John Donne

 

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

Meditation Xvii.

Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris.

 

No man is an island,  entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main

 

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.

 

At The Round Earth's Imagined Corners

Holy Sonnet 7

 

At the round earth's imagined corners, blow

Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise

From death, you numberless infinities

Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,

All whom the flood did, and fire shall, o'erthrow,

All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,

Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes,

Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.

But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space;

For, if above all these, my sins abound,

'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,

When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,

Teach me how to repent; for that's as good

As if thou'hadst seal'd my pardon with thy blood.

 

Death Be Not Proud (1610)

Holy Sonnet #10

 

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, death, thou shalt die.

 

Conclusion from An Anatomy of the World, Wherein, by occasion of the untimely death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury, the frailty and the decay of this whole world is represented. The First Anniversary (1611)

 

And new philosophy calls all in doubt,

The element of fire is quite put out,

The sun is lost, and th’ earth, and no man’s wit

Can well direct him where to look for it.

And freely men confess that this world’s spent,

When in the planets and the firmament

They seek so many new; they see that this

Is crumbled out again to his atomies.

‘Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,

All just supply, and all relation;

Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,

For every man alone thinks he hath got

To be a phoenix, and that then can be

None of that kind, of which he is, but he.

This is the world’s condition now, and now

She that should all parts to reunion bow,

She that had all magnetic force alone,

To draw, and fasten sund’red parts in one;

She whom wise nature had invented then

When she observ’d that every sort of men

Did in their voyage in this world’s sea stray,

And needed a new compass for their way;

She that was best and first original

Of all fair copies, and the general

Steward to fate; she whose rich eyes and breast

Gilt the West Indies, and perfum’d the East;

Whose having breath’d in this world, did bestow

Spice on those Isles, and bade them still smell so,

And that rich India which doth gold inter,

Is but as single money, coin’d from her;

She to whom this world must it self refer,

As suburbs or the microcosm of her,

She, she is dead; she’s dead: when thou know’st this,

Thou know’st how lame a cripple this world is

 

The Anniversary

 

All kings, and all their favourites,

    All glory of honours, beauties, wits,

The sun it self, which makes time, as they pass,

Is elder by a year now than it was

When thou and I first one another saw.

All other things to their destruction draw,

    Only our love hath no decay;

This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday;

Running it never runs from us away,

But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

 

    Two graves must hide thine and my corse;

    If one might, death were no divorce.

Alas! as well as other princes, we

—Who prince enough in one another be—

Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears,

Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears;

    But souls where nothing dwells but love

—All other thoughts being inmates—then shall prove

This or a love increasčd there above,

When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove.

 

    And then we shall be throughly blest;

    But now no more than all the rest.

Here upon earth we're kings, and none but we

Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.

Who is so safe as we? where none can do

Treason to us, except one of us two.

    True and false fears let us refrain,

Let us love nobly, and live, and add again

Years and years unto years, till we attain

To write threescore; this is the second of our reign.

 

 

A Hymn To Christ At The Author's Last Going Into Germany

 

In what torn ship soever I embark,

That ship shall be my emblem of thy Ark;

What sea soever swallow me, that flood

Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood;

Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise

Thy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes,

Which, though they turn away sometimes,

They never will despise.

 

I sacrifice this Island unto thee,

And all whom I loved there, and who loved me;

When I have put our seas 'twixt them and me,

Put thou thy sea betwixt my sins and thee.

As the tree's sap doth seek the root below

In winter, in my winter now I go,

Where none but thee, th' Eternal root

Of true Love, I may know.

 

Nor thou nor thy religion dost control

The amorousness of an harmonious Soul,

But thou wouldst have that love thyself: as thou

Art jealous, Lord, so I am jealous now,

Thou lov'st not, till from loving more, Thou free

My soul: who ever gives, takes liberty:

O, if thou car'st not whom I love

Alas, thou lov'st not me.

 

Seal then this bill of my Divorce to All,

On whom those fainter beams of love did fall;

Marry those loves, which in youth scattered be

On Fame, Wit, Hopes (false mistresses) to thee.

Churches are best for Prayer, that have least light:

To see God only, I go out of sight:

And to 'scape stormy days, I choose

An Everlasting night.

