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.

Metaphysical Poets

John Donne

George Herbert

Andrew Marvell

• metaphysical concerns are the common subject of their poetry
• they investigate the world by rational discussion of its phenomena
• Jonson, in "The Lives of the Poets", noted that metaphysical poets wrote about "a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult ressemblances in things apparently unlike", e.g. a comparison of love with astrology (Donne) and the soul with a drop of dew (Marvell)
• energetic, uneven, rigorous style

Richard Lovelace (1618-1657)

Imprisoned briefly in 1648 for supporting the Royalists during the time of Oliver Cromwell.

"To Lucasta, on Going to the Warres"

I.
Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkinde,
    That from the Nunnerie
Of thy chaste breast, and quiet minde,
     To Warre and Armes I flie.

II.
True; a new Mistresse now I chase,
     The first Foe in the Field;
And with a stronger Faith imbrace
     A Sword, a Horse, a Shield.

III.
Yet this Inconstancy is such,
     As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee (Deare) so much,
     Lov'd I not Honour more.


"To Althea, from Prison"

I.
When Love with unconfined wings
     Hovers within my Gates;
And my divine Althea brings
     To whisper at the Grates;
When I lye tangled in her haire
     And fettered to her eye;
The Gods that wanton in the Aire,
     Know no such Liberty.

II.
When flowing Cups run swiftly round
     With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with Roses bound,
     Our hearts with Loyall Flames;
When thirsty griefe in Wine we steepe,
     When Healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple in the Deepe,
     Know no such Libertie.

III.
When (like committed linnets) I
     With shriller throat shal lsing
The sweetness, Mercy, Majesty,
      And glories of my King,
When I shall voyce aloud, how Good
      He is, how Great should be;
Enlarged Winds that curle the Flood,
      Know no such Liberty.

IV.
Stone Walls do not a Prison make,
       Nor Iron bars a Cage;
Mindes innocent and quiet take
       That for an Hermitage;
If I have freedome in my Love,
        And in my soule am free;
Angels alone that sore above,
        Injoy such Liberty.

Thomas Carew (1595-1640)

Wrote an elegy to Donne which contrasts from the otherwise bawdy, cynical nature of his Cavalier poetry.


"An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. John Donne"

Can we not force from widow'd poetry,
Now thou art dead, great Donne, one elegy,
To crown thy hearse? Why yet did we not trust,
Though with unkneaded dough-baked prose, thy dust,
Such as the unscissor'd lecturer, from the flower
Of fading rhetoric, short-lived as his hour,
Dry upon the sand that measures it, might lay
Upon the ashes on the funeral day?
Have we nor tune nor voice? Didst thou dispense
Through all our language both the words and sense?
Tis a sad truth. The pulpit may her plain
And sober Christian precepts still retain;
Doctrines it may, and wholesome uses, frame,
Grave homilies and lectures; but the flame
Of thy brave soul, that shot such heat and light,
As burn'd our earth, and make our darkness bright,
Committed holy rapes upon the will,
Did through the eye the melting heart distill,
And the deep knowledge of dark truths so teach,
As sense might judge what fancy could not reach,
Must be desired for ever. So the fire,
That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic choir,
Which, kindled first by thy Promethean breath,
Glow'd here awhile, lies quench'd now in thy death.
The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds
O'erspread, was purg'd by thee; the lazy seeds
Of servile imitation thrown away,
And fresh invention planted; thou didst pay
The debts of our penurious bankrupt age;
Licentious thefts, that make poetic rage
A mimic fury, when our souls must be
Possess'd, or with Anacreon's ecstacy,
Or Pindar's, not their own; the sublte cheat
Of sly exchanges, and the juggling feat
Of two-edged words, or whatsoever wrong
By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue,
Thou hast redeem'd, and open'd us a mine
Of rich and pregnant fancy; drawn a line
Of masculine expression, which, had good
Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood
Our superstitious fools admire, and hold
Their lead more precious than thy burnish'd gold,
Thou hadst been their exchequer, and no more
They each in other's dung had search'd for ore.
Thou shalt yield no precedence, but of time,
And the blind fate of language, whose tuned chime
More charms the outward sense: yet thou mayst claim
From so great disadvantage greater fame,
Since to the awe of thy imperious wit
Our troublesome language bends, made only fit
With her tough thick ribb'd hoops to gird about
Thy giant fancy, which had proved too stout
For their soft melting phrases. As in time
They had the start, so did they cull the prime
Buds of invention many a hundred year,
And left the rifled fields, besides the fear
To touch their harvest; yet from those bare lands,
Of what was only thine, thy only hands
(And that their smallest work,) have gleaned more
Than all those times and tongues could reap before.
But thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be
Too hard for libertines in poetry;
They will recall the goodly exiled train
Of gods and goddesses, which in thy just reign
Was banish'd nobler poems; now with these,
The silenced tales i' th' Metamorphoses,
Shall stuff their lines, and swell the windy page,
Till verse, refined by thee in this last age,
Turn ballad-rhyme, or those old idols be
Adored again with new apostacy.
O pardon me, that break with untuned verse
The reverend silence that attends thy hearse,
Whose solemn awful murmurs were to thee,
More than these rude lines, a loud elegy,
That did proclaim in a dumb eloquence
The death of all the arts: whose influence
Grown feeble, in these panting numbers lies,
Gasping short-winded accents, and so dies.
So doth the swiftly-turning wheel not stand
In th' instant we withdraw the moving hand,
But some short time retain a faint weak course,
By virtue of the first impulsive force:
And so, whilst I cast on thy funeral pile
Thy crown of bays, oh let it crack awhile,
And spit disdain, till the devouring flashes
Suck all the moisture up, then turn to ashes.
I will not draw the envy to engross
All thy perfections, or weep all the loss;
Those are too numerous for one elegy,
And this too great to be express'd by me.
Let others carve the rest; it shall suffice
I on thy grave this epitaph incise: -

