John Donne (1572-1631)

"Holy Sonnets: XIV"


Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

This poem is an appeal to God, pleading with Him not for mercy or clemency or benevolent aid but for a violent, almost brutal overmastering; thus, it implores God to perform actions that would usually be considered extremely sinful—from battering the speaker to actually raping him, which, he says in the final line, is the only way he will ever be chaste. The poem’s metaphors (the speaker’s heart as a captured town, the speaker as a maiden betrothed to God’s enemy) work with its extraordinary series of violent and powerful verbs (batter, o’erthrow, bend, break, blow, burn, divorce, untie, break, take, imprison, enthrall, ravish) to create the image of God as an overwhelming, violent conqueror. The bizarre nature of the speaker’s plea finds its apotheosis in the paradoxical final couplet, in which the speaker claims that only if God takes him prisoner can he be free, and only if God ravishes him can he be chaste.

As is amply illustrated by the contrast between Donne’s religious lyrics and his metaphysical love poems, Donne is a poet deeply divided between religious spirituality and a kind of carnal lust for life. Many of his best poems, including “Batter my heart, three-personed God,” mix the discourse of the spiritual and the physical or of the holy and the secular. In this case, the speaker achieves that mix by claiming that he can only overcome sin and achieve spiritual purity if he is forced by God in the most physical, violent, and carnal terms imaginable.

"Holy Sonnets: X"


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 picture[s] 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'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 swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more ; Death, thou shalt die.




"The Sun Rising"


This poem is an aubade, a poem about lovers separating at dawn. 

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.

One of Donne’s most charming and successful metaphysical love poems, “The Sun Rising” is built around a few hyperbolic assertions—first, that the sun is conscious and has the watchful personality of an old busybody; second, that love, as the speaker puts it, “no season knows, nor clime, / Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time”; third, that the speaker’s love affair is so important to the universe that kings and princes simply copy it, that the world is literally contained within their bedroom. Of course, each of these assertions simply describes figuratively a state of feeling—to the wakeful lover, the rising sun does seem like an intruder, irrelevant to the operations of love; to the man in love, the bedroom can seem to enclose all the matters in the world. The inspiration of this poem is to pretend that each of these subjective states of feeling is an objective truth.

Accordingly, Donne endows his speaker with language implying that what goes on in his head is primary over the world outside it; for instance, in the second stanza, the speaker tells the sun that it is not so powerful, since the speaker can cause an eclipse simply by closing his eyes. This kind of heedless, joyful arrogance is perfectly tuned to the consciousness of a new lover, and the speaker appropriately claims to have all the world’s riches in his bed (India, he says, is not where the sun left it; it is in bed with him). The speaker captures the essence of his feeling in the final stanza, when, after taking pity on the sun and deciding to ease the burdens of his old age, he declares “Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere.”

"The Bait"


The first few lines of this poem is from Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Nymph."

COME live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.

There will the river whisp'ring run
Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun ;
And there th' enamour'd fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou, to be so seen, be'st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy net.

Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest ;
Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes.

For thee, thou need'st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait :
That fish, that is not catch'd thereby,
Alas ! is wiser far than I.

"The Ecstacy"

WHERE, like a pillow on a bed,
     A pregnant bank swell'd up, to rest
The violet's reclining head,
     Sat we two, one another's best.

Our hands were firmly cemented
     By a fast balm, which thence did spring ;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
     Our eyes upon one double string.

So to engraft our hands, as yet
     Was all the means to make us one ;
And pictures in our eyes to get
     Was all our propagation.

As, 'twixt two equal armies, Fate
     Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls—which to advance their state,
     Were gone out—hung 'twixt her and me.

And whilst our souls negotiate there,
     We like sepulchral statues lay ;
All day, the same our postures were,
     And we said nothing, all the day.

If any, so by love refined,
     That he soul's language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
     Within convenient distance stood,

He—though he knew not which soul spake,
     Because both meant, both spake the same—
Might thence a new concoction take,
     And part far purer than he came.

This ecstasy doth unperplex
     (We said) and tell us what we love ;
We see by this, it was not sex ;
     We see, we saw not, what did move :

But as all several souls contain
     Mixture of things they know not what,
Love these mix'd souls doth mix again,
     And makes both one, each this, and that.

A single violet transplant,
     The strength, the colour, and the size—
All which before was poor and scant—
     Redoubles still, and multiplies.

When love with one another so
     Interanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
     Defects of loneliness controls.

We then, who are this new soul, know,
     Of what we are composed, and made,
For th' atomies of which we grow
     Are souls, whom no change can invade.

But, O alas ! so long, so far,
     Our bodies why do we forbear?
They are ours, though not we ; we are
     Th' intelligences, they the spheres.

We owe them thanks, because they thus
     Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses' force to us,
     Nor are dross to us, but allay.

On man heaven's influence works not so,
     But that it first imprints the air ;
For soul into the soul may flow,
     Though it to body first repair.

As our blood labours to beget
     Spirits, as like souls as it can ;
Because such fingers need to knit
     That subtle knot, which makes us man ;

So must pure lovers' souls descend
     To affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
     Else a great prince in prison lies.

To our bodies turn we then, that so
     Weak men on love reveal'd may look ;
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
     But yet the body is his book.

And if some lover, such as we,
     Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
     Small change when we're to bodies gone.

