by John Donne
Thou see’st me strive for life; my life shall be
To be hereafter praised for praising thee,
Immortal maid, who though thou would’st refuse
The name of mother, be unto my muse
A father, since her chaste ambition is
Yearly to bring forth such a child as this.
These hymns may work on future wits, and so
May great grandchildren of thy praises grow.
And so, though not revive, embalm and spice
[40] The world, which else would putrify with vice.
For thus, man may extend thy progeny,
Until man do but vanish and not die.
These hymns thy issue may increase so long,
As till God’s great Venite change the song.
Thirst for that time, O my insatiate soul,
A just disestimation of this world.
And serve thy thirst with God’s safe-sealing bowl.
Be thirsty still, and drink still till thou go
To th’only health, to be hydropic so.
Forget this rotten world; and unto thee
[50] Let thine own times as an old story be.
Be not concerned. Study not why nor when;
Do not so much as not believe a man.
For though to err be worst, to try truths forth,
Is far more business than this world is worth.
The world is but a carcass; thou art fed
By it, but as a worm, that carcass bred.
And why should’st thou, poor worm, consider more
When this world will grow better than before,
Than those thy fellow worms do think upon
[60] That carcass’s last resurrection.
Forget this world, and scarce think of it so,
As of old clothes, cast off a year ago.
To be thus stupid is alacrity;
Men thus lethargic have best memory.
Look upward; that’s towards her, whose happy state
We now lament not but congratulate.
She, to whom all this world was but a stage,
Where all sat hark’ning how her youthful age
Should be employed, because in all she did,
[70] Some figure of the golden times was hid.
Who could not lack, whate’er this world could give,
Because she was the form that made it live;
Nor could complain that this world was unfit
To be stayed in, then when she was in it.
She that first tried indifferent desires
By virtue, and virtue by religious fires,
She to whose person paradise adhered,
As courts to princes; she whose eyes ensphered
Starlight enough to’have made the South control
[80] (Had she been there) the star-full Northern pole.
She, she is gone; she’is gone; when thou knowest this,
What fragmentary rubbish this world is
Thou knowest, and that it is not worth a thought;
He honours it too much that thinks it nought.
Think then, my soul, that death is but a groom,
Contemplation of our state in our deathbed.
Which brings a taper to the outward room,
Whence thou spiest first a little glimmering light,
And after brings it nearer to thy sight,
For such approaches doth heaven make in death.
[90] Think thyself labouring now with broken breath,
And think those broken and soft notes to be
Division, and thy happiest harmony.
Think thee laid on thy deathbed, loose and slack,
And think that but unbinding of a pack,
To take one precious thing, thy soul, from thence.
Think thyself parched with fever’s violence;
Anger thine ague more by calling it
Thy physic; chide the slackness of the fit.
Think that thou hear’st thy knell, and think no more,
[100] But that, as bells called thee to church before,
So this, to the triumphant church, calls thee.
Think Satan’s sergeants round about thee be,
And think that but for legacies they thrust;
Give one thy pride, to’another give thy lust;
Give them those sins, which they gave thee before,
And trust th’immaculate blood to wash thy score.
Think thy friends weeping round, and think that they
Weep but because they go not yet thy way.
Think that they close thine eyes, and think in this,
[110] That they confess much in the world, amiss,
Who dare not trust a dead man’s eye with that,
Which they from God, and angels cover not.
Think that they shroud thee up, and think from thence
They reinvest thee in white innocence.
Think that thy body rots, and (if so low,
Thy soul exalted so, thy thoughts can go)
Think thee a prince, who of themselves create
Worms which insensibly devour their state.
Think that they bury thee, and think that rite
[120] Lays thee to sleep but a Saint Lucy’s night.
Think these things cheerfully, and if thou be
Drowsy or slack, remember then that she,
She whose complexion was so even made,
That which of her ingredients should invade
The other three, no fear, no art could guess,
So far were all removed from more or less.
But as in mithridate, or just perfumes,
Where all good things being met, no one presumes
To govern, or to triumph on the rest,
[130] Only because all were, no part was best.
And as, though all do know, that quantities
Are made of lines, and lines from points arise,
None can these lines or quantities unjoint
And say this is a line, or this a point.
So though the elements and humours were
In her, one could not say, this governs there,
Whose even constitution might have won
Any disease to venture on the sun,
Rather than her, and make a spirit fear,
[140] That he to disuniting subject were.
