,
The subject changed, and measure; the same thing
[60] In a low constable and in the king
I reverence, his power to work on me;
So did I humbly reverence each degree
Of fair, great, good, but more, now I am come
From having found their walks, to find their home.
And as I owe my first soul’s thanks, that they
For my last soul did fit and mould my clay,
So am I debtor unto them, whose worth
Enabled me to profit, and take forth
This new great lesson, thus to study you,
[70] Which none, not reading others first, could do.
Nor lack I light to read this book, though I
In a dark cave, yea, in a grave do lie.
For as your fellow angels, so you do
Illustrate them who come to study you.
The first, whom we in histories do find
To have professed all arts, was one born blind.
&
nbsp; He lacked those eyes beasts have as well as we,
Not those by which angels are seen and see.
So, though I’am born without those eyes to live,
[80] Which fortune, who hath none herself, doth give,
Which are fit means to see bright courts and you,
Yet may I see you thus, as now I do.
I shall by that, all goodness have discerned,
And though I burn my library, be learned.
Funeral Elegies
Anniversaries
To the Praise of the Dead, and the Anatomy [Probably by Joseph Hall]
Well died the world, that we might live to see
This world of wit, in his Anatomy:
No evil wants his good: so wilder heirs
Bedew their fathers’ tombs with forced tears,
Whose state requites their loss: whiles thus we gain,
Well may we walk in blacks, but not complain.
Yet, how can I consent the world is dead
While this muse lives? Which in his spirit’s stead
Seems to inform a world, and bids it be,
[10] In spite of loss, or frail mortality?
And thou the subject of this well-born thought,
Thrice noble maid, could’st not have found nor sought
A fitter time to yield to thy sad fate,
Than whiles this spirit lives; that can relate
Thy worth so well to our last nephew’s eyne,
That they shall wonder both at his and thine.
Admired match! Where strives in mutual grace
The cunning pencil, and the comely face.
A task, which thy fair goodness made too much
[20] For the bold pride of vulgar pens to touch;
Enough is us to praise them that praise thee,
And say that but enough those praises be,
Which had’st thou liv’d had hid their fearful head
From th’angry checkings of thy modest red.
Death bars reward and shame; when envy’s gone,
And gain, ’tis safe to give the dead their own.
As then the wise Egyptians wont to lay
More on their tomb than houses; these of clay,
But those of brass, or marble were; so we
[30] Give more unto thy ghost than unto thee.
Yet what we give to thee, thou gav’st to us,
And may’st but thank thy self, for being thus;
Yet what thou gav’st, and wert, O happy maid,
Thy grace professed all due, where ’tis repaid.
So these high songs that to thee suited been,
Serve but to sound thy maker’s praise in thine,
Which thy dear soul as sweetly sings to Him
Amid the choir of saints and seraphim,
