JOHN DONNE. JOHN DONNE was born in London, in 1573. He entered Hertford College at the early age of eleven, and became a youthful prodigy of learning. Donne, who had been bred a Catholic, early in life, on sincere conviction, renounced that faith, and became a Protestant minister; he obtained the favour of King James the First, and died Dean of St. Paul's, in 1631. Without being in the strictest sense of the word a sacred poet, Donne is one of those writers who have shown their reverence of religion with the warmth and sincerity of genuine feeling. He is frequently rugged and obscure, yet he displays a depth of sentiment and an originality of thought, which contain the germs of true poetry. SACRED SONNETS. I. THOU hast made me, and shall thy work decay? Despair behind, and death before, doth cast That not one hour myself I can sustain; II. This is my play's last scene; here heavens appoint Idly yet quickly run, hath this last pace; My body and my soul, and I shall sleep a space; Whose fear already shakes my every joint: Then as my soul, to heaven, her first seat, takes flight, And earth-born body, in the earth shall dwell, So fall my sins, that all may have their right, To where they're bred, and would press me to hell. Impute me righteous, thus purged of evil, For thus I leave the world, the filesh, the devil. III. At the round earth's imagined corners, blow Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go All whom the flood did, and fire shall, o'erthrow; All whom war, death, 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 sealed my pardon with thy blood. IV. Death, be not proud, though some have called thee For those whom thou thinkest thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be, Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow: Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. Thou'rt 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 swellest thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally; And death shall be no more; Death! thou must die. ODE. VENGEANCE will sit above our faults; but till We see her not, nor them. Thus blind, yet still Unhappy he whom youth makes not beware Enough we labour under age and care: Yet we, that should the ill we now begin (Strange thing!) perceive not; our faults are not seen, The punishment. But we know ourselves least; mere outward shows Our minds so store, That our souls, no more than our eyes, disclose Himself, knows more. 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; Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood; They never will despise. I sacrifice this island unto Thee And all whom I loved there, and who loved me; In winter, in my winter now I go, Where none but Thee, th' eternal root Of true love, I may know. Not 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 am I jealous now, Thou lovest not, till from loving more, Thou free My soul: who ever gives, takes liberty : Oh! if Thou carest not whom I love, Seal, then, this bill of my divorce to all And to 'scape stormy days, I choose An everlasting night. HYMN TO GOD, MY GOD. SINCE I am coming to that holy room Where with the choir of saints for evermore I tune the instrument here at the door, Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Per fretum febris, by these straits to die; I joy that in these straits I see my west; For though those currents yield return to none, We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ's cross and Adam's tree, stood in one place, As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face, So in his purple wrapped receive me, Lord By these his thorns give me his holy crown, And as to others' souls I preached thy word, Be this my text, my sermon to mine own; Therefore, that He may raise, the Lord throws down. |