     Here lies a king that ruled, as he thought fit,
     The universal monarchy of wit;
     Here lies two flamens, and both those the best:
     Apollo's first, at last the true God's priest.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

Many of his poems focus on the character of "Julia."


"To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time"

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may go marry:
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.




"Upon Julia's Clothes"

When as in silks my Julia goes
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
O ho that glittering taketh me!


"Upon Julia's Breasts"

Display thy breasts, my Julia - there let me
Behold that circummortal purity
Between whose glories there my lips I'll lay,
Ravish'd in that fair via lactea.


"The Night Piece, to Julia"

Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee
The shooting stars attend thee:
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.

No Will-o'-th'-Wisp mislight thee,
Nor snake or slow-worm bite thee;
But on, on th way,
Not making a stay,
Since ghost there's none to affright thee.

Let not the dark thee cumber:
What though the moon does slumber?
The starts of the night
Will lend thee their light
Like tapers clear without number.

Then, Julia, let me woo thee,
Thus, thus to come unto me;
And when I shall meet
Thy silv'ry feet
My soul I'll pour into thee.


"Corinna's Going A-Maying"

Begins:

Get up, get up for shame, the blooming morn
Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.
     See how Aurora throws her fair
     Fresh-quilted colors through the air:
     Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
     The dew bespangling herb and tree.

Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

"To the Memory of My Beloved Master William Shakespeare"

To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such,
As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much.
Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I mean unto thy praise;
For seeliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin where it seemed to raise.
These are, as some infamous bawd or whore
Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more?
But thou are proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin: Soul of the age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so my brain excuses,
I mean with great, but disproportioned Muses:
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek
For names: but call forth thund'ring Aeschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread
And shake a stage: or when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show
To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but fror all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm!
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all; thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion: and, that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame;
Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn;
For a good poet's made, as well as born.
And such wert thou! Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well torned and true filed lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandisht at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so dit take Eliza, and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage,
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.


"To Penhurst"

A country house poem.

Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show
Of touch, or marble; nor canst boast a row
Of Polish'd pillars, or a roof of gold:
Thou hast no lantern whereof tales are told;
Or stair, or courts; but stand'st an ancient pile,
And these grudg'd at, art reverenced the while...


"On My First Son"

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
     My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years thou were lent to me, and I thee pay,
     Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
Oh, could I lose all father now! For why
     Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage
      And if no other misery, yet age!
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, Here doth lie
     Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such
     As what he loves may never like too much.


Volpone

• means "The Fox"
• Volpone fakes a long illness to pique the expectations of all who aspire to his fortune
• Mosca tells Voltore, Corbaccio and Corvino that they are each to be named Volpone's heir, thanks to his influence. He then announces Volpone's impending death.
• The hopeful heirs shower Volpone with gifts.
• Corbaccio disinherits his own son in Volpone's favor, Corvino offers Volpone his wife.
• Just as Volpone is about to be outsmarted by Mosca, he reveals all in open court and the characters receive their due punishment. 

The Cavalier Poets

Ben Jonson
Robert Herrick
Thomas Carew
Richard Lovelace

Characteristics:

• use of direct and colloquial language expressive of a highly individual personality
• enjoyment of the casual, the amateur, the affectionate poem written by the way
• "cavalier" in the sense of not only being Royalists but that they distrust the over-earnest or the too intense
• avoid subject of religion
• the Mistress is no longer an impossibly chaste Goddess to be wooed with sighs, but a woman who may be spoken to in a forthright manner
• poems are celebratory of things that are much livelier than philosophy or art

John Milton (1608-1674)

I opted for the Chaucer class over the Milton one because I figured I didn't want to deal with Christian guilt. "Paradise Lost" is pretty important, but there are some other poems of Milton's that are likely to show up too.

