by John Donne
Fair law’s white reverend name be strumpeted
[70] To warrant thefts; she is established
Recorder to Destiny on earth, and she
Speaks Fate’s words, and but tells us who must be
Rich, who poor, who in chairs, who in jails;
She is all fair, but yet hath foul long nails
With which she scratcheth suitors; in bodies
Of men, so’in law, nails are th’extremities,
So’officers stretch to more than law can do,
As our nails reach what no else part comes to.
Why barest thou to yon officer? Fool, hath he
[80] Got those goods, for which erst men bared to thee?
Fool, twice, thrice, thou hast bought wrong, and now hungrily
Beg’st right; but that dole comes not till these die.
Thou had’st much, and law’s Urim and Thummim try
Thou would’st for more; and for all hast paper
Enough to clothe all the great carrack’s pepper.
Sell that, and by that thou much more shalt lease
Than Haman when he sold his antiquities.
O wretch that thy fortunes should moralize
Aesop’s fables, and make tales, prophecies.
[90] Thou’art the swimming dog whom shadows cozened,
And divest, near drowning, for what vanished.
Upon Mr Thomas Coryat’s Crudities
O to what height will love of greatness drive
Thy leavened spirit, sesqui-superlative?
Venice’ vast lake thou’had’st seen, and would’st seek then
Some vaster thing, and found’st a courtesan.
That inland sea, having discovered well
A cellar-gulf where one might sail to hell
From Heidelberg, thou longed’st to see, and thou
This book, greater than all, producest now.
Infinite work, which doth so far extend,
[10] That none can study it to any end.
’Tis no one thing: it is not fruit, nor root,
Nor poorly limited with head or foot.
If man be therefore man because he can
Reason and laugh, thy book doth half make man.
One half being made, thy modesty was such
That thou on the’other half would’st never touch.
When wilt thou be at full, great lunatic?
Not till thou exceed the world? Canst thou be like
A prosperous nose-born wen, which sometimes grows
[20] To be far greater than the mother-nose?
Go then, and as to thee, when thou didst go,
Munster did towns, and Gesner authors show,
Mount now to Gallo-Belgicus, appear
As deep a statesman as a gazeteer.
Homely and familiarly, when thou com’st back,
Talk of Will Conqueror and Prester Jack.
Go bashful man, lest here thou blush to look
Upon the progress of thy glorious book,
To which both Indies sacrifices send.
[30] The west sent gold, which thou didst freely spend
(Meaning to see’t no more) upon the press.
The East sends hither her deliciousness,
And thy leaves must embrace what comes from thence:
The myrrh, the pepper, and the frankincense.
This magnifies thy leaves. But if they stoop
To neighbour wares when merchants do unhoop
Voluminous barrels, if thy leaves do then
Convey these wares in parcels unto men,
If for vast tomes of currants and of figs,
[40] Of medicinal and aromatic twigs,
Thy leaves a better method do provide,
Divide to pounds and ounces subdivide;
If they stoop lower yet and vent our wares,
Home-manufactures, to thick popular fairs,
If omni-pregnant there, upon warm stalls
They hatch all wares for which the buyer calls,
Then thus thy leaves we justly may commend,
That they all kind of matter comprehend.
Thus thou, by means which th’ancients never took,
[50] A pandect mak’st and universal book.
The bravest heroes, for public good
Scattered in diverse lands, their limbs and blood.
Worst malefactors, to whom men are prize,
Do public good cut in anatomies,
So will thy book in pieces, for a lord
Which casts at portescues and all the board,
Provide whole books; each leaf enough will be
For friends to pass time and keep company.
Can all carouse up thee? No, thou must fit
[60] Measures and fill out for the half-pint wit.
Some shall wrap pills and save a friend’s life so,
Some shall stop muskets and so kill a foe.
Thou shalt not ease the critics of next age
So much, at once their hunger to assuage.
Nor shall wit-pirates hope to find thee lie
All in one bottom in one library.
Some leaves may paste strings there in other books
And so one may, which on another looks,
Pilfer, alas, a little wit from you,
[70] But hardly* much, and yet, I think this true;
As Sybil’s was, your book is mystical,
For every piece is as much worth as all.
Therefore mine impotency I confess;
The healths which my brain bears must be far less.
Thy giant wit o’erthrows me, I am gone,
And rather than read all, I would read none.
In eundem Macaronicon
Quot, dos haec, Linguists perfetti, Disticha fairont,
Tot cuerdos States-men, hic livre fara tuus.
Es sat a My l’honneur estre hic inteso; Car I leave
L’honra, de personne nestre creduto, tibi.
Explicit Ioannes Donne
On the Same Macaronic Composition
As these two double verses, perfect linguists, create
So many sensible statesmen, this book will form yours.
It is sufficient to my reputation to be understood in this;
for I leave
The honour of anyone not to be believed, to you.
