John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (26 page)

Though he be called aloud, to look again.

Let others sigh, and grieve; one cunning sleight

Shall freeze my love to crystal in a night.

I can love first, and (if I win) love still;

And cannot be removed, unless she will.

It is her fault if I unsure remain,

She only can untie, and bind again.

The honesties of love with ease I do,

But am no porter for a tedious woo.

But (Madam) I now think on you; and here

Where we are at our heights, you but appear,

We are but clouds you rise from, our noon ray

But a foul shadow, not your break of day.

You are at first hand all that's fair and right,

And others' good reflects but back your light.

You are a perfectness, so curious hit,

That youngest flatteries do scandal it.

For, what is more doth what you are restrain,

And though beyond, is down the hill again.

We'have no next way to you, we cross to it:

You are the straight line, thing praised, attribute.

Each good in you 's a light; so many a shade

You make, and in them are your motions made.

These are your pictures to the life. From far

We see you move, and here your zanies are:

So that no fountain good there is, doth grow

In you, but our dim actions faintly show.

Then find I, if man's noblest part be love,

Your purest lustre must that shadow move.

The soul with body, is a heaven combined

With earth, and for man's ease, but nearer joined.

Where thoughts the stars of soul we understand,

We guess not their large natures, but command.

And love in you, that bounty is of light,

That gives to all, and yet hath infinite,

Whose heat doth force us thither to intend,

But soul we find too earthly to ascend,

'Till slow access hath made it wholly pure,

Able immortal clearness to endure.

Who dare aspire this journey with a stain,

Hath weight will force him headlong back again.

No more can impure man retain and move

In that pure region of a worthy love,

Than earthly substance can unforced aspire,

And leave his nature to converse with fire:

Such may have eye, and hand; may sigh, may speak;

But like swoll'n bubbles, when they are high'st they break.

Though far removed northern fleets scarce find

The sun's comfort; others think him too kind.

There is an equal distance from her eye,

Men perish too far off, and burn too nigh.

But as air takes the sun-beam's equal bright

From the first rays, to his last opposite:

So able men, blessed with a virtuous love,

Remote or near, or howsoe'er they move;

Their virtue breaks all clouds that might annoy,

There is no emptiness, but all is joy.

He much profanes whom violent heats do move

To style his wandering rage of passion, love.

Love that imparts in everything delight,

Is feigned, which only tempts man's appetite.

Why love among the virtues is not known

Is, that love is them all contract in one.

To the Countess of Salisbury

August 1614

Fair, great, and good, since seeing you, we see

What heaven can do, and what any earth can be:

Since now your beauty shines, now when the sun

Grown stale, is to so low a value run,

That his dishevelled beams and scattered fires

Serve but for ladies' periwigs and tires

In lovers' sonnets: you come to repair

God's book of creatures, teaching what is fair;

Since now, when all is withered, shrunk, and dried,

All virtue ebbed out to a dead low tide,

All the world's frame being crumbled into sand,

Where every man thinks by himself to stand,

Integrity, friendship, and confidence,

(Cements of greatness) being vapoured hence,

And narrow man being filled with little shares,

Court, city, church, are all shops of small-wares,

All having blown to sparks their noble fire,

And drawn their sound gold-ingot into wire,

All trying by a love of littleness

To make abridgements, and to draw to less

Even that nothing, which at first we were;

Since in these times, your greatness doth appear,

And that we learn by it, that man to get

Towards him, that's infinite, must first be great;

Since in an age so ill, as none is fit

So much as to accuse, much less mend it,

(For who can judge, or witness of those times

Where all alike are guilty of the crimes?)

Where he that would be good, is thought by all

A monster, or at best fantastical:

Since now you durst be good, and that I do

Discern, by daring to contemplate you,

That there may be degrees of fair, great, good,

Though your light, largeness, virtue understood:

If in this sacrifice of mine, be shown

Any small spark of these, call it your own.

And if things like these, have been said by me

Of others; call not that idolatry.

For had God made man first, and man had seen

The third day's fruits, and flowers, and various green,

He might have said the best that he could say

Of those fair creatures, which were made that day:

And when next day, he had admired the birth

Of sun, moon, stars, fairer than late-praised earth,

He might have said the best that he could say,

And not be chid for praising yesterday:

So though some things are not together true

As, that another is worthiest, and, that you:

Yet, to say so, doth not condemn a man,

If when he spoke them, they were both true then.

How fair a proof of this, in our soul grows!

We first have souls of growth, and sense, and those,

When our last soul, our soul immortal came,

Were swallowed into it, and have no name.

Nor doth he injure those souls, which doth cast

The power and praise of both them, on the last;

No more do I wrong any; I adore

The same things now, which I adored before,

The subject changed, and measure; the same thing

In a low constable, and in the King

I reverence; his power to work on me:

So did I humbly reverence each degree

Of fair, great, good, but more, now I am come

From having found their walks, to find their home.

And as I owe my first souls thanks, that they

For my last soul did fit and mould my clay,

So am I debtor unto them, whose worth,

Enabled me to profit, and take forth

This new great lesson, thus to study you;

Which none, not reading others, first, could do.

Nor lack I light to read this book, though I

In a dark cave, yea in a grave do lie;

For as your fellow angels, so you do

Illustrate them who come to study you.

