VIII.

IF faithful souls be alike glorifi'd

As angels, then my father's soul doth see,
And adds this ev'n to full felicity,
That valiantly I Hell's wide mouth o'erstride:
But if our minds to these souls be descry'd
By circumstances and by signs, that be
Apparent in us not immediately,

How shall my mind's white truth by them be try'd?
They see idolatrous lovers weep and mourn,
And style blasphemous conjurers to call
On Jesus' name, and pharisaical
Dissemblers feign devotion. Then turn,
O pensive soul, to God; for he knows best
Thy grief, for he put it into my breast.

IX.

Ir poisonous minerals, and if that tree,
Whose fruit threw death on (else immortal) us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious,
Cannot be damn'd, alas! why should I be?
Why should intent or reason, born in me,
Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous ?
And mercy being easy and glorious

To God, in his stern wrath why threatens he?
But who am I, that dare dispute with thee!
O God, oh! of thine only worthy blood,
And my tears, make a heav'nly Lethean flood,
And drown in it my sin's black memory:
That thou remember them, some claim as debt;
I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.

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 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. [men,
Thou 'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate
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.

XII.

WHY are we by all creatures waited on?
Why do the progidal elements supply
Life and food to me, being more pure than I,
Simpler, and further from corruption?
Why brook'st thou, ignorant horse, subjection?
Why do you, bull and boar, so sillily

Dissemble weakness, and by one man's stroke die,
Whose whole kind you might swallow and feed upon?
Weaker I am, woe's me! and worse than you;
You have not sinn'd, nor need be timorous,
But wonder at a greater, for to us
Created nature doth these things subdue;
But their Creator, whom sin, nor nature ty'd,
For us, his creatures, and his foes, hath dy'd.

XIII.

WHAT if this present were the world's last night?
Mark in my heart, O soul, where thou dost dwell,
The picture of Christ crucifi'd, and tell
Whether his countenance can thee affright;
Tears in his eyes quench the amazing light, [fell.
Blood fills his frowns, which from his pierc'd head
And can that tongue adjudge thee unto Hell,
Which pray'd forgiveness for his foe's fierce spight?
No, no; but as in my idolatry

I said to all my profane mistresses,
Beauty of pity, foulness only is

A sign of rigour: so I say to thee;
To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assign'd,
This beauteous form assumes a piteous mind.

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 m', and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labour t' admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, we should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue;
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd 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.

XI.

1

SPIT in my face, you Jews, and pierce my side,
Buffet and scoff, scourge and crucify me:
For I have sinn'd, and sinn'd; and only he,
Who could do no iniquity, hath dy'd:
But by my death cannot be satisfi'd
My sins, which pass the Jews' impiety:
They kill'd once an inglorious man, but I
Crucify him daily, being now glorifi'd.
O let me then his strange love still admire:
Kings pardon, but he bore our punishment;
And Jacob came, cloth'd in vile harsh attire,
But to supplant, and with gainful intent:
God cloth'd himself in vile man's flesh, that so
He might be weak enough to suffer woe.

XV.

WILT thou love God, as he thee? then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation,
How God the spirit, by angels waited on

In Heav'n, doth make his temple in thy breast;
The Father having begot a Son most bless'd,
And still begetting, (for he ne'er begun)
Hath deign'd to choose thee by adoption,
Coheir to his glory, and sabbath's endless rest.
And as a robb'd man, which by search doth find
His stol'n stuff sold, must lose or buy 't again:
The Sun of glory came down, and was slain,
Us, whom h' had made, and Satan stole, t' unbind.
'T was much, that man was made like God before;
But, that God should be made like man, much more.

XVI.

FATHER, part of his double interest
Unto thy kingdom thy Son gives to me;
His jointure in the knotty Trinity

He keeps, and gives to me his death's conquest. This Lamb, whose death with life the world hath bless'd,

Was from the world's beginning slain; and he
Hath made two wills, which, with the legacy
Of his and thy kingdom, thy sons invest:
Yet such are these laws, that men argue yet,
Whether a man those statutes can fulfil;
None doth; but thy all-healing grace and spirit
Revive again, what law and letter kill:
Thy law's abridgment and thy last command
Is all but love; O let this last will stand!

ON THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. In that, O queen of queens, thy birth was free From that, which others doth of grace bereave, When in their mother's womb they life receive, God, as his sole-born daughter, loved thee:

To match thee like thy birth's nobility,

He thee bis Spirit for his spouse did leave, By whom thou didst his only Son conceive, And so wast link'd to all the Trinity.

