John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (11 page)
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Authors: John Donne
DIVINE POEMS
This collection of poems was first published in 1607, at a time when Donne was serving as a minor lawyer, following his dismissal for marrying his employer’s daughter without permission. The poems reveal his fervent faith and devout nature, somewhat at odds with the risqué and witty content of some of the songs and sonnets. Donne later became a priest of the Anglican Church in 1615 and was appointed royal chaplain later that year. In 1621 he was named Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. He attained eminence as a preacher, delivering sermons that are regarded by many as the most eloquent of his time.
St Paul’s Cathedral, close to the time that Donne became Dean
CONTENTS
TO THE EARL OF DONCASTER WITH SIX HOLY SONNETS.
TO THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT, OF ST. MARY MAGDALEN.
TO THE EARL OF DONCASTER WITH SIX HOLY SONNETS.
SEE, sir, how, as the sun’s hot masculine flame
Begets strange creatures on Nile’s dirty slime,
In me your fatherly yet lusty rhyme
— For these songs are their fruits — have wrought the same.
But though th’ engend’ring force from which they came
Be strong enough, and Nature doth admit
Seven to be born at once; I send as yet
But six; they say the seventh hath still some maim.
I choose your judgment, which the same degree
Doth with her sister, your invention, hold,
As fire these drossy rhymes to purify,
Or as elixir, to change them to gold.
You are that alchemist, which always had
Wit, whose one spark could make good things of bad.
LA CORONA.
Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise,
Weaved in my lone devout melancholy,
Thou which of good hast, yea, art treasury,
All changing unchanged Ancient of days.
But do not with a vile crown of frail bays
Reward my Muse’s white sincerity;
But what Thy thorny crown gain’d, that give me,
A crown of glory, which doth flower always.
The ends crown our works, but Thou crown’st our ends,
For at our ends begins our endless rest.
The first last end, now zealously possess’d,
With a strong sober thirst my soul attends.
‘Tis time that heart and voice be lifted high;
Salvation to all that will is nigh.
ANNUNCIATION.
Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo! faithful Virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He’ll wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death’s force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son, and Brother;
Whom thou conceivest, conceived; yea, thou art now
Thy Maker’s maker, and thy Father’s mother,
Thou hast light in dark, and shutt’st in little room
Immensity, cloister’d in thy dear womb.
NATIVITY.
Immensity, cloister’d in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-beloved imprisonment.
There he hath made himself to his intent
Weak enough, now into our world to come.
But O! for thee, for Him, hath th’ inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from th’ orient,
Stars, and wise men will travel to prevent
The effects of Herod’s jealous general doom.
See’st thou, my soul, with thy faith’s eye, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.
TEMPLE.
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe,
Joseph, turn back; see where your child doth sit,
Blowing, yea blowing out those sparks of wit,
Which Himself on the doctors did bestow.
The Word but lately could not speak, and lo!
It suddenly speaks wonders; whence comes it,
That all which was, and all which should be writ,
A shallow seeming child should deeply know?
His Godhead was not soul to His manhood,
Nor had time mellow’d Him to this ripeness;
But as for one which hath a long task, ‘tis good,
With the sun to begin His business,
He in His age’s morning thus began,
By miracles exceeding power of man.
CRUCIFYING.
By miracles exceeding power of man,
He faith in some, envy in some begat,
For, what weak spirits admire, ambitious hate:
In both affections many to Him ran.
But O! the worst are most, they will and can,
Alas! and do, unto th’ Immaculate,
Whose creature Fate is, now prescribe a fate,
Measuring self-life’s infinity to span,
Nay to an inch. Lo! where condemned He
Bears His own cross, with pain, yet by and by
When it bears him, He must bear more and die.
Now Thou art lifted up, draw me to Thee,
And at Thy death giving such liberal dole,
Moist with one drop of Thy blood my dry soul.
RESURRECTION.
