by John Donne
The Father having begot a Son most blest,
And still begetting — for he ne’er begun —
Hath deign’d to choose thee by adoption,
Co-heir to His glory, and Sabbath’ endless rest.
And as a robb’d man, which by search doth find
His stolen stuff sold, must lose or buy it again,
The Sun of glory came down, and was slain,
Us whom He had made, and Satan stole, to unbind.
‘Twas much, that man was made like God before,
But, that God should be made like man, much more.
XVI.
FATHER, PART OF HIS DOUBLE INTEREST
Father, part of His double interest
Unto Thy kingdom Thy Son gives to me;
His jointure in the knotty Trinity
He keeps, and gives to me his death’s conquest.
This Lamb, whose death with life the world hath blest,
Was from the world’s beginning slain, and He
Hath made two wills, which with the legacy
Of His and Thy kingdom do thy sons invest.
Yet such are these laws, that men argue yet
Whether a man those statutes can fulfil.
None doth; but thy all-healing grace and Spirit
Revive again what law and letter kill.
Thy law’s abridgement, and Thy last command
Is all but love; O let this last Will stand!
XVII.
SINCE SHE WHOM I LOVED HATH PAID HER LAST DEBT
Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt
To Nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravishèd,
Wholly on heavenly things my mind is set.
Here the admiring her my mind did whet
To seek thee, God; so streams do show the head;
But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.
But why should I beg more love, whenas thou
Dost woo my soul, for hers offering all thine:
And dost not only fear lest I allow
My love to saints and angels, things divine,
But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt
Lest the world, flesh, yea, devil put thee out.
XVIII.
SHOW ME, DEAR CHRIST, THY SPOUSE SO BRIGHT AND CLEAR
Show me, dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear.
What! is it she which on the other shore
Goes richly painted? or which, robbed and tore,
Laments and mourns in Germany and here?
Sleeps she a thousand, then peeps up one year?
Is she self-truth, and errs? now new, now outwore?
Doth she, and did she, and shall she evermore
On one, on seven, or on no hill appear?
Dwells she with us, or like adventuring knights
First travel we to seek, and then make love?
Betray, kind husband, thy spouse to our sights,
And let mine amorous soul court thy mild dove,
Who is most true and pleasing to thee then
When she is embraced and open to most men.
XIX
OH, TO VEX ME, CONTRARIES MEET IN ONE
Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one:
Inconstancy unnaturally hath begot
A constant habit; that when I would not
I change in vows, and in devotion.
As humorous is my contrition
As my profane love, and as soon forgot:
As riddlingly distempered, cold and hot,
As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none.
I durst not view heaven yesterday; and today
In prayers and flattering speeches I court God:
Tomorrow I quake with true fear of his rod.
So my devout fits come and go away
Like a fantastic ague; save that here
Those are my best days, when I shake with feare.
OTHER DIVINE POEMS
CONTENTS
THE CROSS.
RESURRECTION, IMPERFECT.
THE ANNUNCIATION AND PASSION.
GOOD-FRIDAY, 1613, RIDING WESTWARD.
A LITANY.
UPON THE TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS BY SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, AND THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE, HIS SISTER.
ODE: VENGEANCE WILL SIT ABOVE OUR FAULTS
TO MR. TILMAN AFTER HE HAD TAKEN ORDERS.
A HYMN TO CHRIST, AT THE AUTHOR’S LAST GOING INTO GERMANY.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMY, FOR THE MOST PART ACCORDING TO TREMELLIUS.
HYMN TO GOD, MY GOD, IN MY SICKNESS.
A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER.
TO GEORGE HERBERT, SENT HIM WITH ONE OF MY SEALS OF THE ANCHOR AND CHRIST.
A SHEAF OF SNAKES USED HERETOFORE TO BE MY SEAL, THE CREST OF OUR POOR FAMILY.
TRANSLATED OUT OF GAZÆUS, “VOTA AMICO FACTA,” FOL. 160.
THE CROSS.
SINCE Christ embraced the cross itself, dare I
His image, th’ image of His cross, deny?
Would I have profit by the sacrifice,
And dare the chosen altar to despise?
It bore all other sins, but is it fit
That it should bear the sin of scorning it?
Who from the picture would avert his eye,
How would he fly his pains, who there did die?