"An Anatomy of the World"


It begins:


When that rich soul which to her heaven is gone,
Whom all do celebrate, who know they have one
(For who is sure he hath a soul, unless
It see, and judge, and follow worthiness,
And by deeds praise it? He who doth not this,
May lodge an inmate soul, but 'tis not his)
When that queen ended here her progress time,
And, as t'her standing house, to heaven did climb,
Where loath to make the saints attend her long,
She's now a part both of the choir, and song;
This world, in that great earthquake languished;
For in a common bath of tears it bled,
Which drew the strongest vital spirits out;
But succour'd then with a perplexed doubt,
Whether the world did lose, or gain in this,
(Because since now no other way there is,
But goodness, to see her, whom all would see,
All must endeavour to be good as she)
This great consumption to a fever turn'd,
And so the world had fits; it joy'd, it mourn'd;
And, as men think, that agues physic are,
And th' ague being spent, give over care,
So thou, sick world, mistak'st thy self to be
Well, when alas, thou'rt in a lethargy.
Her death did wound and tame thee then, and then
Thou might'st have better spar'd the sun, or man.
That wound was deep, but 'tis more misery
That thou hast lost thy sense and memory.


It ends:


The noblest part, man, felt it first; and then
Both beasts and plants, curs'd in the curse of man.
So did the world from the first hour decay,
That evening was beginning of the day,
And now the springs and summers which we see,
Like sons of women after fifty be.
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 Canonization"


For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love;
    Or chide my palsy, or my gout;
    My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve;
    Take you a course, get you a place,
    Observe his Honor, or his Grace;
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
    Contemplate; what you will, approve,
    So you will let me love.


Alas! alas! who's injured by my love?
    What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
    Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
    When did the heats which my veins fill
    Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
    Litigious men, which quarrels move,
    Though she and I do love.


Call's what you will, we are made such by love;
    Call her one, me another fly,
    We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th'eagle and the dove.
     The phoenix riddle hath more wit
     By us; we two being one, are it;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
      We die and rise the same, and prove
      Mysterious by this love.


We can die by it, if not live by love,
      And if unfit for tomb or hearse
      Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
      We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
      As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
      And by these hymns, all shall approve
      Us canonized for love;


And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love
      Made one another's hermitage;
      You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
      Into the glasses of your eyes;
      So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize - 
      Countries, towns, courts beg from above
      A pattern of your love.


This complicated poem, spoken ostensibly to someone who disapproves of the speaker’s love affair, is written in the voice of a world-wise, sardonic courtier who is nevertheless utterly caught up in his love. The poem simultaneously parodies old notions of love and coins elaborate new ones, eventually concluding that even if the love affair is impossible in the real world, it can become legendary through poetry, and the speaker and his lover will be like saints to later generations of lovers. (Hence the title: “The Canonization” refers to the process by which people are inducted into the canon of saints).




"The Flea"


Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
    Yet this enjoys before it woo,
    And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two;
    And this, alas! is more than we would do.


O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
    Though use make you apt to kill me,
    Let not to that self-murder added be,
    And sacrilege, three sins in killig three. 


Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
    'Tis true; then learn how false fears be;
    Just so much honor, when thou yield'st to me,
    Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee. 

This funny little poem again exhibits Donne’s metaphysical love-poem mode, his aptitude for turning even the least likely images into elaborate symbols of love and romance. This poem uses the image of a flea that has just bitten the speaker and his beloved to sketch an amusing conflict over whether the two will engage in premarital sex. The speaker wants to, the beloved does not, and so the speaker, highly clever but grasping at straws, uses the flea, in whose body his blood mingles with his beloved’s, to show how innocuous such mingling can be—he reasons that if mingling in the flea is so innocuous, sexual mingling would be equally innocuous, for they are really the same thing. By the second stanza, the speaker is trying to save the flea’s life, holding it up as “our marriage bed and marriage temple.”

But when the beloved kills the flea despite the speaker’s protestations (and probably as a deliberate move to squash his argument, as well), he turns his argument on its head and claims that despite the high-minded and sacred ideals he has just been invoking, killing the flea did not really impugn his beloved’s honor—and despite the high-minded and sacred ideals she has invoked in refusing to sleep with him, doing so would not impugn her honor either.

This poem is the cleverest of a long line of sixteenth-century love poems using the flea as an erotic image, a genre derived from an older poem of Ovid. Donne’s poise of hinting at the erotic without ever explicitly referring to sex, while at the same time leaving no doubt as to exactly what he means, is as much a source of the poem’s humor as the silly image of the flea is; the idea that being bitten by a flea would represent “sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead” gets the point across with a neat conciseness and clarity that Donne’s later religious lyrics never attained.

"Air and Angels"

TWICE or thrice had I loved thee,
     Before I knew thy face or name ;
     So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.
     Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
     But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
     More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too ;
     And therefore what thou wert, and who,
          I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
     And so more steadily to have gone,
     With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught ;
     Thy every hair for love to work upon
Is much too much ; some fitter must be sought ;
     For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere ;
     Then as an angel face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
     So thy love may be my love's sphere ;
          Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air's and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.

"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,
     "Now his breath goes," 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 th' 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
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
     The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
     That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd 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 aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
     As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
     To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre 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 th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
     And makes me end where I begun.

“A Valediction: forbidding Mourning” is one of Donne’s most famous and simplest poems and also probably his most direct statement of his ideal of spiritual love. For all his erotic carnality in poems, such as “The Flea,” Donne professed a devotion to a kind of spiritual love that transcended the merely physical. Here, anticipating a physical separation from his beloved, he invokes the nature of that spiritual love to ward off the “tear-floods” and “sigh-tempests” that might otherwise attend on their farewell. The poem is essentially a sequence of metaphors and comparisons, each describing a way of looking at their separation that will help them to avoid the mourning forbidden by the poem’s title.