John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (29 page)
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Authors: John Donne
WHETHER that soul which now comes up to you
Fill any former rank, or make a new;
Whether it take a name named there before,
Or be a name itself and order more
Than was in heaven till now—for may not he
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Be so, if every several angel be
A kind alone? whatever order grow
Greater by him in heaven, we do not so.
One of your orders grows by his access,
But, by his loss, grow all our orders less;
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The name of father, master, friend, the name
Of subject and of prince, in one is lame;
Fair mirth is damp’d, and conversation black,
The Household widow’d, and the Garter slack;
The Chapel wants an ear, Council a tongue;
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Story, a theme; and Music lacks a song.
Blest order that hath him, the loss of him
Gangrened all orders here; all lost a limb.
Never made body such haste to confess
What a soul was; all former comeliness
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Fled, in a minute, when the soul was gone;
And, having lost that beauty, would have none.
So fell our monasteries, in an instant grown
Not to less houses, but to heaps of stone;
So sent his body that fair form it wore 25
Unto the sphere of forms, and doth—before
His soul shall fill up his sepulchral stone—
Anticipate a resurrection.
For, as in his fame now his soul is here,
So, in the form thereof, his body’s there;
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And if, fair soul, not with first Innocents
Thy station be, but with the Penitents,
—And who shall dare to ask then, when I am
Dyed scarlet in the blood of that pure Lamb,
Whether that colour, which is scarlet then,
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Were black or white before in eyes of men?—
When thou rememb’rest what sins thou didst find
Amongst those many friends now left behind,
And seest such sinners, as they are, with thee
Got thither by repentance, let it be
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Thy wish to wish all there, to wish them clean,
Wish him a David, her a Magdalen.
EPIGRAMS
CONTENTS
HERO AND LEANDER.
BOTH robb’d of air, we both lie in one ground;
Both whom one fire had burnt, one water drown’d.
PYRAMUS AND THISBE.
Two, by themselves, each other, love and fear,
Slain, cruel friends, by parting have join’d here.
NIOBE.
By children’s births, and death, I am become
So dry, that I am now mine own sad tomb.
A BURNT SHIP.
Out of a fired ship, which by no way
But drowning could be rescued from the flame,
Some men leap’d forth, and ever as they came
Near the foes’ ships, did by their shot decay;
So all were lost, which in the ship were found,
They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drowned.
FALL OF A WALL.
Under an undermined and shot-bruised wall
A too-bold captain perish’d by the fall,
Whose brave misfortune happiest men envied,
That had a town for tomb, his bones to hide.
A LAME BEGGAR.
I am unable, yonder beggar cries,
To stand, or move; if he say true, he lies.
A SELF-ACCUSER.
Your mistress, that you follow whores, still taxeth you;
‘Tis strange that she should thus confess it, though ‘t be true.
A LICENTIOUS PERSON.
Thy sins and hairs may no man equal call;
For, as thy sins increase, thy hairs do fall.
ANTIQUARY.
If in his study he hath so much care
To hang all old strange things, let his wife beware.
DISINHERITED.
Thy father all from thee, by his last will,
Gave to the poor; thou hast good title still.
PHRYNE.
Thy flattering picture, Phryne, is like thee,
Only in this, that you both painted be.
AN OBSCURE WRITER.
Philo with twelve years’ study hath been grieved
To be understood; when will he be believed?
KLOCKIUS
Klockius so deeply hath sworn ne’er more to come
In bawdy house, that he dares not go home.
RADERUS.
Why this man gelded Martial I muse,
Except himself alone his tricks would use,
As Katherine, for the court’s sake, put down stews.
MERCURIUS GALLO-BELGICUS.
Like Esop’s fellow-slaves, O Mercury,
Which could do all things, thy faith is; and I
Like Esop’s self, which nothing. I confess
I should have had more faith, if thou hadst less.
Thy credit lost thy credit. ‘Tis sin to do,
In this case, as thou wouldst be done unto,
To believe all. Change thy name; thou art like
Mercury in stealing, but liest like a Greek.
RALPHIUS
Compassion in the world again is bred;
Ralphius is sick, the broker keeps his bed.
INFINITATI SACRUM
16. Augusti 1601.
METEMPSYCOSIS.
EPISTLE.