The first whom we in histories do find

To have professed all arts, was one born blind:

He lacked those eyes beasts have as well as we,

Not those, by which angels are seen and see;

So, though I'am born without those eyes to live,

Which fortune, who hath none herself, doth give,

Which are, fit means to see bright courts and you,

Yet may I see you thus, as now I do;

I shall by that, all

EPICEDES AND OBSEQUIES

CONTENTS

ON HIMSELF.

MY FORTUNE AND MY WILL THIS CUSTOM BREAK

MAN IS THE WORLD, AND DEATH THE OCEAN

ELEGY UPON THE UNTIMELY DEATH OF THE INCOMPARABLE PRINCE HENRY

OBSEQUIES OF THE LORD HARRINGTON, BROTHER TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD

ELEGY ON MISTRESS BOULSTRED (I)

ELEGY ON MISTRESS BOULSTRED (II)

DEATH

ELEGY ON THE LORD CHANCELLOR

A HYMN TO THE SAINTS, AND TO MARQUIS HAMILTON

ON HIMSELF.

My fortune and my choice this custom break,
When we are speechless grown to make stones speak.
Though no stone tell thee what I was, yet thou
In my grave’s inside seest what thou art now,
Yet thou ‘rt not yet so good;  till death us lay
To ripe and mellow here, we’re stubborn clay.
Parents make us earth, and souls dignify
Us to be glass;  here to grow gold we lie.
Whilst in our souls sin bred and pamper’d is,
Our souls become worm-eaten carcases,
So we ourselves miraculously destroy.
Here bodies with less miracle enjoy
Such privileges, enabled here to scale
Heaven, when the trumpet’s air shall them exhale.
Hear this, and mend thyself, and thou mend’st me,
By making me, being dead, do good for thee;
    And think me well composed, that I could now
    A last sick hour to syllables allow.

MY FORTUNE AND MY WILL THIS CUSTOM BREAK

    MADAM —
That I might make your cabinet my tomb,
    And for my fame, which I love next my soul,
Next to my soul provide the happiest room,
    Admit to that place this last funeral scroll.
   Others by wills give legacies, but I
   Dying, of you do beg a legacy.

My fortune and my will this custom break,
When we are senseless grown to make stones speak,
Though no stone tell thee what I was, yet thou
In my grave’s inside seest what thou art now,
Yet thou ‘rt not yet so good;  till death us lay
To ripe and mellow there, we’re stubborn clay.
Parents make us earth, and souls dignify
Us to be glass;  here to grow gold we lie.
Whilst in our souls sin bred and pamper’d is,
Our souls become worm-eaten carcases.

MAN IS THE WORLD, AND DEATH THE OCEAN

Elegy on the Lady Markham

MAN is the world, and death the ocean,
To which God gives the lower parts of man.
This sea environs all, and though as yet
God hath set marks and bounds ’twixt us and it,
Yet doth it roar, and gnaw, and still pretend, 
5
And breaks our bank, whene’er it takes a friend.
Then our land waters, tears of passion, vent;
Our waters, then, above our firmament
—Tears which our soul doth for her sins let fall—
Take all a brackish taste, and funeral. 
10
And e’en those tears which should wash sin, are sin.
We, after God’s ‘No,’ drown the world again.
Nothing but man of all envenom’d things
Doth work upon itself with inborn stings.
Tears are false spectacles; we cannot see, 
15
Through passion’s mist, what we are or what she.
In her this sea of death hath made no breach,
But as the tide doth wash the slimy beach,
And leaves embroider’d works upon the sand,
So is her flesh refined by death’s cold hand. 
20
As men of China, after an age’s stay,
Do take up porcelain, where they buried clay;
So at this grave, her limbec—which refines
The diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls and mines,
Of which this flesh was—her soul shall inspire 
25
Flesh of such stuff, as God, when His last fire
Annuls this world, to recompense it, shall
Make and name then th’ elixir of this all.
They say the sea, when it gains, loseth too;
If carnal death, the younger brother, do 
30
Usurp the body, our soul, which subject is
To th’ elder death by sin, is freed by this.
They perish both, when they attempt the just;
For graves our trophies are, and both death’s dust.
So, unobnoxious now, she hath buried both; 
35
For none to death sins, that to sin is loth;
Nor do they die, which are not loth to die;
So hath she this and that virginity.
Grace was in her extremely diligent,
That kept her from sin, yet made her repent. 
40
Of what small spots pure white complains! Alas,
How little poison cracks a crystal glass!
She sinn’d but just enough to let us see
That God’s word must be true, ‘All, sinners be.’
So much did zeal her conscience rarify, 
  45
That extreme truth lacked little of a lie,
Making omissions acts, laying the touch
Of sin on things that sometime may be such.
As Moses’ cherubins, whose natures do
Surpass all speed, by him are winged too; 
50
So would her soul, already in heaven, seem then
To climb by tears the common stairs of men.
How fit she was for God, I am content
To speak, that death his vain haste may repent.
How fit for us, how even and how sweet, 
55
How good in all her titles, and how meet
To have reform’d this forward heresy,
That women can no parts of friendship be,
How moral, how divine, shall not be told,
Lest they that hear her virtues, 5 think her old; 
60
And lest we take death’s part, and make him glad
Of such a prey, and to his triumph add.

ELEGY UPON THE UNTIMELY DEATH OF THE INCOMPARABLE PRINCE HENRY