John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (24 page)

Care not then, Madam, how low your praisers lie;

In labourers' ballad, oft more piety

God finds, than in
Te Deum
's melody.

And, ordnance raised on towers so many mile

Send not their voice, nor last so long a while

As fires from th' earth's low vaults in Sicil Isle.

Should I say I lived darker than were true,

Your radiation can all clouds subdue;

But one, 'tis best light to contemplate you.

You, for whose body God made better clay,

Or took soul's stuff such as shall late decay,

Or such as needs small change at the last day.

This, as an amber drop enwraps a bee,

Covering discovers your quick soul; that we

May in your through-shine front your heart's thoughts see.

You teach (though we learn not) a thing unknown

To our late times, the use of specular stone,

Through which all things within without were shown.

Of such were temples; so and of such you are;

Being and seeming is your equal care,

And virtue's whole sum is but know and dare.

But as our souls of growth and souls of sense

Have birthright of our reason's soul, yet hence

They fly not from that, nor seek precedence:

Nature's first lesson, so, discretion,

Must not grudge zeal a place, nor yet keep none,

Not banish itself, nor religion.

Discretion is a wiseman's soul, and so

Religion is a Christian's, and you know

How these are one, her
yea,
is not her
no.

Nor may we hope to solder still and knit

These two, and dare to break them; nor must wit

Be colleague to religion, but be it.

In those poor types of God (round circles) so

Religions' types, the pieceless centres flow,

And are in all the lines which all ways go.

If either ever wrought in you alone

Or principally, then religion

Wrought your ends, and your ways discretion.

Go thither still, go the same way you went,

Who so would change, do covet or repent;

Neither can reach you, great and innocent.

To the Countess of Bedford

Madam,

Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right,

By these we reach divinity, that's you;

Their loves, who have the blessing of your sight,

Grew from their reason, mine from fair faith grew.

But as, although a squint lefthandedness

Be ungracious, yet we cannot want that hand,

So would I, not to increase, but to express

My faith, as I believe, so understand.

Therefore I study you first in your Saints,

Those friends, whom your election glorifies,

Then in your deeds, accesses, and restraints,

And what you read, and what yourself devise.

But soon, the reasons why you are loved by all,

Grow infinite, and so pass reason's reach,

Then back again to implicit faith I fall,

And rest on what the catholic voice doth teach;

That you are good: and not one heretic

Denies it: if he did, yet you are so.

For, rocks, which high-topped and deep-rooted stick,

Waves wash, not undermine, nor overthrow.

In everything there naturally grows

A balsamum to keep it fresh, and new,

If 'twere not injured by extrinsic blows;

Your birth and beauty are this balm in you.

But you of learning and religion,

And virtue, and such ingredients, have made

A mithridate, whose operation

Keeps off, or cures what can be done or said.

Yet, this is not your physic, but your food,

A diet fit for you; for you are here

The first good angel, since the world's frame stood,

That ever did in woman's shape appear.

Since you are then God's masterpiece, and so

His factor for our loves; do as you do,

Make your return home gracious; and bestow

This life on that; so make one life of two.

For so God help me, I would not miss you there

For all the good which you can do me here.

To the Countess of Bedford

Begun in France but Never Perfected

Though I be dead, and buried, yet I have

(Living in you,) Court enough in my grave,

As oft as there I think myself to be,

So many resurrections waken me.

That thankfulness your favours have begot

In me, embalms me, that I do not rot.

This season as 'tis Easter, as 'tis spring,

Must both to growth and to confession bring

My thoughts disposed unto your influence, so,

These verses bud, so these confessions grow;

First I confess I have to others lent

Your stock, and over prodigally spent

Your treasure, for since I had never known

Virtue or beauty, but as they are grown

In you, I should not think or say they shine,

(So as I have) in any other mine;

Next I confess this my confession,

For, 'tis some fault thus much to touch upon

Your praise to you, where half rights seem too much,

And make your mind's sincere complexion blush.

Next I confess my impenitence, for I

Can scarce repent my first fault, since thereby

Remote low spirits, which shall ne'er read you,

May in less lessons find enough to do,

By studying copies, not originals,

Desunt caetera.

To the Countess of Bedford

To have written then, when you writ, seemed to me

Worst of spiritual vices, simony,

And not to have written then, seems little less

Than worst of civil vices, thanklessness.

In this, my debt I seemed loth to confess,

In that, I seemed to shun beholdingness.

But 'tis not so, nothings, as I am, may

Pay all they have, and yet have all to pay.

Such borrow in their payments, and owe more

By having leave to write so, than before.

Yet since rich mines in barren grounds are shown,

May not I yield (not gold) but coal or stone?

Temples were not demolished, though profane:

Here Peter Jove's, there Paul hath Dian's fane.

So whether my hymns you admit or choose,

In me you have hallowed a pagan Muse,

And denizened a stranger, who mistaught

By blamers of the times they marred, hath sought

Virtues in corners, which now bravely do

Shine in the world's best part, or all it; you.

I have been told, that virtue in courtiers' hearts

Suffers an ostracism, and departs.

Profit, ease, fitness, plenty, bid it go,

But whither, only knowing you, I know;

Your (or you) virtue, two vast uses serves,

It ransoms one sex, and one Court preserves;

There's nothing but your worth, which being true,

Is known to any other, not to you:

And you can never know it; to admit

No knowledge of your worth, is some of it.