"Paradise Lost"

• Characters: Satan, Beelzebub, Abdiel, Adam and Eve

"Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

With lss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,

Sing Heavn'nly Muse, that on the secret top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,

In the beginning how the heav'ns and earth

Rose out of Chaos: or if Sion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed 

Fast by the oracle of God; I thence

Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme....

"How Soon Hath Time"

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,

         Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year!

         My hasting days fly on with full career,

         But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.

Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,

         That I to manhood am arrived so near,

         And inward ripeness doth much less appear,

         That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.

Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow,

         It shall be still in strictest measure even

         To that same lot, however mean or high,

         Toward which Time leads me, and the will of HEaven;

         All is: if I have grace to use it so,

         As ever in my great Task-Master's eye. 

"On Shakespeare"

• Ben Jonson also wrote about Shakespeare
• Andrew Marvell wrote about Milton

What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd Bones,

The labour of an age in piled Stones,

Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid

Under a Star-y pointing Pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.

For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,

Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,

Those Delphick lines with deep impression took,

Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,

Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving;

And so Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie,

That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die. 

"On the Late Massacre in Piedmont"

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

      Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,

      Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,

      When all our father worshipped stocks and stones;

Forget not: in thy book record their groans

      Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold

      Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled

      Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

      To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow

      O'er all th' Italian fields where still doth sway

The triple tyrant; that from these may grow

      A hundred-fold, who having learnt thy way

      Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

"When I Consider How My Light is Spent" (also sometimes called "On His Blindness")

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith m yMaker, and present

My true account, lest He returning chide,

"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"

I fondly ask; But patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies "God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best

Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state

Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed

And post o'er land and ocean without rest;

They also serve who only stand and wait."

Areopagitica

• protest against censorship and obstruction of the press
• considers the political freedom of ancient Greece to have been ideal and attempts to link the greatness of Greece with that of England
• three central points in his attack of censorship:
• books are not the sole purveyors of evil or destructive information, so attempts to halt the flow of evil by regulating book publishing would be ineffective
• only inhumanly perfect individuals could serve as judges, or else personal biases and misunderstandings would creep into the system and damage the chances that "good" books had of publication
• even "bad" books can be constructive through strengthening an individual's resistance to faulty or evil ideas

"For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unlesse warinesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but he who destoryes a good Book, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life."

Comus

• masque about the attempted seduction of a young girl by Comus, a supernatural being
• the Lady is rescued by her brothers and a couple of attendant spirits
• dedicated to the Earl of Bridgewater and features his children in the priamry roles

"Love virtue, she alone is free;

She can teach ye how to climb

Higher than the sphery chime:

Or, if virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her."

Of Education

• on contemporary debate about methods of education 
• part of larger discussion about how the Church should be organized and how the State should be governed
• importance of clearer consciousness among teachers and students of education as a discipline for active life
• insistence upon a more extensive reading of ancient classical and Christian writers as the means of securing this discipline
• attitude of severe and hostile criticism towards medieval education and culture

Samson Agonistes

• play retelling the story of Samson
• concentrates on Samson after he had been betrayed by Delilah and was blinded and held prisoner by the Philistine
• Samson resists the temptation to become despondent and, having regained his strength by allowing his hair to grow after the Philistines had cut it, destroys the leadership of the Philistines by pulling down a large building on them and himself
• a reflection on how Milton, like Samson, had devoted his life to his country and see his efforts come to nothing when the monarchy was restored with Charles II - he had temporarily given up his poetry and worked for Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth government

"Lycidas"

• pastoral elegy
• dedicated to the memory of Edward King, a collegemate of Milton's at Cambridge who had been drowned when his ship sank
• a shepherd mourns his drowned friend Lycidas, alluding to the immortal fame of a poet

It begins:

"Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,

And with forced fingers rude,

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year...

Last came, and last did go,

The Pilot of the Galilean lake,

Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain,

(The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain)

He shook his Miter'd locks, and stern bespake,

How well could I have spar'd for thee young swain,

Anow of such as for their bellies sake,

Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?

Of other care they little reckn'ning make,

Then how to scramble at the shearers feast,

And shove away the worthy bidden guest.

Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves know how to hold

A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least

That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs@

What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;

And when they list, their lean and flashy songs

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,

But swol'n with wind, and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread,

Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw

Daily devours apace, and nothing said.

But that two-handed engine at the door

Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

"blind mouths" - corrupt clergy who acquire their position with dishonest means

"Wolf" - allegory for the Catholic Church

"engine" - a type of sword

Final lines of poem:

"And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills

And now was dropt into the Western bay;

At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:

Tomorrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new."