From me no pulpit, nor misgrounded law,
Nor scandal taken, shall this cross withdraw,
It shall not, for it cannot; for the loss
Of this cross were to me another cross.
Better were worse, for no affliction,
No cross is so extreme, as to have none.
Who can blot out the cross, with th’ instrument
Of God dew’d on me in the Sacrament?
Who can deny me power, and liberty
To stretch mine arms, and mine own cross to be?
Swim, and at every stroke thou art thy cross;
The mast and yard make one, where seas do toss;
Look down, thou spiest out crosses in small things;
Look up, thou seest birds raised on crossed wings;
All the globe’s frame, and spheres, is nothing else
But the meridians crossing parallels.
Material crosses then, good physic be,
But yet spiritual have chief dignity.
These for extracted chemic medicine serve,
And cure much better, and as well preserve.
Then are you your own physic, or need none,
When still’d or purged by tribulation;
For when that cross ungrudged unto you sticks,
Then are you to yourself a crucifix.
As perchance carvers do not faces make,
But that away, which hid them there, do take;
Let crosses, so, take what hid Christ in thee,
And be His image, or not His, but He.
But, as oft alchemists do coiners prove,
So may a self-despising get self-love;
And then, as worst surfeits of best meats be,
So is pride, issued from humility,
For ‘tis no child, but monster; therefore cross
Your joy in crosses, else, ‘tis double loss.
And cross thy senses, else both they and thou
Must perish soon, and to destruction bow.
For if the eye seek good objects, and will take
No cross from bad, we cannot ‘scape a snake.
So with harsh, hard, sour, stinking; cross the rest;
Make them indifferent; call, nothing best.
But most the eye needs crossing, that can roam,
And move; to th’ others th’ objects must come home.
And cross thy heart; for that in man alone
Pants downwards, and hath palpitation.
Cross those dejections, when it downward tends,
And when it to forbidden heights pretends.
An
d as the brain through bony walls doth vent
By sutures, which a cross’s form present,
So when thy brain works, ere thou utter it,
Cross and correct concupiscence of wit.
Be covetous of crosses; let none fall;
Cross no man else, but cross thyself in all.
Then doth the cross of Christ work faithfully
Within our hearts, when we love harmlessly
That cross’s pictures much, and with more care
That cross’s children, which our crosses are.
RESURRECTION, IMPERFECT.
SLEEP, sleep, old sun, thou canst not have repass’d,
As yet, the wound thou took’st on Friday last;
Sleep then, and rest; the world may bear thy stay;
A better sun rose before thee to-day;
Who — not content to enlighten all that dwell
On the earth’s face, as thou — enlighten’d hell,
And made the dark fires languish in that vale,
As at thy presence here our fires grow pale;
Whose body, having walk’d on earth, and now
Hasting to heaven, would — that He might allow
Himself unto all stations, and fill all —
For these three days become a mineral.
He was all gold when He lay down, but rose
All tincture, and doth not alone dispose
Leaden and iron wills to good, but is
Of power to make e’en sinful flesh like his.
Had one of those, whose credulous piety
Thought that a soul one might discern and see
Go from a body, at this sepulchre been,
And, issuing from the sheet, this body seen,
He would have justly thought this body a soul,
If not of any man, yet of the whole.
Desunt Caetera
THE ANNUNCIATION AND PASSION.
TAMELY, frail body, abstain to-day; to-day
My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away.
She sees Him man, so like God made in this,
That of them both a circle emblem is,
Whose first and last concur; this doubtful day
Of feast or fast, Christ came, and went away;
She sees Him nothing, twice at once, who’s all;
She sees a cedar plant itself, and fall;
Her Maker put to making, and the head
Of life at once not yet alive, yet dead;
She sees at once the Virgin Mother stay
Reclused at home, public at Golgotha;
Sad and rejoiced she’s seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty, and at scarce fifteen;
At once a son is promised her, and gone;
Gabriell gives Christ to her, He her to John;
Not fully a mother, she’s in orbity;
At once receiver and the legacy.
All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
Th’ abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one —
As in plain maps, the furthest west is east —
Of th’ angels Ave, and Consummatum est.
How well the Church, God’s Court of Faculties,
Deals, in sometimes, and seldom joining these.