Moist with one drop of Thy blood, my dry soul
Shall — though she now be in extreme degree
Too stony hard, and yet too fleshly — be
Freed by that drop, from being starved, hard or foul,
And life by this death abled shall control
Death, whom Thy death slew; nor shall to me
Fear of first or last death bring misery,
If in thy life-book my name thou enroll.
Flesh in that long sleep is not putrified,
But made that there, of which, and for which it was;
Nor can by other means be glorified.
May then sin’s sleep and death soon from me pass,
That waked from both, I again risen may
Salute the last and everlasting day.
ASCENSION.
Salute the last and everlasting day,
Joy at th’ uprising of this Sun, and Son,
Ye whose true tears, or tribulation
Have purely wash’d, or burnt your drossy clay.
Behold, the Highest, parting hence away,
Lightens the dark clouds, which He treads upon;
Nor doth He by ascending show alone,
But first He, and He first enters the way.
O strong Ram, which hast batter’d heaven for me!
Mild Lamb, which with Thy Blood hast mark’d the path!
Bright Torch, which shinest, that I the way may see!
O, with Thy own Blood quench Thy own just wrath;
And if Thy Holy Spirit my Muse did raise,
Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise.
TO THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT, OF ST. MARY
MAGDALEN.
HER of your name, whose fair inheritance
Bethina was, and jointure Magdalo,
An active faith so highly did advance,
That she once knew, more than the Church did know,
The Resurrection; so much good there is
Deliver’d of her, that some Fathers be
Loth to believe one woman could do this;
But think these Magdalens were two or three.
Increase their number, Lady, and their fame;
To their devotion add your innocence;
Take so much of th’ example as of the name,
The latter half; and in some recompense,
That they did harbour Christ Himself, a guest,
Harbour these hymns, to His dear Name address’d.
HOLY SONNETS
This collection is a series of devotional poems, composed in 1609 and 1610, in a period of great personal distress for Donne. He was facing physical and financial hardship, as well as religious turmoil, as he considered converting to Anglicanism...
The Holy Sonnets
reflect these various anxieties. Many of the poems were circulated in manuscript form during Donne’s life, though their personal nature evidently reveals Donne’s reluctance to have them published officially.
The increasing gloominess of Donne’s tone may also be observed in the religious works that he began writing during the same period. His early belief in the value of scepticism now gave way to a firm faith in the traditional teachings of the Bible. Having converted to the Anglican Church, Donne focused his literary career on religious literature. He quickly became noted for his sermons and religious poems. The lines of these sermons would come to influence future works of English literature, such as Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, which took its title from a passage in Meditation XVII of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, which took its title from the same source.
Towards the end of his life Donne wrote works that challenged death, and the fear that it inspired in many men, on the grounds of his belief that those who die are sent to Heaven to live eternally. One example of this challenge is his
Holy Sonnet X, Death Be Not Proud
, from which come the famous lines “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.” Even as he lay dying during Lent in 1631, he rose from his sickbed and delivered the
Death’s Duel
sermon, which was later described as his own funeral sermon.
Death’s Duel
portrays life as a steady descent to suffering and death, yet sees hope in salvation and immortality through an embrace of God, Christ and the Resurrection.
Donne commissioned this portrait of himself only a few months before his death. It depicts how he expected to appear when he arose from the grave at the Apocalypse. Once completed, the poet hung the portrait on his wall as a reminder of the ‘transience of life’.
CONTENTS
THOU HAST MADE ME, AND SHALL THY WORK DECAY?
AS DUE BY MANY TITLES I RESIGN
O! MIGHT THOSE SIGHS AND TEARS RETURN AGAIN
O, MY BLACK SOUL, NOW THOU ART SUMMONED
I AM A LITTLE WORLD MADE CUNNINGLY
THIS IS MY PLAY’S LAST SCENE; HERE HEAVENS APPOINT
AT THE ROUND EARTH’S IMAGINED CORNERS BLOW