by John Donne
Two new stars lately to the firmament;
Why grudge we us (not heaven) the dignity
T' increase with ours, those fair souls' company?
But I must end this letter, though it do
Stand on two truths, neither is true to you.
Virtue hath some perverseness; for she will
Neither believe her good, nor others' ill.
Even in you, virtue's best paradise,
Virtue hath some, but wise degrees of vice.
Too many virtues, or too much of one
Begets in you unjust suspicion.
And ignorance of vice, makes virtue less,
Quenching compassion of our wretchedness.
But these are riddles; some aspersion
Of vice becomes well some complexion.
Statesmen purge vice with vice, and may corrode
The bad with bad, a spider with a toad:
For so, ill thralls not them, but they tame ill
And make her do much good against her will,
But in your commonwealth, or world in you,
Vice hath no office, or good work to do.
Take then no vicious purge, but be content
With cordial virtue, your known nourishment.
To the Countess of Bedford
Madam,
You have refined me, and to worthiest things
(Virtue, art, beauty, fortune,) now I see
Rareness, or use, not nature value brings;
And such, as they are circumstanced, they be.
Two ills can ne'er perplex us, sin to excuse;
But of two good things, we may leave and choose.
Therefore at Court, which is not virtue's clime,
(Where a transcendent height, (as, lowness me)
Makes her not be, or not show) all my rhyme
Your virtues challenge, which there rarest be;
For, as dark texts need notes: there some must be
To usher virtue, and say, This is she.
So in the country is beauty; to this place
You are the season (Madam) you the day,
'Tis but a grave of spices, till your face
Exhale them, and a thick close bud display.
Widowed and reclused else, her sweets she enshrines
As China, when the sun at Brazil dines.
Out from your chariot, morning breaks at night,
And falsifies both computations so;
Since a new world doth rise here from your light,
We your new creatures, by new reckonings go.
This shows that you from nature loathly stray,
That suffer not an artificial day.
In this you have made the Court the antipodes,
And willed your delegate, the vulgar sun,
To do profane autumnal offices,
Whilst here to you, we sacrificers run;
And whether priests, or organs, you we obey,
We sound your influence, and your dictates say.
Yet to that deity which dwells in you,
Your virtuous soul, I now not sacrifice;
These are petitions and not hymns; they sue
But that I may survey the edifice.
In all religions as much care hath been
Of temples' frames, and beauty, as rites within.
As all which go to Rome, do not thereby
Esteem religions, and hold fast the best,
But serve discourse, and curiosity,
With that which doth religion but invest,
And shun th' entangling labyrinths of schools,
And make it wit, to think the wiser fools:
So in this pilgrimage I would behold
You as you'are virtue's temple, not as she,
What walls of tender crystal her enfold,
What eyes, hands, bosom, her pure altars be;
And after this survey, oppose to all
Babblers of chapels, you th' Escurial.
Yet not as consecrate, but merely as fair,
On these I cast a lay and country eye.
Of past and future stories, which are rare,
I find you all record, all prophecy.
Purge but the book of Fate, that it admit
No sad nor guilty legends, you are it.
If good and lovely were not one, of both
You were the transcript, and original,
The elements, the parent, and the growth,
And every piece of you, is both their all:
So entire are all your deeds, and you, that you
Must do the same thing still; you cannot two.
But these (as nice thin school divinity
Serves heresy to further or repress)
Taste of poetic rage, or flattery,
And need not, where all hearts one truth profess;
Oft from new proofs, and new phrase, new doubts grow,
As strange attire aliens the men we know.
Leaving then busy praise, and all appeal
To higher courts, sense's decree is true,
The mine, the magazine, the commonweal,
The story of beauty, in Twicknam is, and you.
Who hath seen one, would both; as, who had been
In Paradise, would seek the cherubin.
To the Lady Bedford
You that are she and you, that's double she,
In her dead face, half of yourself shall see;
She was the other part, for so they do
Which build them friendships, become one of two;
So two, that but themselves no third can fit,
Which were to be so, when they were not yet.