To whose proportions if we would compare
Cubes th’are unstable: circles, angular;
She who was such a chain as fate employs
To bring mankind, all fortunes it enjoys,
So fast, so even wrought, as one would think
No accident could threaten any link.
She, she embraced a sickness, gave it meat,
The purest blood and breath that e’er it eat,
And hath taught us that though a good man hath
[150] Title to heaven, and plead it by his faith,
And though he may pretend a conquest, since
Heaven was content to suffer violence,
Yea though he plead a long possession too
(For they’are in heaven on earth, who heaven’s works do),
Though he had right and power and place before,
Yet death must usher and unlock the door.
Think further on thyself, my soul, and think
Incommodities of the soul in the body.
How thou at first wast made but in a sink.
Think that it argued some infirmity,
[160] That those two souls, which then thou found’st in me,
Thou fed’st upon, and drew’st into thee both:
My second soul of sense, and first of growth.
Think but how poor thou wast, how obnoxious,
Whom a small lump of flesh could poison thus.
This curded milk, this poor unlittered whelp
My body could, beyond escape or help,
Infect thee with original sin, and thou
Could’st neither then refuse, nor leave it now.
[170] Which fixed to a pillar, or a grave doth sit
Bedded and bathed in all his ordures, dwells
So foully as our souls in’their first built cells.
Think in how poor a prison thou did’st lie
After, enabled but to suck and cry.
Think, when ’twas grown to most, ’twas a poor inn,
A province packed up in two yards of skin,
And that usurped, or threatened with a rage
Of sicknesses, or their true mother, age.
But think that death hath now enfranchised thee,
Her liberty by death.
Thou hast thy’expansion now and liberty.
[181] Think that a rusty piece, discharged, is flown
In pieces, and the bullet is his own,
And freely flies; this to thy soul allow,
Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatched but now.
And think this slow-paced soul, which late did cleave
To’a body,’and went but by the body’s leave,
Twenty, perchance, or thirty mile a day,
Dispatches in a minute all the way
’Twixt heaven and earth. She stays not in the air
[190] To look what meteors there themselves prepare.
She carries no desire to know, nor sense,
Whether th’air’s middle region be intense,
For th’element of fire, she doth not know,
Whether she passed by such a place or no.
She baits not at the moon, nor cares to try
Whether in that new world men live and die.
Venus retards her not, to’enquire how she
Can (being one star) Hesper and Vesper be.
He that charmed Argus’ eyes, sweet Mercury,
[200] Works not on her, who now is grown all eye;
Who, if she meet the body of the sun,
Goes through, not staying till his course be run;
Who finds in Mars his camp, no corps of guard,
Nor is by Jove, nor by his father barred,
But ere she can consider how she went,
At once is at, and through the firmament.
And as these stars were but so many beads
Strung on one string, speed undistinguished leads
Her through those spheres, as through the beads, a string,
[210] Whose quick succession makes it still one thing,
As doth the pith, which, lest our body’s slack,
Strings fast the little bones of neck and back;
So by the soul doth death string heaven and earth,
For when our soul enjoys this, her third birth
(Creation gave her one, a second, grace),
Heaven is as near and present to her face
As colours are, and objects in a room
Where darkness was before, when tapers come.
This must, my soul, thy long-short progress be,
[220] To’advance these thoughts; remember then that she,
She, whose fair body no such prison was,
But that a soul might well be pleased to pass
An age in her; she whose rich beauty lent
Mint age to others’ beauties, for they went
But for so much, as they were like to her;
She, in whose body (if we dare prefer
This low world to so high a mark as she),
The western treasure, eastern spicery,
Europe, and Afric, and the unknown rest
[230] Were easily found, or what in them was best.
And when we’have made this large discovery
Of all in her some one part then will be
Twenty such parts, whose plenty’and riches is
Enough to make twenty such worlds as this.
She, whom had they known, who did first betroth
The tutelar angels, and assigned one, both
To nations, cities, and to companies,
To functions, offices, and dignities,
And to each several man, to him, and him,
[240] They would have given her one for every limb.
She, of whose soul, if we may say, ’twas gold,
Her body was th’electrum, and did hold
Many degrees of that. We understood
Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one might almost say her body thought.
She, she, thus richly and largely housed, is gone,
And chides us slow-paced snails, who crawl upon
Our prison’s prison, earth, nor think us well
[250] Longer than whil’st we bear our brittle shell.
