To nations, cities, and to companies, To functions, offices, and dignities,

And to each several man, to him and him,
They would have giv'n her one for every limb;
She, of whose soul if we may say, 't was gold,
Her body was th' electrum, and did hold
Many degrees of that; we understood
Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one might almost say, her body thought;
She, she thus richly and largely hous'd, is gone,
And chides us, slow-pac'd snails, who crawl upon
Our prison's prison, Earth, nor think us well,
Longer than whilst we bear our brittle shell.
But 't were but little to have chang'd our room,
If, as we were in this our living tomb
Oppress'd with ignorance, we still were so.
Poor soul, in this thy flesh what dost thou know?
Thou know'st thyself so little, as thou know'st not
How thou didst die, nor how thou wast begot.
Thou neither know'st how thou at first cam'st in,
Nor how thou took'st the poison of man's sin;
Nor dost thou (though thou know'st that thou art so)
By what way thou art made immortal, know.
Thou art too narrow, wretch, to comprehend
Even thyself, yea, though thou would'st but bend
To know thy body. Have not all souls thought
For many ages, that our body's wrought
Of air, and fire, and other elements?
And now they think of new ingredients.
And one soul thinks one, and another way
Another thinks, and 't is an even lay.
Know'st thou but how the stone doth enter in
The bladder's cave, and never break the skin?
Know'st thou how blood, which to the heart doth
flow,

Doth from one ventricle to th' other go?
And for the putrid stuff which thou dost spit,
Know'st thou how thy lungs have attracted it?
There are no passages, so that there is
(For ought thou know'st) piercing of substances.
And of those many opinions, which men raise
Of nails and hairs, dost thou know which to praise?
What hope have we to know ourselves, when we
Know not the least things, which for our use be?
We see in authors, too stiff to recant,
An hundred controverses of an ant;

And yet one watches, starves, freezes, and sweats,
To know but catechisms and alphabets
Of unconcerning things, matters of fact;
How others on our stage their parts did act:
What Cæsar did, yea, or what Cicero said.
Why grass is green, or why our blood is red,
Are mysteries which none have reach'd unto;
In this low form, poor soul, what wilt thou do?
Oh! when wilt thou shake off this pedantry,
Of being taught by sense and fantasy?
Thou look'st through spectacles; small things seem
great

Below; but up unto the watch-tower get,
And see all things despoil'd of fallacies:
Thou shalt not peep through lattices of eyes,
Nor hear through labyrinths of ears, nor learn
By circuit or collections to discern;

In Heav'n thou straight know'st all concerning it,
And what concerns it not, shall straight forget.
There thou (but in no other school) may'st be
Perchance as learned, and as full as she;
She, who all libraries had throughly read
At home in her own thoughts, and practised

So much good, as would make as many more:
She, whose example they must all implore,
Who would, or do, or think well, and confess
That all the virtuous actions they express,
Are but a new and worse edition