As by the self-fix’d Pole we never do
Direct our course, but the next star thereto,
Which shows where th’other is, and which we say
— Because it strays not far — doth never stray,
So God by His Church, nearest to him, we know,
And stand firm, if we by her motion go.
His Spirit, as His fiery pillar, doth
Lead, and His Church, as cloud; to one end both.
This Church by letting those days join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind is one;
Or ‘twas in Him the same humility,
That He would be a man, and leave to be;
Or as creation He hath made, as God,
With the last judgment but one period,
His imitating spouse would join in one
Manhood’s extremes; He shall come, He is gone;
Or as though one blood drop, which thence did fall,
Accepted, would have served, He yet shed all,
So though the least of His pains, deeds, or words,
Would busy a life, she all this day affords.
This treasure then, in gross, my soul, uplay,
And in my life retail it every day.
GOOD-FRIDAY, 1613, RIDING WESTWARD.
LET man’s soul be a sphere, and then, in this,
Th’ intelligence that moves, devotion is;
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey;
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl’d by it.
Hence is’t, that I am carried towards the west,
This day, when my soul’s form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees Gods face, that is self-life, must die;
What a death were it then to see God die?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our soul’s, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for His apparel, ragg’d and torn?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,
Who was God’s partner here, and furnish’d thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom’d us?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They’re present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and Thou look’st towards me,
O Saviour, as Thou hang’st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity;
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face.
A LITANY.
I.
THE FATHER.
FATHER of Heaven, and Him, by whom
It, and us for it, and all else for us,
Thou madest, and govern’st ever, come
And re-create me, now grown ruinous:
My heart is by dejection, clay,
And by self-murder, red.
From this red earth, O Father, purge away
All vicious tinctures, that new-fashioned
I may rise up from death, before I’m dead.
II.
THE SON.
O Son of God, who, seeing two things,
Sin and Death, crept in, which were never made,
By bearing one, tried’st with what stings
The other could Thine heritage invade;
O be Thou nail’d unto my heart,
And crucified again;
Part not from it, though it from Thee would part,
But let it be by applying so Thy pain,
Drown’d in Thy blood, and in Thy passion slain.
III.
THE HOLY GHOST.
O Holy Ghost, whose temple I
Am, but of mud walls , and condensèd dust,
And being sacrilegiously
Half wasted with youth’s fires of pride and lust,
Must with new storms be weather-beat,
Double in my heart Thy flame,
Which let devout sad tears intend, and let —
Though this glass lanthorn, flesh, do suffer maim —
Fire, sacrifice, priest, altar be the same.
IV.
THE TRINITY.
O blessed glorious Trinity,
Bones to philosophy, but milk to faith,
Which, as wise serpents, diversely
Most slipperiness, yet most entanglings hath,
As you distinguish’d, undistinct,
By power, love, knowledge be,
Give me a such self different instinct,
Of these let all me elemented be,
Of power, to love, to know you unnumbered three.
V.
THE VIRGIN MARY.
For that fair blessed mother-maid,
Whose flesh redeem’d us, that she-cherubin,
Which unlock’d paradise, and made
One claim for innocence, and disseizèd sin,
Whose womb was a strange heaven, for there
God clothed Himself, and grew,
Our zealous thanks we pour. As her deeds were
Our helps, so are her prayers; nor can she sue
In vain, who hath such titles unto you.
VI.
THE ANGELS.
And since this life our nonage is,
And we in wardship to Thine angels be,
Native in heaven’s fair palaces
Where we shall be but denizen’d by Thee;
As th’ earth conceiving by the sun,
Yields fair diversity,
Yet never knows what course that light doth run;
So let me study that mine actions be
Worthy their sight, though blind in how they see.
VII.
THE PATRIARCHS.
And let Thy patriarchs’ desire,
— Those great grandfathers of Thy Church, which saw
More in the cloud than we in fire,
Whom nature clear’d more, than us grace and law,
And now in heaven still pray, that we
May use our new helps right —
Be satisfied, and fructify in me;
Let not my mind be blinder by more light,
Nor faith by reason added lose her sight.
VIII.
THE PROPHETS.
Thy eagle-sighted prophets too,
— Which were Thy Church’s organs, and did sound
That harmony which made of two
One law, and did unite, but not confound;