Others at the Porches and entries of their Buildings set their Armes; I, my picture; if any colours can deliver a minde so plaine, and flat, and through-light as mine. Naturally at a new Author, I doubt, and sticke, and doe not say quickly, good. I censure much and taxe; And this liberty costs mee more than others, by how much my owne things are worse than others. Yet I would not be so rebellious against my selfe, as not to doe it, since I love it; nor so unjust to others, to do it sine talione. As long as I give them as good hold upon mee, they must pardon mee my bitings. I forbid no reprehender, but him that like the Trent Councell forbids not bookes, but Authors, damning what ever such a name hath or shall write. None writes so ill, that he gives not some thing exemplary, to follow, or flie. Now when I beginne this booke, I have no purpose to come into any mans debt; how my stocke will hold out I know not; perchance waste, perchance increase in use; if I doe borrow any thing of Antiquitie, besides that I make account that I pay it to posterity, with as much and as good: You shall still finde mee to acknowledge it, and to thanke not him onely that hath digg’d out treasure for mee, but that hath lighted mee a candle to the place. All which I bid you remember, (for I will have no such Readers as I can teach) is, that the Pithagorian doctrine doth not onely carry one soule from man to man, nor man to beast, but indifferently to plants also: and therefore you must not grudge to finde the same soule in an Emperour, in a Post-horse, and in a Mucheron, since no unreadinesse in the soule, but an indisposition in the organs workes this. And therefore though this soule could not move when it was a Melon, yet it may remember, and now tell mee, at what lascivious banquet it was serv’d. And though it could not speaker, when it was a spider, yet it can remember, and now tell me, who used it for poison to attaine dignitie. How ever the bodies have dull’d her other faculties, her memory hath ever been her owne, which makes me so seriously deliver you by her relation all her passages from her first making when shee was that apple which Eve eate, to this time when shee is hee, whose life you shall finde in the end of this booke.
THE PROGRESS OF THE SOUL
First Song.
I.
I sing of the progresse of a deathlesse soule,
Whom Fate, which God made, but doth not controule,
Plac’d in most shapes; all times before the law
Yoak’d us, and when, and since, in this I sing.
And the great world to his aged evening;
From infant morne, through manly noone I draw.
What the gold Chaldee, or silver Persian saw,
Greeke brasse, or Roman iron, is in this one;
A worke t’outweare Seths pillars, bricke and stone,
And (holy writt excepted) made to yeeld to none.
II.
Thee, eye of heaven, this greate Soule envies not,
By thy male force, is all wee have, begot,
In the first East, thou now beginst to shine,
Suck’st early balme, and Iland spices there,
And wilt anon in thy loose-rein’d careere
At Tagus, Po, Sene, Thames, and Danow dine.
And see at night thy Westerne land of Myne,
Yet hast thou not more nations seene then shee,
That before thee, one day beganne to bee,
And thy fraile light being quench’d, shall long, long out live thee.
III.
Nor, holy Janus, in whose soveraigne boate
The Church, and all the Monarchies did floate:
That swimming Colledge, and free Hospitall
Of all mankinde, that cage and vivarie
Of fowles, and beastes, in whose wombe, Destinie
us, and our latest nephewes did install
(From thence are all deriv’d, that fills this All,)
Did’st thou in that great stewardship embarke
So diverse shapes into that floating parke,
As have beene moved, and inform’d by this heavenly sparke.
IV.
Great Destiny the Commissary of God,
That hast mark’d out a path and period
For every thing; who, where wee of-spring tooke,
Our wayes and ends seest at one instant; Thou
Knot of all causes, thou whose changelesse brow
Ne’r smiles nor frownes, O vouch thou safe to looke
And shew my story, in thy eternall booke:
That (if my prayer be fit) I may’understand
So much my selfe, as to know with what hand,
How scant, or liberall this my lifes race is spand.
V.
To my sixe lustres almost now outwore,
Except thy booke owe me so many more,
Except my legend be free from the letts
Of steepe ambition, sleepie povertie,
Spirit-quenching sicknesse, dull captivitie,
Distracting businesse, and from beauties nets,
And all that calls from this, and to others whets,
O let me not launch out, but let me save
Th’expense of braine and spirit; that my grave
His right and due, a whole unwasted man may have.
VI.
But if my dayes be long, and good enough,
In vaine this sea shall enlarge, or enrough
It selfe; for I will through the wave, and fome,
And shall, in sad lone wayes a lively spright,
Make my darke heavy Poëm light, and light.
For though through many streights, and lands I roame,
I launch at paradise, and I saile towards home;
The course I there began, shall here be staid,
Sailes hoised there, stroke here, and anchors laid
In Thames, which were at Tygrys, and Euphrates waide.
VII.
For the great soule which here amongst us now
Doth dwell, and moves that hand, and tongue, and brow,
Which, as the Moone the sea, moves us; to heare
Whose story, with long patience you will long;
(For ‘tis the crowne, and last straine of my song)
This soule to whom Luther and Mahomet were
Prisons of flesh; this soule which oft did teare,
And mend the wracks of th’Empire, and late Rome,
And liv’d when every great change did come,
Had first in paradise, a low, but fatall roome.
VIII.
Yet no low roome, nor then the greatest, lesse,
If (as devout and sharpe men fitly guesse)
That Crosse, our joy, and griefe, where nailes did tye
That All, which alwayes was all, every where,
Which could not sinne, and yet all sinnes did beare;
Which could not die, yet could not chuse but die;
Stood in the selfe same roome in Calvarie,
Where first grew the forbidden learned tree,
For on that tree hung in security
This Soule, made by the Makers will from pulling free.
IX.
Prince of the orchard, faire as dawning morne,
Fenc’d with the law, and ripe as soone as borne
That apple grew, which this Soule did enlive
Till the then climing serpent, that now creeps
For that offence, for which all mankinde weepes,
Tooke it, and t’her whom the first man did wive
(Whom and her race, only forbiddings drive)
He gave it, she, t’her husband, both did eate;
So perished the eaters, and the meate:
And wee (for treason taints the blood) thence die and sweat.