But since to you, your praises discords be,

Stoop others' ills to meditate with me.

Oh! to confess we know not what we should,

Is half excuse; we know not what we would.

Lightness depresseth us, emptiness fills,

We sweat and faint, yet still go down the hills;

As new philosophy arrests the sun,

And bids the passive earth about it run,

So we have dulled our mind, it hath no ends;

Only the body's busy, and pretends;

As dead low earth eclipses and controls

The quick high moon: so doth the body, souls.

In none but us, are such mixed engines found,

As hands of double office: for, the ground

We till with them; and them to heaven we raise;

Who prayerless labours, or, without this, prays,

Doth but one half, that's none; he which said,
Plough

And look not back,
to look up doth allow.

Good seed degenerates, and oft obeys

The soil's disease, and into cockle strays.

Let the mind's thoughts be but transplanted so,

Into the body, and bastardly they grow.

What hate could hurt our bodies like our love?

We, but no foreign tyrants could, remove

These not engraved, but inborn dignities

Caskets of souls; temples, and palaces:

For, bodies shall from death redeemed be,

Souls but preserved, not naturally free.

As men to our prisons, new souls to us are sent,

Which learn vice there, and come in innocent.

First seeds of every creature are in us,

Whate'er the world hath bad, or precious,

Man's body can produce, hence hath it been

That stones, worms, frogs, and snakes in man are seen

But who e'er saw, though nature can work so,

That pearl, or gold, or corn in man did grow?

We' have added to the world Virginia, and sent

Two new stars lately to the firmament;

Why grudge we us (not heaven) the dignity

T' increase with ours, those fair souls' company?

But I must end this letter, though it do

Stand on two truths, neither is true to you.

Virtue hath some perverseness; for she will

Neither believe her good, nor others' ill.

Even in you, virtue's best paradise,

Virtue hath some, but wise degrees of vice.

Too many virtues, or too much of one

Begets in you unjust suspicion.

And ignorance of vice, makes virtue less,

Quenching compassion of our wretchedness.

But these are riddles; some aspersion

Of vice becomes well some complexion.

Statesmen purge vice with vice, and may corrode

The bad with bad, a spider with a toad:

For so, ill thralls not them, but they tame ill

And make her do much good against her will,

But in your commonwealth, or world in you,

Vice hath no office, or good work to do.

Take then no vicious purge, but be content

With cordial virtue, your known nourishment.

To the Countess of Bedford

Madam,

You have refined me, and to worthiest things

(Virtue, art, beauty, fortune,) now I see

Rareness, or use, not nature value brings;

And such, as they are circumstanced, they be.

Two ills can ne'er perplex us, sin to excuse;

But of two good things, we may leave and choose.

Therefore at Court, which is not virtue's clime,

(Where a transcendent height, (as, lowness me)

Makes her not be, or not show) all my rhyme

Your virtues challenge, which there rarest be;

For, as dark texts need notes: there some must be

To usher virtue, and say,
This is she.

So in the country is beauty; to this place

You are the season (Madam) you the day,

'Tis but a grave of spices, till your face

Exhale them, and a thick close bud display.

Widowed and reclused else, her sweets she enshrines

As China, when the sun at Brazil dines.

Out from your chariot, morning breaks at night,

And falsifies both computations so;

Since a new world doth rise here from your light,

We your new creatures, by new reckonings go.

This shows that you from nature loathly stray,

That suffer not an artificial day.

In this you have made the Court the antipodes,

And willed your delegate, the vulgar sun,

To do profane autumnal offices,

Whilst here to you, we sacrificers run;

And whether priests, or organs, you we obey,

We sound your influence, and your dictates say.

Yet to that deity which dwells in you,

Your virtuous soul, I now not sacrifice;

These are petitions and not hymns; they sue

But that I may survey the edifice.

In all religions as much care hath been

Of temples' frames, and beauty, as rites within.

As all which go to Rome, do not thereby

Esteem religions, and hold fast the best,

But serve discourse, and curiosity,

With that which doth religion but invest,

And shun th' entangling labyrinths of schools,

And make it wit, to think the wiser fools:

So in this pilgrimage I would behold

You as you'are virtue's temple, not as she,

What walls of tender crystal her enfold,

What eyes, hands, bosom, her pure altars be;

And after this survey, oppose to all

Babblers of chapels, you th' Escurial.

Yet not as consecrate, but merely as fair,

On these I cast a lay and country eye.

Of past and future stories, which are rare,

I find you all record, all prophecy.

Purge but the book of Fate, that it admit

No sad nor guilty legends, you are it.

If good and lovely were not one, of both

You were the transcript, and original,

The elements, the parent, and the growth,

And every piece of you, is both their all:

So entire are all your deeds, and you, that you

Must do the same thing still; you cannot two.

But these (as nice thin school divinity

Serves heresy to further or repress)

Taste of poetic rage, or flattery,

And need not, where all hearts one truth profess;

Oft from new proofs, and new phrase, new doubts grow,

As strange attire aliens the men we know.

Leaving then busy praise, and all appeal

To higher courts, sense's decree is true,

The mine, the magazine, the commonweal,

The story of beauty, in Twicknam is, and you.

Who hath seen one, would both; as, who had been

In Paradise, would seek the cherubin.

To the Lady Bedford