 

A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day, Being The Shortest Day

 

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,

Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;

The sun is spent, and now his flasks

Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;

The world's whole sap is sunk;

The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,

Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,

Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,

Compar'd with me, who am their epitaph.

 

Study me then, you who shall lovers be

At the next world, that is, at the next spring;

For I am every dead thing,

In whom Love wrought new alchemy.

For his art did express

A quintessence even from nothingness,

From dull privations, and lean emptiness;

He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot

Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

 

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,

Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;

I, by Love's limbec, am the grave

Of all that's nothing. Oft a flood

Have we two wept, and so

Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow

To be two chaoses, when we did show

Care to aught else; and often absences

Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

 

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)

Of the first nothing the elixir grown;

Were I a man, that I were one

I needs must know; I should prefer,

If I were any beast,

Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,

And love; all, all some properties invest;

If I an ordinary nothing were,

As shadow, a light and body must be here.

 

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.

You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun

At this time to the Goat is run

To fetch new lust, and give it you,

Enjoy your summer all;

Since she enjoys her long night's festival,

Let me prepare towards her, and let me call

This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this

Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight is.

 

A Valediction Of Weeping

 

Let me pour forth

My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,

For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,

And by this mintage they are something worth,

For thus they be

Pregnant of thee;

Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more,

When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,

So thou and I are nothing then, when on a diverse shore.

 

On a round ball

A workman that hath copies by, can lay

An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,

And quickly make that, which was nothing, all;

So doth each tear

Which thee doth wear,

A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,

Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow

This world; by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.

 

O more than moon,

Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,

Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear

To teach the sea what it may do too soon;

Let not the wind

Example find,

To do me more harm than it purposeth;

Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,

Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.

 

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

 

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

   And whisper to their souls to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say,

   "The breath goes now," and some say, "No,"

 

So let us melt, and make no noise,

   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;

'Twere profanation of our joys

   To tell the laity our love.

 

Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,

   Men reckon what it did and meant;

But trepidation of the spheres,

   Though greater far, is innocent.

 

Dull sublunary lovers' love

   (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

   Those things which elemented it.

 

But we, by a love so much refined

   That our selves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

   Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

 

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

   Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion.

   Like gold to airy thinness beat.

 

If they be two, they are two so

   As stiff twin compasses are two:

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

   To move, but doth, if the other do;

 

And though it in the center sit,

   Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

   And grows erect, as that comes home.

 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

   Like the other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

   And makes me end where I begun.

 

Lovers' Infiniteness

 

If yet I have not all the love,

Dear, I shall never have it all,

I cannot breathe one other sigh, to move,

Nor can entreat one other tear to fall.

All my treasure, which should purchase thee,

Sighs, tears, and oaths, and letters I have spent,

Yet no more can be due to me,

Than at the bargain made was meant.

If then thy gift of love were partial,

That some to me, some should to others fall,

     Dear, I shall never have thee all.

 

Or if then thou gavest me all,

All was but all, which thou hadst then;

But if in thy heart, since, there be or shall

New love created be, by other men,

Which have their stocks entire, and can in tears,

In sighs, in oaths, and letters outbid me,

This new love may beget new fears,

For, this love was not vowed by thee.

And yet it was, thy gift being general,

The ground, thy heart is mine; whatever shall

     Grow there, dear, I should have it all.

 

Yet I would not have all yet,

He that hath all can have no more,

And since my love doth every day admit

New growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in store;

Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,

If thou canst give it, then thou never gav'st it;

Love's riddles are, that though thy heart depart,

It stays at home, and thou with losing sav'st it:

But we will have a way more liberal,

Than changing hearts, to join them, so we shall

Be one, and another's all.

 

The Sun Rising

 

        Busy old fool, unruly Sun,

        Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?

        Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

        Late school-boys and sour prentices,

    Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,

    Call country ants to harvest offices;

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

 

        Thy beams so reverend, and strong

        Why shouldst thou think?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long.

        If her eyes have not blinded thine,

        Look, and to-morrow late tell me,

    Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine

    Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.

Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

 

        She's all states, and all princes I;

        Nothing else is;

Princes do but play us; compared to this,

All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

        Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,

        In that the world's contracted thus;

    Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

    To warm the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.