Of her some one thought, or one action:
She, who in th' art of knowing Heav'n was grown
Here upon Earth to such perfection,
That she hath, ever since to Heav'n she came,
(In a far fairer print) but read the same;
She, she not satisfy'd with all this weight,
(For so much knowledge, as would over-freight
Another, did but ballast her) is gone
As well t' enjoy as get perfection;
And calls us after her, in that she took
(Taking herself) our best and worthiest book.
Return not, my soul, from this ecstasy,
And meditation of what thou shalt be,
To earthly thoughts, till it to thee appear,
With whom thy conversation must be there.
With whom wilt thou converse? what station
Canst thou choose out free from infection,
That will not give thee theirs, nor drink in thine?
Shalt thou not find a spungy slack divine
Drink and suck in th' instructions of great men,
And for the word of God vent them again?
Are there not some courts (and then no things be
So like as courts) which in this let us see,
That wits and tongues of libellers are weak,
Because they do more ill than these can speak?
The poison's gone through all, poisons affect
Chiefly the chiefest parts; but some effect
In nails, and hairs, yea, excrements will show;
So lies the poison of sin in the most low.
Up, up, my drowsy soul, where thy new ear
Shall in the angels' songs no discord hear;
Where thou shalt see the blessed mother-maid
Joy in not being that which men have said;
Where she 's exalted more for being good,
Than for her interest of motherhood:
Up to those patriarchs, which did longer sit
Expecting Christ, than they 've enjoy'd him yet:
Up to those prophets, which now gladly see
Their prophecies grown to be history:
Up to th' apostles, who did bravely run
All the Sun's course, with more light than the Sun:
Up to those martyrs, who did calmly bleed
Oil to th' apostle's lamps, dew to their seed:
Up to those virgins, who thought, that almost
They made joint-tenants with the Holy Ghost,`
If they to any should his temple give:
Up, up, for in that squadron there doth live
She, who hath carry'd thither new degrees
(As to their number) to their dignities:
She, who being to herself a state, enjoy'd
All royalties, which any state employ'd;
For she made wars, and triumph'd; reason still
Did not o'erthrow, but rectify her will:
And she made peace; for no peace is like this,
That beauty and chastity together kiss:
She did high justice, for she crucify'd
Ev'ry first motion of rebellion's pride:
And she gave pardons, and was liberal,
For, only herself except, she pardon'd all:
She coin'd, in this, that her impression gave
To all our actions all the worth they have:
She gave protections; the thoughts of her breast
Satan's rude officers could ne'er arrest.
As these prerogatives, being met in one,
Made her a sovereign state; religion

Laws of religion have at least the same,
Immortal maid, I might invoke thy name.
Could any saint provoke that appetite,
Thou here should'st make me a French convertite.
But thou would'st not; nor would'st thou be content
To take this for my second year's true rent,
Did this coin bear any other stamp than his,
That gave thee power to do, me to say this:
Since his will is, that to posterity

Thou should'st for life and death a pattern be,
And that the world should notice have of this,
The purpose and th' authority is his.
Thou art the proclamation; and I am

The trumpet, at whose voice the people came.

EPICEDES AND OBSEQUIES

UPON

THE DEATHS OF SUNDRY PERSONAGES.

AN ELEGY

ON THE UNTIMELY DEATH OF THE INCOMPARABLE PRINCE HENRY.

Look on me, Faith, and look to my faith, God;
For both my centres feel this period.
Of weight one centre, one of greatness is;
And reason is that centre, faith is this;
For into our reason flow, and there do end
All, that this natural world doth comprehend;
Quotidian things, and equidistant hence,
Shut in, for man, in one circumference:
But for th' enormous greatnesses, which are
So disproportion'd, and so angular,

As is God's essence, place, and providence,
Where, how, when, what souls do, departed hence;
These things (eccentric else) on faith do strike:
Yet neither all, nor upon all alike.
For reason, put to her best extension,
Almost meets faith, and makes both centres one.
And nothing ever came so near to this,
As contemplation of that prince we miss.
For all that faith might credit, mankind could,
Reason still seconded, that this prince would.
If then least moving of the centre make
More, than if whole Hell belch'd, the world to shake,
What must this do, centres distracted so,
That we see not what to believe or know?
Was it not well believ'd till now, that he,
Whose reputation was an ecstasy,

Ou neighbour states, which knew not why to wake,
Till he discover'd what ways he would take;
For whom, what princes angled, when they try'd,
Met a torpedo, and were stupify'd;

And other's studies, how he would be bent;

Was his great father's greatest instrument,

And activ'st spirit, to convey and tie

This soul of peace unto Christianity?

Was it not well believ'd, that he would make

This general peace th' eternal overtake,

And that his times might have stretch'd out so far, As to touch those of which they emblems are?

