John Donne - Delphi Poets Series

by John Donne

  Until this raw disordered heap did break,

  And several desires led parts away,

  Water declined with earth, the air did stay,

  Fire rose, and each from other but untied,

  Themselves unprisoned were and purified;

  So was love, first in vast confusion hid,

  An unripe willingness which nothing did,

  A thirst, an appetite which had no ease,

  That found a want, but knew not what would please.

  What pretty innocence in those days moved!

  Man ignorantly walked by her he loved;

  Both sighed and interchanged a speaking eye,

  Both trembled and were sick, both knew not why.

  That natural fearfulness that struck man dumb,

  Might well (those times considered) man become.

  As all discoverers whose first assay

  Finds but the place, after, the nearest way:

  So passion is to woman's love, about,

  Nay, farther off, than when we first set out.

  It is not love that sueth, or doth contend;

  Love either conquers, or but meets a friend.

  Man's better part consists of purer fire,

  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 sleight

  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 woo.

  But (Madam) 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

  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

  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,

  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 dare aspire this journey with a stain,

  Hath weight will force him headlong back again.

  No more can impure man retain and move

  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 sun-beam's equal bright

  From the first rays, to his last opposite:

  So able men, blessed 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 style 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

  Is, that love is them all contract in one.

  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,

  All virtue 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

  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

  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,

  Though 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

  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,


  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

  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 souls 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;

  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:

  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,

  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

  EPICEDES AND OBSEQUIES

  CONTENTS

  ON HIMSELF.

  MY FORTUNE AND MY WILL THIS CUSTOM BREAK

  MAN IS THE WORLD, AND DEATH THE OCEAN

  ELEGY UPON THE UNTIMELY DEATH OF THE INCOMPARABLE PRINCE HENRY

  OBSEQUIES OF THE LORD HARRINGTON, BROTHER TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD

  ELEGY ON MISTRESS BOULSTRED (I)

  ELEGY ON MISTRESS BOULSTRED (II)

  DEATH

  ELEGY ON THE LORD CHANCELLOR

  A HYMN TO THE SAINTS, AND TO MARQUIS HAMILTON

  ON HIMSELF.

  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 ‘rt not yet so good; till death us lay

  To ripe and mellow here, we’re 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 pamper’d 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 for thee;

  And think me well composed, that I could now

  A last sick hour to syllables allow.

  MY FORTUNE AND MY WILL THIS CUSTOM BREAK

  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,

  Admit to that place this last funeral scroll.

  Others by wills give legacies, but I

  Dying, of you do beg a legacy.

  My fortune and my will this custom break,

  When we are senseless 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 ‘rt not yet so good; till death us lay

  To ripe and mellow there, we’re 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 pamper’d is,

  Our souls become worm-eaten carcases.

  MAN IS THE WORLD, AND DEATH THE OCEAN

  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, 5

  And breaks our bank, whene’er 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—

  Take all a brackish taste, and funeral. 10

  And e’en those tears which should wash sin, are sin.

  We, after God’s ‘No,’ drown the world again.

  Nothing but man of all envenom’d things

  Doth work upon itself with inborn stings.

  Tears are false spectacles; we cannot see, 15

  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 embroider’d works upon the sand,

  So is her flesh refined by death’s cold hand. 20

  As men of China, after an age’s stay,

  Do take up porcelain, where they buried clay;

  So at this grave, her limbec—which refines

  The diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls and mines,

  Of which this flesh was—her soul shall inspire 25

  Flesh of such stuff, as God, when His last fire

  Annuls this world, to recompense it, shall

  Make and name then th’ elixir of this all.

  They say the sea, when it gains, loseth too;

  If carnal death, the younger brother, do 30

  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; 35

  For none to death sins, that to sin is loth;

  Nor do they die, which are not loth to die;

  So hath she this and that virginity.

  Grace was in her extremely diligent,

  That kept her from sin, yet made her repent. 40

  Of what small spots pure white complains! Alas,

  How little poison cracks a crystal glass!

  She sinn’d but just enough to let us see

  That God’s word must be true, ‘All, sinners be.’

  So much did zeal her conscience rarify, 45

  That extreme truth lacked little of a lie,

  Making omissions acts, laying the touch

  Of sin on things that sometime may be such.

  As Moses’ cherubins, whose natures do

  Surpass all speed, by him are winged too; 50

  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, 55

  How good in all her titles, and how meet

  To have reform’d this forward heresy,

  That women can no parts of friendship be,

  How moral, how divine, shall not be told,

  Lest they that hear her virtues, 5 think her old; 60

  And lest we take de
ath’s part, and make him glad

  Of such a prey, and to his triumph add.

  ELEGY UPON THE UNTIMELY DEATH OF THE INCOMPARABLE PRINCE HENRY

  LOOK to me, faith, and look to my faith, God;

  For both my centres feel this period.

  Of weight one centre, one of greatness is;

  And reason is that centre, faith is this;

  For into our reason flow, and there do end, 5

  All that this natural world doth comprehend,

  Quotidian things, and equidistant hence,

  Shut in, for man, in one circumference.

  But for th’ enormous greatnesses, which are

  So disproportion’d and so angular, 10

  As is God’s essence, place, and providence,

  Where, how, when, what souls do, departed hence,

  These things (eccentric else) on faith do strike;

  Yet neither all, nor upon all, alike.

  For reason, put to her best extension, 15

  Almost meets faith, and makes both centres one.

  And nothing ever came so near to this,

  As contemplation of that prince we miss.

  For all that faith might credit mankind could,

  Reason still seconded that this prince would. 20

  If, then, least moving of the centre make,

  More than if whole hell belch’d, the world to shake,

  What must this do, centres distracted so,

  That we see not what to believe or know?

  Was it not well believed till now, that he, 25

  Whose reputation was an ecstasy

  On neighbour states, which knew not why to wake,

  Till he discover’d what ways he would take;

  For whom, what princes angled, when they tried,

  Met a torpedo, and were stupefied; 30

  And others’ studies, how he would be bent,

  Was his great father’s greatest instrument,

  And activest spirit, to convey and tie

  This soul of peace through Christianity?

  Was it not well believed, that he would make 35

  This general peace th’ eternal overtake,

  And that his times might have stretch’d out so far,

  As to touch those of which they emblems are?

  For to confirm this just belief, that now

  The last days came, we saw heaven did allow 40

  That, but from his aspect and exercise,

  In peaceful times rumours of wars did rise.

  But now this faith is heresy; we must

  Still stay, and vex our great-grandmother, Dust.

  O, is God prodigal? hath He spent His store 45

  Of plagues on us; and only now, when more

  Would ease us much, doth He grudge misery,

  And will not let ’s enjoy our curse—to die?