by John Donne
She, who being to herself a state, enjoyed
[360] All royalties which any state employed,
For she made wars and triumphed; reason still
Did not o’erthrow, but rectify her will;
And she made peace, for no peace is like this,
That beauty’and chastity together kiss.
She did high justice, for she crucified
Every first motion of rebellious pride;
And she gave pardons and was liberal,
For, only’herself except, she pardoned all;
She coined, in this, that her impression gave
[370] To all our actions all the worth they have.
She gave protections; the thoughts of her breast
Satan’s rude officers could ne’er arrest.
As these prerogatives being met in one,
Made her a sovereign state; religion
Made her a church, and these two made her all.
She who was all this all, and could not fall
To worse by company (for she was still
More antidote, than all the world was ill);
She, she doth leave it, and by death survive
[380] All this in heaven; whither who doth not strive
The more, because she’is there, he doth not know
That accidental joys in heaven do grow.
But pause, my soul, and study ere thou fall
On accidental joys, th’essential.
Of essential joy in this life and the next.
Still before accessories do abide
A trial, must the principal be tried.
And what essential joy canst thou expect
Here upon earth? What permanent effect
Of transitory causes? Dost thou love
[390] Beauty? (And beauty worthiest is to move.)
Poor cozened coz’ner, that she, and that thou,
Which did begin to love, are neither now.
You are both fluid, changed since yesterday;
Next day repairs (but ill) last day’s decay.
Nor are (although the river keep the name)
Yesterday’s waters and today’s the same.
So flows her face and thine eyes, neither now
That saint, nor pilgrim, which your loving vow
Concerned, remains; but whil’st you think you be
[400] Constant, you’are hourly in inconstancy.
Honour may have pretence unto our love,
Because that God did live so long above
Without this honour, and then loved it so,
That He at last made creatures to bestow
Honour on Him, not that He needed it,
But that, to His hands, man might grow more fit.
But since all honours from inferiors flow
(For they do give it; princes do but show
Whom they would have so honoured), and that this
[410] On such opinions and capacities
Is built, as rise and fall, to more and less,
Alas, ’tis but a casual happiness.
Hath ever any man to’himself assigned
This or that happiness to’arrest his mind,
But that another man which takes a worse,
Thinks him a fool for having ta’en that course?
They who did labour Babel’s tower to’erect
Might have considered, that for that effect,
All this whole solid earth could not allow
[420] Nor furnish forth materials enow,
And that this centre, to raise such a place
Was far too little, to have been the base;
No more affords this world, foundation
To’erect true joy, were all the means in one.
But as the heathen made them several gods,
Of all God’s benefits and all His rods,
(For as the wine, and corn, and onions are
Gods unto them, so agues be, and war);
And as by changing that whole precious gold
[430] To such small copper coins, they lost the old,
And lost their only God, who ever must
Be sought alone, and not in such a thrust.
So much mankind true happiness mistakes;
No joy enjoys that man, that many makes.
Then, soul, to thy first pitch work up again;
Know that all lines which circles do contain,
For once that they the centre touch, do touch
Twice the circumference, and be thou such.
Double on heaven thy thoughts on earth employed;
[440] All will not serve; only who have enjoyed
The sight of God in fullness can think it,
For it is both the object and the wit.
This is essential joy, where neither He
Can suffer diminution nor we;
’Tis such a full and such a filling good,
Had th’angels once look’d on Him, they had stood.
To fill the place of one of them, or more,
She whom we celebrate is gone before.
She, who had here so much essential joy,
[450] As no chance could distract, much less destroy;
Who with God’s presence was acquainted so
(Hearing, and speaking to Him) as to know
His face in any natural stone or tree,
Better than when in images they be;
Who kept by diligent devotion,
God’s image in such reparation
Within her heart, that what decay was grown
Was her first parents’ fault, and not her own;
Who being solicited to any act,
[460] Still heard God pleading His safe pre-contract;
Who by a faithful confidence was here
Betrothed to God, and now is married there;
Whose twilights were more clear than our midday,
Who dreamt devoutlier than most use to pray;
Who being here filled with grace, yet strove to be,
Both where more grace and more capacity
At once is given: she to heaven is gone,
Who made this world in some proportion
A heaven, and here, became unto us all,
[470] Joy (as our joys admit) essential.
But could this low world joys essential touch,
Heaven’s accidental joys would pass them much.
Of accidental joys in both places.
How poor and lame must then our casual be?