For to confirm this just belief, that now
The last days came, we saw Heav'n did allow,
That, but from his aspect and exercise,
In peaceful times rumours of wars should arise.
But now this faith is heresy: we must
Still stay, and vex our great grandmother, Dust.
Oh, is God prodigal? hath he spent his store
Of plagues on us; and only now, when more
Would ease us much, doth he grudge misery;
And will not let 's enjoy our curse, to die?
As for the Earth, thrown lowest down of all,
"T were an ambition to desire to fall;
So God, in our desire to die, doth know
Our plot for ease, in being wretched so:
Therefore we live, though such a life we have,
As but so many mandrakes on his grave.
What had his growth and generation done,
When, what we are, his putrefaction
Sustains in us, Earth, which griefs animate?
Nor hath our world now other soul than that.
And could grief get so high as Heav'n, that quire,
Forgetting this their new joy, would desire
(With grief to see him) he had stay'd below,
To rectify our errours they foreknow.

Is th' other centre, reason, faster then?
Where should we look for that, now we 're not men?
For if our reason be our connection

Of causes, now to us there can be none.
For, as if all the substances were spent,
'T were madness to inquire of accident;
So is 't to look for reason, he being gone,
The only subject reason wrought upon.
If fate have such a chain, whose divers links
Industrious man discerneth, as he thinks,
When miracle doth come, and so steal in
A new link, man knows not where to begin:
At a much deader fault must reason be,
Death having broke off such a link as he.
But now, for us with busy proof to come,
That we 've no reason, would prove we had some;
So would just lamentations: therefore we
May safelier say, that we are dead, than he.
So, if our griefs we do not well declare,
We 've double excuse; he's not dead, we are.
Yet would not I die yet; for though I be
Too narrow to think him, as he is he,
(Our souls' best baiting and mid-period,
In her long journey of considering God)
Yet (no dishonour) I can reach him thus,
As he embrac'd the fires of love, with us.
Oh, may I (since I live) but see or hear,
That she-intelligence which mov'd this sphere,
I pardon Fate, my life; whoe'er thou be,
Which hast the noble conscience, thou art she:
I conjure thee by all the charms he spoke,
By th' oaths, which only you two never broke,
By all the souls ye sigh'd, that if you see
These lines, you wish, I knew your history.
So much, as you two mutual Heav'ns were here,
I were an angel, singing what you were.

OBSEQUIES

ON

THE LORD HARRINGTON, &C.

ΤΟ

THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD.

MADAM,

I HAVE learned by those laws, wherein I am little conversant, that he which bestows any cost upon the dead, obliges him which is dead, but not his heir; I do not therefore send this paper to your ladyship, that you should thank me for it, or think that I thank you in it; your favours and benefits to me are so much above my merits, that they are even above my gratitude; if that were to be judged by words, which must express it. But, madam, since your noble brother's fortune being yours, the evidences also concerning it are yours: so his virtues being yours, the evidences concerning that belong also to you, of which by your acceptance this may be one piece; in which quality I humbly present it, and as a testimony how entirely your family possesseth

your ladyship's

most humble and thankful servant,

JOHN DONNE.

FAIR soul, which wast not only as all souls be,
Then when thou wast infused, harmony,
But did'st continue so; and now dost bear
A part in God's great organ, this whole sphere;
If looking up to God, or down to us,
Thou find that any way is pervious

'Twixt Heav'n and Earth, and that men's actions do
Come to your knowledge and affections too,
See, and with joy, me to that good degree
of goodness grown, that I can study thee;
And by these meditations refin'd,
Can unapparel and enlarge my mind,
And so can make by this soft ecstasy,
This place a map of Heav'n, myself of thee.
Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest;
Time's dead-low water, when all minds divest
To morrow's business, when the labourers have
Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave,
Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;
Now when the client, whose last hearing is
To morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,
(Who when he opes his eyes must shut them then
Again by death) although sad watch he keep,
Doth practise dying by a little sleep;

Thou at this midnight seest me, and as soon
As that Sun rises to me, midnight 's noon;

All the world grows transparent, and I see
Through all, both church and state, in seeing thee;
And I discern by favour of this light

Myself, the hardest object of the sight.