Cease then, O queens, that earthly crowns do wear,
To glory in the pomp of earthly things;
If men such high respects unto you bear,

Which daughters, wives, and mothers are of kings,
What honour can unto that queen be done,
Who had your God for father, spouse, and son?

These for extracted chymic medicine serve,
And cure much better, and as well preserve;
Then are you your own physic, or need none,
When still'd or purg'd by tribulation:
For, when that cross ungrudg'd unto you sticks,
Then are you to yourself a crucifix.

As perchance carvers do not faces make,
But that away, which hid them there, do take:
Let crosses so take what hid Christ in thee,
And be his image, or not his, but he.
But as oft alchymists do coiners prove,
So may a self-despising get self-love.
And then as worst surfeits of best meats be,
So is pride, issued from humility;
For 't is no child, but monster; therefore cross
Your joy in crosses, else 't is double loss;
And cross thy senses, else both they and thou
Must perish soon, and to destruction bow.
For if th' eye see good objects, and will take
No cross from bad, we cannot 'scape a snake.
So with harsh, hard, sour, stinking cross the rest,
Make them indifferent all; nothing best.
But most the eye needs crossing, that can roam
And move to th' others objects must come home,
And cross thy heart: for that in man alone
Pants downwards, and hath palpitation.
Cross those detorsions, when it downward tends,
And when it to forbidden heights pretends.
And as the brain though bony walls doth vent
By sutures, which a cross's form present:
So when thy brain works, e'er thou utter it,
Cross and correct concupiscence of wit.
Be covetous of crosses, let none fall:
Cross no man else, but cross thyself in all.
Then doth the cross of Christ work faithfully
Within our hearts, when we love harmlessly
The cross's pictures much, and with more care
That cross's children, which our crosses are.

THE CROSS.

SINCE Christ embrac'd the cross itself, dare I,
His image, th' image of his cross deny ?
Would I have profit by the sacrifice,
And dare the chosen altar to despise ?
It bore all other sins, but is it fit

That it should bear the sin of scorning it?
Who from the picture would avert his eye,
How would he fly his pains, who there did die?
From me no pulpit, nor misgrounded law,
Nor scandal taken sball this cross withdraw;
It shall not, for it cannot; for the loss
Of this cross were to me another cross;
Better were worse, for no affliction,

No cross is so extreme, as to have none.

Who can blot out the cross, which th' instrument
Of God dew'd on me in the sacrament?
Who can deny me power and liberty

To stretch mine arms, and mine own cross to be?
Swim, and at every stroke thou art thy cross:
The mast and yard make one, where seas do toss.
Look down, thou spy'st our crosses in small things;
Look up, thou seest birds rais'd on crossed wings.
All the globe's frame, and spheres, is nothing else
But the meridian's crossing parallels,
Material crosses then good physic be;
But yet spiritual have chief dignity.

I PRESUME you rather try what you can do in me, than what I can do in verse; you know my uttermost when it was best, and even then I did best, when I had least truth for my subjects. In this present case there is so much truth, as it defeats all poetry. Call therefore this paper by what name you will, and if it be not worthy of him, nor of you, nor of me, smother it, and be that the sacrifice, If you had commanded me to have waited on his body to Scotland and preached there, I would have embraced the obligation with more alacrity; but I thank you, that you would command me that, which I was loath to do, for even that hath given a tincture of merit to the obedience of

your poor friend

and servant in Christ Jesus,

J. DONNE.

RESURRECTION.

IMPERFECT.

SLEEP, sleep, old Sun, thou canst not have re-past
As yet the wound, thou took'st on Friday last;
Sleep then, and rest: the world may bear thy stay,
A better Sun rose before thee to day;
Who, not content t' enlighten all that dwell
On the Earth's face, as thou enlightned Hell;
And made the dark fires languish in that vale,
As at thy presence here our fires grow pale:
Whose body having walk'd on Earth, and now
Hast'ning to Heav'n, would that he might allow
Himself unto all stations, and fill all,
For these three days become a mineral.
He was all gold, when he lay down, but rose
All tincture; and doth not alone dispose