But ’twere but little to have changed our room,
Her ignorance in this life and knowledge in the next.
If, as we were in this our living tomb
Oppressed with ignorance, we still were so.
Poor soul, in this thy flesh what dost thou know?
Thou know’st thyself so little, as thou know’st not
How thou didst die, nor how thou wast begot.
Thou neither know’st how thou at first cam’st in,
Nor how thou took’st the poison of man’s sin.
Nor dost thou (though thou know’st, that thou art so)
[260] By what way thou art made immortal, know.
Thou art too narrow, wretch, to comprehend
Even thyself, yea though thou would’st but bend
To know thy body. Have not all souls thought
For many ages that our body’s wrought
Of air, and fire, and other elements?
And now they think of new ingredients.
And one soul thinks one, and another way
Another thinks, and ’tis an even lay.
Know’st thou but how the stone doth enter in
[270] The bladder’s cave and never break the skin?
Know’st thou how blood, which to the heart doth flow,
Doth from one ventricle to th’other go?
And for the putrid stuff, which thou dost spit,
Know’st thou how thy lungs have attracted it?
There are no passages, so that there is
(For ought thou know’st) piercing of substances.
And of those many opinions which men raise
Of nails and hairs, dost thou know which to praise?
What hope have we to know ourselves when we
[280] Know not the least things, which for our use be?
We see in authors, too stiff to recant,
A hundred controversies of an ant.
And yet one watches, starves, freezes, and sweats,
To know but catechisms and alphabets
Of unconcerning things, matters of fact,
How others on our stage their parts did act,
What Caesar did, yea, and what Cicero said.
Why grass is green, or why our blood is red,
Are mysteries which none have reached unto.
[290] In this low form, poor soul, what wilt thou do?
When wilt thou shake off this pedantry
Of being taught by sense, and fantasy?
Thou look’st through spectacles; small things seem great
Below, but up unto the watchtower get,
And see all things despoiled of fallacies.
Thou shalt not peep through lattices of eyes,
Nor hear through labyrinths of ears, nor learn
By circuit or collections to discern.
In heaven thou straight know’st all, concerning it,
[300] And what concerns it not shalt straight forget.
There thou (but in no other school) may’st be
Perchance, as learned, and as full, as she,
She who all libraries had thoroughly read
At home in her own thoughts, and practised
So much good as would make as many more;
She whose example
they must all implore,
Who would or do, or think well, and confess
That aye the virtuous actions they express
Are but a new and worse edition
[310] Of her some one thought or one action;
She, who in th’art of knowing heaven, was grown
Here upon earth to such perfection,
That she hath, ever since to heaven she came
(In a far fairer print) but read the same;
She, she not satisfied with all this weight
(For so much knowledge, as would over-freight
Another, did but ballast her) is gone
As well to’enjoy, as get perfection,
And calls us after her, in that she took
[320] (Taking herself) our best and worthiest book.
Return not, my soul, from this ecstasy
Of our company in this life and the next.
And meditation of what thou shalt be,
To earthly thoughts, till it to thee appear,
With whom thy conversation must be there.
With whom wilt thou converse? What station
Canst thou choose out, free from infection,
That will nor give thee theirs, nor drink in thine?
Shalt thou not find a spongy slack divine,
Drink and suck in th’instructions of great men,
[330] And for the word of God, vent them again?
Are there not some courts (and then, no things be
So like as courts) which, in this let us see
That wits and tongues of libellers are weak,
Because they do more ill than these can speak?
The poison’is gone through all; poisons affect
Chiefly the chiefest parts, but some effect
In nails and hairs, yea excrements, will show;
So will the poison of sin in the most low.
Up, up, my drowsy soul, where thy new ear
[340] Shall in the angels’ songs no discord hear,
Where thou shalt see the blessed mother-maid
Joy in not being that, which men have said.
Where she’is exalted more for being good,
Than for her interest of motherhood.
Up to those patriarchs, which did longer sit
Expecting Christ than they’have enjoyed him yet.
Up to those prophets, which now gladly see
Their prophecies grown to be history.
Up to th’apostles, who did bravely run
[350] All the sun’s course with more light than the sun.
Up to those martyrs, who did calmly bleed
Oil to th’apostles lamps, dew to their seed.
Up to those virgins, who thought that almost
They made joint-tenants with the Holy Ghost,
If they to any should His temple give.
Up, up, for in that squadron there doth live
She, who hath carried thither new degrees
(As to their number) to their dignities.