Twins, though their birth Cusco, and Musco take,
As divers stars one constellation make,
Paired like two eyes, have equal motion, so
Both but one means to see, one way to go;
Had you died first, a carcase she had been;
And we your rich tomb in her face had seen;
She like the soul is gone, and you here stay,
Not a live friend; but th' other half of clay;
And since you act that part, as men say, »Here
Lies such a Prince«, when but one part is there,
And do all honour and devotion due
Unto the whole, so we all reverence you;
For such a friendship who would not adore
In you, who are all what both was before,
Not all, as if some perished by this,
But so, as all in you contracted is;
As of this all, though many parts decay,
The pure which elemented them shall stay;
And though diffused, and spread in infinite,
Shall recollect, and in one all unite:
So madam, as her soul to heaven is fled,
Her flesh rests in the earth, as in a bed;
Her virtues do, as to their proper sphere,
Return to dwell with you, of whom they were;
As perfect motions are all circular,
So they to you, their sea, whence less streams are;
She was all spices, you all metals; so
In you two we did both rich Indies know;
And as no fire, nor rust can spend or waste
One dram of gold, but what was first shall last,
Though it be forced in water, earth, salt, air,
Expansed in infinite, none will impair;
So, to yourself you may additions take,
But nothing can you less, or changed make.
Seek not in seeking new, to seem to doubt,
That you can match her, or not be without;
But let some faithful book in her room be,
Yet but of Judith no such book as she.
Epitaph on Himself
To the Countess of Bedford
Madam,
That I might make your cabinet my tomb,
And for my fame which I love next my soul,
Next to my soul provide the happiest room,
Others by wills give legacies, but I
Dying, of you do beg a legacy.
OMNIBUS
My fortune and my choice this custom break,
When we are speechless grown, to make stones speak,
Though no stone tell thee what I was, yet thou
In my grave's inside seest what thou art now:
Yet thou'art not yet so good, till death us lay
To ripe and mellow here, we are stubborn clay.
Parents make us earth, and souls dignify
Us to be glass; here to grow gold we lie.
Whilst in our souls sin bred and pampered is,
Our souls become worm-eaten carcases;
So we ourselves miraculously destroy.
Here bodies with less miracle enjoy
Such privileges, enabled here to scale
Heaven, when the trumpet's air shall them exhale.
Hear this, and mend thyself, and thou mend'st me,
By making me being dead, do good to thee,
And think me well composed, that I could now
A last-sick hour to syllables allow.
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.
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,
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,
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.
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,
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
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 Huntingdon
Madam,
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
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
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,
'Tis not as woman, for all are not so,
But virtue having made you virtue, is fain
To 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,
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,
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,
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, or 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,
And now your chaplain, God in you to praise.
To the Countess of Huntingdon
That unripe side of earth, that heavy clime
That gives us man up now, like Adam's time
Before he ate; man's shape, that would yet be
(Knew they not it, and feared beasts' company)
So naked at this day, as though man there
From Paradise so great a distance were,
As yet the news could not arrived be
Of Adam's tasting the forbidden tree;
Deprived of that free state which they were in,
And wanting the reward, yet bear the sin.
But, as from extreme heights who downward looks,
Sees men at children's shapes, rivers at brooks,
And loseth younger forms; so, to your eye
These (Madam) that without your distance lie,
Must either mist, or nothing seem to be,
Who are at home but wit's mere atomi.
But, I who can behold them move, and stay,
Have found myself to you, just their midway;
And now must pity them; for, as they do
Seem sick to me, just so must I to you.
Yet neither will I vex your eyes to see
A sighing ode, nor cross-armed elegy.
I come not to call pity from your heart,
Like some white-livered dotard that would part
Else from his slippery soul with a faint groan,
And faithfully, (without you smiled) were gone.
I cannot feel the tempest of a frown,
I may be raised by love, but not thrown down.
Though I can pity those sigh twice a day,
I hate that thing whispers itself away.
Yet since all love is fever, who to trees
Doth talk, doth yet in love's cold ague freeze.
'Tis love, but, with such fatal weakness made,
That it destroys itself with its own shade.
Who first looked sad, grieved, pined, and showed his pain,
Was he that first taught women to disdain.
As all things were one nothing, dull and weak,