If thy prince will his subjects to call thee
My Lord, and this do swell thee, thou art then,
By being a greater, grown to be less man.
When no physician of redress can speak,
A joyful casual violence may break
A dangerous apostem in thy breast,
[480] And whil’st thou joy’st in this, the dangerous rest,
The bag may rise up, and so strangle thee.
Whate’er was casual may ever be.
What should the nature change? Or make the same
Certain, which was but casual, when it came?
All casual joy doth loud and plainly say,
Only by coming, that it can away.
Only in heaven joy’s strength is never spent,
And accidental things are permanent.
Joy of a soul’s arrival ne’er decays,
[490] For that soul ever joys and ever stays.
Joy that their last great consummation
Approaches in the resurrection,
When earthly bodies more celestial
Shall be than angels were, for they could fall;
This kind of joy doth every day admit
Degrees of growth, but none of losing it.
In this fresh joy, ’tis no small part that she,
She, in whose goodness, he that names degree
Doth injure her (’Tis loss to be called best,
[500] There where the stuff is not such as the rest);
She, who left such a body
’as even she
Only in heaven could learn how it can be
Made better; for she rather was two souls,
Or like to full on both sides written rolls,
Where eyes might read upon the outward skin
As strong records for God, as minds within.
She, who by making full perfection grow,
Pieces a circle, and still keeps it so,
Longed for, and longing for’it, to heaven is gone,
[510] Where she receives and gives addition.
Here in a place, where mis-devotion frames
Conclusion.
A thousand prayers to saints, whose very names
The ancient church knew not, heaven knows not yet,
And where what laws of poetry admit,
Laws of religion have at least the same,
Immortal maid, I might invoke thy name.
Could any saint provoke that appetite,
Thou here should’st make me a French convertite.
But thou would’st not, nor would’st thou be content
[520] To take this, for my second year’s true rent.
Did this coin bear any other stamp than His,
That gave thee power to do, me, to say this.
Since His will is, that to posterity
Thou should’st for life, and death, a pattern be,
And that the world should notice have of this,
The purpose, and th’authority is His.
Thou art the proclamation, and I am
The trumpet, at whose voice the people came.
Finis.
Epicedes and Obsequies
Elegy
Sorrow, who to this house scarce knew the way
Is, O, heir of it, our all is his prey.
This strange chance claims strange wonder, and to us
Nothing can be so strange, as to weep thus.
’Tis well his life’s loud speaking works deserve,
And give praise too; our cold tongues could not serve.
’Tis well, he kept tears from our eyes before,
That to fit this deep ill we might have store.
O, if a sweet briar climb up by a tree,
[10] If to a paradise that transplanted be
Or felled and burnt for holy sacrifice,
Yet, that must wither, which by it did rise,
As we, for him dead. Though no family
E’er rigged a soul for heaven’s discovery
With whom more venturers more boldly dare
Venture their states, with him in joy to share.
We lose what all friends loved, him; he gains now
But life by death, which worst foes would allow,
If he could have foes, in whose practice grew
[20] All virtues, whose names subtle schoolmen knew,
What ease can hope, that we shall see’him, beget,
When we must die first, and cannot die yet?
His children are his pictures. O, they be
Pictures of him dead, senseless, cold as he.
Here needs no marble tomb since he is gone;
He, and about him, his, are turned to stone.
Elegy on the Lady Markham
Man is the world, and death the ocean
To which God gives the lower parts of man.
This sea environs all, and though as yet
God hath set marks and bounds ’twixt us and it,
Yet doth it roar, and gnaw, and still pretend,
And breaks our bank when ere it takes a friend.
Then our land waters (tears of passion) vent;
Our waters then above our firmament
(Tears which our soul doth for her sins let fall)
[10] Take all a brackish taste and funeral,
And even those tears, which should wash sin, are sin.
We, after God’s Noah, drown the world again.
Nothing but man, of all envenomed things,
Doth work upon itself with inborn stings.
Tears are false spectacles; we cannot see
Through passion’s mist what we are, or what she.
In her, this sea of death hath made no breach,
But as the tide doth wash the slimy beach,
And leaves embroidered works upon the sand,
[20] So is her flesh refined by death’s cold hand.
As men of China after an age’s stay
Do take up porcelain where they buried clay,
So at this grave, her limbeck, which refines
The diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls, and mines
Of which this flesh was; her soul shall inspire
Flesh of such stuff, as God, when His last fire
Annuls this world to recompense it, shall
Make and name then the elixir of this all.