God is the glass; as thou, when thou dost see

Him, who sees all, seest all concerning thee:
So, yet unglorified, I comprehend

All, in these mirrors of thy ways and end.

Though God be our true glass, through which we see
All, since the being of all things is be,

Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive
Things in proportion, fit by perspective,
Deeds of good men: for by their being here,
Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.
But where can I affirm or where arrest

My thoughts on his deeds? which shall I call best?
For fluid virtue cannot be look'd on,
Nor can endure a contemplation.
As bodies change, and as I do not wear
Those spirits, humours, blood, I did last year;
And as, if on a stream I fix mine eye,
That drop, which I look'd on, is presently
Push'd with more waters from my sight, and gone:
So in this sea of virtues, can no one
Be insisted on; virtues as rivers pass,
Yet still remains that virtuous man there was.
And as, if man feed on man's flesh, and so
Part of his body to another owe,
Yet at the last two perfect bodies rise,
Because God knows where every atom lies;
So if one knowledge were made of all those,
Who knew his minutes well, he might dispose
His virtues into names and ranks; but I
Should injure nature, virtue, and destiny,

Should I divide and discontinue so
Virtue, which did in one entireness grow.
For as he that should say, spirits are fram'd
Of all the purest parts that can be nam'd,
Honours not spirits half so much as he
Which says they have no parts, but simple be:
So is 't of virtue; for a point and one

Are much entirer than a million.

And had Fate meant t' have had his virtues told,
It would have let him live to have been old.
So then that virtue in season, and then this,
We might have seen, and said, that now he is
Witty, now wise, now temperate, now just :
In good short lives, virtues are fain to thrust,
And to be sure betimes to get a place,
When they would exercise, lack time, and space.
So was it in this person, forc'd to be,
For lack of time, his own epitome:
So to exhibit in few years as much,

[run,

As all the long-breath'd chroniclers can touch.
As when an angel down from Heav'n doth fly,
Our quick thought cannot keep him company;
We cannot think, now he is at the Sun,
Now through the Moon, now through the air doth
Yet when he 's come, we know he did repair
To all 'twixt Heav'n and Earth, Sun, Moon, and air;
And as this angel in an instant knows;
And yet we know this sudden knowledge grows
By quick amassing several forms of things,
Which he successively to order brings;
When they, whose slow-pac'd lame thoughts cannot
So fast as he, think that he doth not so;
Just as a perfect reader doth not dwell
On every syllable, nor stay to spell,
Yet without doubt he doth distinctly see,
And lay together every A and B ;

[go

So in short-liv'd good men is not understood
Each several virtue, but the compound good.
For they all virtue's paths in that pace tread,
As angels go, and know, and as men read.

O why should then these men, these lumps of balm,
Sent hither the world's tempest to becalm,
Before by deeds they are diffus'd and spread,
And to make us alive, themselves be dead?
O, soul! O, circle! why so quickly be
Thy ends, thy birth, and death clos'd up in thee?
Since one foot of thy compass still was plac'd
In Heav'n, the other might securely 've pac'd
In the most large extent through every path,
Which the whole world, or man, th' abridgment,
hath.

Thou know'st, that though the tropic circles have
(Yea, and those small ones which the poles engrave)
All the same roundness, evenness, and all
The endlessness of th' equinoctial;
Yet when we come to measure distances,
How here, how there, the Sun affected is;
When he doth faintly work, and when prevail;
Only great circles then can be our scale:
So though thy circle to thyself express
All tending to thy endless happiness;
And we by our good use of it may try
Both how to live well (young) and how to die.
Yet since we must be old, and age endures
His torrid zone at court, and calentures
Of hot ambition, irreligion's ice,
Zeal's agues, and hydropic avarice,
(Infirmities, which need the scale of truth,
As well as lust and ignorance of youth ;)
Why didst thou not for these give medicines too,
And by thy doing tell us what to do?
Though as small pocket-clocks, whose every wheel
Doth each mis-motion and distemper feel;
Whose hands gets shaking palsies; and whose string
(His sinews) slackens; and whose soul, the spring,
Expires or languishes; and whose pulse, the flee,
Either beats not, or beats unevenly;