WHETHER that Soul, which now comes up to you,
Fill any former rank, or make a new,
Whether it take a name nam'd there before,
Or be a name itself, and order more
Than was in Heav'n till now; (for may not he
Be so, if every several angel be
A kind alone) whatever order grow
One of your orders grows by his access;
Greater by him in Heav'n, we do not so.
But by his loss grow all our orders less:
The name of father, master, friend, the name
Of subject and of prince, in one is lame;
Fair mirth is damp'd, and conversation black,
The household widow'd, and the garter slack;
The chapel wants an ear, council a tongue;
Story a theme, and music lacks a song.
Bless'd order, that hath him! the loss of him
Gangren'd all orders here; all lost a limb!
Never made body such haste to confess
What a soul was; all former comeliness

Fled in a minute, when the soul was gone,
And, having lost that beauty, would have none:
So fell our monast'ries, in an instant grown,
Not to less houses, but to heaps of stone;
So sent his body, that fair form it wore,
Unto the sphere of forms, and doth (before
His soul shall fill up his sepulchral stone)
Anticipate a resurrection;

For as it is his fame, now his soul 's here,
So in the form thereof his body's there.
And if, fair soul, not with first innocents
Thy station be, but with the penitents;
(And who shall dare to ask then, when I am
Dy'd scarlet in the blood of that pure Lamb,
Whether that colour, which is scarlet then,
Were black or white before in eyes of men?)
When thou remembrest what sins thou didst find
Amongst those many friends now left behind,
And seest such sinners, as they are, with thee
Got thither by repentance, let it be

Thy wish to wish all there, to wish them clean;
Wish him a David, her a Magdalen.

THE

ANNUNCIATION AND PASSION.
TAMELY, frail flesh, abstain to day; to day
My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away;
She sees him man, so like God made in this,
That of them both a circle emblem is,
Whose first and last concur; this doubtful day
Of feast or fast Christ came, and went away.
She sees him nothing twice at once, who 's all;
She sees a cedar plant itself, and fall:
Her maker put to making, and the head
Of life, at once, not yet alive, and dead;
She sees at once the virgin mother stay
Reclus'd at home, public at Golgotha.
Sad and rejoic'd she 's seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty and at scarce fifteen:
At once a son is promis'd her, and gone;
Gabriel gives Christ to her, he her to John:
Not fully a mother, she 's in orbity,
At once receiver and the legacy.

All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
Th' abridgment of Christ's story, which makes one
(As in plain maps the furthest west is east)
Of th' angel's ave and consummatum est.
How well the church, God's court of faculties,
Deals in sometimes and seldom joining these!
As by the self-fix'd pole we never do
Direct our course, but the next star thereto,
Which shows where th' other is, and which we say
(Because it strays not far) doth never stray:
So God by his church, nearest to him, we know
And stand firm, if we by her motion go;
His spirit as his fiery pillar doth

Lead, and his church as cloud; to one end both.
This church, by letting those feasts join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind are one;

Or 't was in him the same humility,
That he would be a man, and leave to be
Or as creation he hath made, as God,
With the last judgment but one period;
His imitating spouse would join in one
Manhood's extremes: he shall come, he is gone.
Or as though one blood drop, which thence did fall,
Accepted, would have serv'd, he yet shed all;

GOOD FRIDAY.

1613.

RIDING WESTWARD.

LET man's soul be a sphere, and then in this
Th' intelligence, that moves, devotion is;
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own:
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey:
Pleasure or business so our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl'd by it.
Hence is 't, that I am carried t'wards the west
This day, when my soul's form bends to the east ;
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on his cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.

Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see,
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees God's face, that is self-life, must die;
What a death were it then to see God die?
It made his own lieutenant, Nature, shrink;
It made his footstool crack, and the Sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles,
And tune all spheres at once, pierc'd with those holes?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our antipodes,

Humbled below us? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our souls, if not of his,

Made dirt of dust? or that flesh, which was worn
By God for his apparel, ragg'd and torn?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On his distressed mother cast mine eye,
Who was God's partner here, and furnish'd thus
Half of that sacrifice, which ransom'd us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They 're present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look'st to-
wards me,

O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee, but to receive
Corrections; till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O think me worth thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity;
Restore thine image so much by thy grace,
That thou may'st know me, and I'll turn my face.

THE LITANY.

THE FATHER.

FATHER of Heav'n, and him, by whom
It, and us for it, and all else for us

Thou mad'st and govern'st ever, come,
And re-create me, now grown ruinous:
My heart is by dejection clay,
And by self-murder red.

From this red earth, O Father, purge away
All vicious tinctures, that new fashioned
I may rise up from death, before I'm dead.