They say, when the sea gains, it loseth too;
[30] If carnal death (the younger brother) do
Usurp the body,’our soul, which subject is
To th’elder death by sin, is freed by this;
They perish both when they attempt the just,
For graves our trophies are, and both death’s dust.
So, unobnoxious now, she’hath buried both,
For none to death sins, that to sin is loath.
Nor do they die, which are not loath to die,
So hath she this, and that virginity.
Grace was in her extremely diligent,
[40] That kept her from sin, yet made her repent.
Of what small spots pure white complains? Alas,
How little poison breaks a crystal glass?
She sinned but just enough to let us see
That God’s word must be true: all sinners be.
So much did zeal her conscience rarefy
That extreme truth lacked little of a lie,
Making omissions acts, laying the touch
Of sin on things that sometimes may be such.
As Moses cherubim, whose natures do
[50] Surpass all speed, by him are winged too,
So would her soul already’in heaven seem then
To climb by tears the common stairs of men.
How fit she was for God, I am content
To speak, that death his vain haste may repent.
How fit for us, how even, and how sweet,
How good in all her titles, and how meet
To have reformed this forward heresy
That women can no parts of friendship be;
How moral, how divine shall not be told,
[60] Lest they that hear her virtues think her old,
And lest we take death’s part, and make him glad
Of such a prey, and to his triumph add.
Elegy on Mrs Bulstrode
Death I recant, and say unsaid by me
What ere hath slipped that might diminish thee.
Spiritual treason, atheism ’tis to say
That any can thy summons disobey.
Th’earth’s face is but thy table, and the meat
Plants, cattle, men – dishes for Death to eat.
In a rude hunger now he millions draws
Into his bloody, or plaguy, or starved jaws.
Now he will seem to spare, and doth more waste,
[10] Eating the best fruit, well preserved to last.
Now wantonly he spoils and eats us not,
But breaks off friends, and lets us piecemeal rot.
Nor will this earth serve him; he sinks the deep,
Where harmless fish monastic silence keep,
Who (were Death dead) by rows of living sand,
Might sponge that element, and make it land.
He rounds the air and breaks the hymnic notes
In birds’, heaven’s choristers’, organic throats,
Which (if they did not die) might seem to be
[20] A tenth rank in the heavenly hierarchy.
O strong and long-lived death, how cam’st thou in?
And how without creation didst begin?
Thou hast and shalt see dead before thou dyest
All the four monarchies, and Antichrist.
How could I think thee nothing, that see now
In all this all, nothing else is but thou.
Our births and life, vices and virtues, be
Wasteful consumptions, and degrees of thee,
For we, to live, our bellows wear and breath,
[30] Nor are we mortal, dying, dead, but death,
And though thou beest, O mighty bird of prey,
So much reclaimed by God that thou must lay
All that thou kill’st at His feet, yet doth He
Reserve but few, and leaves the most to thee.
And of those few, now thou hast overthrown
One, whom thy blow makes not ours, nor thine own.
She was more stories high; hopeless to come
To her soul, thou’hast offered at her lower room.
Her soul and body was a king and court,
[40] But thou hast both of captain missed, and fort.
As houses fall not, though the king remove,
Bodies of saints rest for their souls above.
Death gets ’twixt souls and bodies such a place,
As sin insinuates ’twixt just men and grace;
Both work a separation, no divorce.
Her soul is gone to usher up her corpse,
Which shall be’almost another soul, for there
Bodies are purer than best souls are here.
Because in her, her virtues did outgo
[50] Her years, would’st thou, O emulous Death, do so,
And kill her young to thy loss? Must the cost
Of beauty’and wit, apt to do harm, be lost?
What though thou found’st her proof ’gainst sins of youth?
O, every age a diverse sin pursueth.
Thou shouldst have stayed, and taken better hold.
Shortly ambitious, covetous, when old,
She might have proved, and such devotion
Might once have strayed to superstition.
If all her virtues must have grown, yet might
[60] Abundant virtue’have bred a proud delight.
Had she persevered just, there would have grown
Some that would sin, mis-thinking she did sin,
Such as would call her friendship, love, and fain
To sociableness a name profane,
Or sin by tempting, or not daring that,
By wishing, though they never told her what.
Thus mightst thou’have slain more souls, hadst thou not crossed
Thyself, and to triumph, thine army lost.
Yet though these ways be lost, thou hast left one,
[70] Which is immoderate grief that she is gone.
But we may ’scape that sin, yet weep as much;