Whose voice, the bell, doth rattle or grow dumb,
Or idle, as men which to their last hour come;
If these clocks be not wound, or be wound still,
Or be not set, or set at every will;
So youth is easiest to destruction,
If then we follow all, or follow none.
Yet as in great clocks, which in steeples chime,
Plac'd to inform whole towns, t'employ their time,
And errour doth more harm, being general,
When small clock's faults only on th' wearer fall:
So work the faults of age, on which the eye
Of children, servants, or the state rely;

Why would'st not thou then, which hadst such a soul,

A clock so true, as might the Sun control,
And daily hadst from him, who gave it thee,
Instructions, such, as it could never be
Disorder'd, stay here, as a general
And great sun-dial, to have set us all ?
Oh, why would'st thou be an instrument
To this unnatural course? or why consent
To this, not miracle, but prodigy,

That when the ebbs longer than flowings be,
Virtue, whose flood did with thy youth begin,
Should so much faster ebb out than flow in?
Though her flood were blown in by thy first breath,
All is at once sunk in the whirl-pool, death.
Which word I would not name, but that I see
Death, else a desert, grown a court by thee.

Now I am sure that if a man would have Good company, his entry is a grave. Methinks all cities now but ant-hills be, Where when the several labourers I see

For children, house, provision, taking pain, [grain:
They're all but ants, carrying eggs, straw, and
And church-yards are our cities, unto which
The most repair, that are in goodness rich;
There is the best concourse and confluence,
There are the holy suburbs, and from thence
Begins God's city, new Jerusalem,
Which doth extend her utmost gates to them:
At that gate then, triumphant soul, dost thou
Begin thy triumph. But since laws allow
That at the triumph-day the people may,
All that they will, 'gainst the triumpher say,
Let me here use that freedom, and express
My grief, though not to make thy triumph less.
By law to triumphs none admitted be,
Till they, as magistrates, get victory;
Though then to thy force all youth's foes did yield,
Yet till fit time had brought thee to that field,
To which thy rank in this state destin'd thee,
That there thy counsels might get victory,
And so in that capacity remove

All jealousies 'twixt prince and subject's love,
Thou could'st no title to this triumph have,
Thou didst intrude on Death, usurp a grave,
Then (though victoriously) thou hadst fought as yet
But with thine own affections, with the heat
Of youth's desires, and colds of ignorance,
But till thou should'st successfully advance
Thine arms 'gainst foreign enemies, which are
Both envy, and acclamations popular,
(For both these engines equally defeat,
Though by a divers mine, those which are great)
Till then thy war was but a civil war,
For which to triumph none admitted are;
No more are they, who, though with good success,
In a defensive war their power express.
Before men triumph, the dominion
Must be enlarg'd, and not preserv'd alone;
Why should'st thou then, whose battles were to win
Thyself from those straits Nature put thee in,
And to deliver up to God that state,
Of which he gave thee the vicariate,
(Which is thy soul and body) as entire
As he, who takes indentures, doth require;
But didst not stay, t' enlarge his kingdom too,
By making others, what thou didst, to do; [more
Why should'st thou triumph now, when Heav'n no
Hath got, by getting thee, than 't had before?
For Heav'n and thou, even when thou livedst here,
Of one another in possession were.
But this from triumph most disables thee,
That that place, which is conquered, must be
Left safe from present war, and likely doubt
Of imminent commotions to break out:
And hath he left us so? or can it be

This territory was no more than he?
No, we were all his charge; the diocese
Of every exemplar man the whole world is:
And he was joined in commission
With tutular angels, sent to every one.
But though this freedom to upbraid, and chide
Him who triumph'd, were lawful, it was ty'd
With this, that it might never reference have
Unto the senate, who this triumph gave;
Men might at Pompey jest, but they might not
At that authority, by which he got