Incipit Ioannes Dones
Lo, here’s a man, worthy indeed to travel;
Fat Libian plains, strangest China’s gravell.
For Europe well hath seen him stir his stumps,
Turning his double shoes to simple pumps.
And for relation, look he doth afford
Almost for every step he took, a word;
What had he done had he ere hugged th’ocean
With swimming Drake or famous Magelan?
And kissed that unturned* cheek of our old mother,
[10] Since so our Europe’s world he can discover?
It’s not thata French which made hisb giant see
Those uncouth lands where words frozen be,
Till by the thaw next year they’re voiced again;
Whose Papagats, Andoüilets, and that train
Should be such matter for a pope to curse
As he would make; make! makes ten times worse,
And yet so pleasing as shall laughter move,
And be his vain, his gain, his praise, his love.
Sit not still then, keeping fame’s trump unblown,
[20] But get thee Coryate to some land unknown.
From whence proclaim thy wisdom with those wonders,
Rarer than summer’s snows, or winter’s thunders.
And take this praise of that th’hast done already,
’Tis pity ere thy flow should have an eddy.
Explicit Ioannes Dones
Metempsychosis
Infinitati Sacrum
16 Augusti 1601.
Metempsychosis
Poêma Satyricon.
Epistle
&n
bsp; Others at the porches and entries of their buildings set their arms; I, my picture, if any colours can deliver a mind so plain and flat and through-light as mine. Naturally at a new author I doubt, and stick, and do not say quickly, good. I censure much and tax, and this liberty costs me more than others, by how much my own things are worse than others. Yet, I would not be so rebellious against myself as not to do it, since I love it; nor so unjust to others to do it sine talione. As long as I give them as good hold upon me, they must pardon me my bitings. I forbid no reprehender but him that like the Trent Council forbids not [10] books but authors, damning what ever such a name hath or shall write. None writes so ill that he gives not some thing exemplary to follow or fly. Now when I begin this book, I have no purpose to come into any man’s debt; how my stock will hold out I know not; perchance waste, perchance increase in use. If I do borrow anything of antiquity, besides that I make account that I pay it to posterity with as much and as good, you shall still find me to acknowledge it, and to thank not him only that hath digged out treasure for me but that hath lighted me a candle to the place. All which I will bid you remember (for I will have no such readers as I [20] can teach) is that the Pythagorean doctrine doth not only carry one soul from man to man, nor man to beast, but indifferently to plants also; and therefore, you must not grudge to find the same soul in an emperor, in a post-horse, and in a mushroom, since no unreadiness in the soul but an indisposition in the organs works this. And therefore, though this soul could not move when it was a melon, yet it may remember and now tell me at what lascivious banquet it was served. And though it could not speak when it was a spider, yet it can remember, and now tell me, who used it for poison to attain dignity. How ever the bodies have dulled her [30] other faculties, her memory hath ever been her own, which makes me so seriously deliver you by her relation all her passages from her first making when she was that apple which Eve ate to this time when she is he, whose life you shall find in the end of this book.
The Progress of the Soul
First Song.
I.
I sing the progress of a deathless soul,
Whom fate, which God made but doth not control,
Placed in most shapes, all times before the law
Yoked us, and when, and since, in this I sing.
And the great world to his aged evening,
From infant morn through manly noon I draw.
What the gold Chaldee or silver Persian saw,
Greek brass or Roman iron is in this one,
A work t’outwear Seth’s pillars, brick and stone,
[10] And (holy writs excepted) made to yield to none.
II.
Thee, eye of heaven, this great soul envies not;
By thy male force is all we have, begot.
In the first East, thou now begins to shine,
Suck’st early balm and island spices there,
And wilt anon in thy loose-reined career
At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danon dine.
And see at night thy western land of mine.
Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she
That, before thee, one day began to be,
[20] And thy frail light being quenched, shall long, long outlive thee.
III.
Nor holy Janus, in whose sovereign boat
The church and all the monarchies did float,
That swimming college and free hospital
Of all mankind, that cage and vivary
Of fowls and beasts, in whose womb Destiny,
Us, and our latest nephews did install
(From thence are all derived, that fill this all),
Didst thou in that great stewardship embark
So diverse shapes into that floating park,
[30] As have been moved and informed by this heavenly spark.
IV.
Great destiny, the commissary of God,
That hast marked out a path and period
For everything, who, where we offspring took,
Our ways and ends see’st at one instant. Thou,
Knot of all causes, thou whose changeless brow
Ne’er smiles nor frowns, O vouchsafe thou to look
And show my story in thy eternal book.
That (if my prayer be fit) I may’understand
So much myself, as to know with what hand,
[40] How scant or liberal this my life’s race is spanned.
V.
To my six lustres almost now outwore,
Except thy book owe me so many more,
Except my legend be free from the lets
Of steep ambition, sleepy poverty,
Spirit-quenching sickness, dull captivity,
Distracting business, and from beauty’s nets,
And all that calls from this, and to others whets,
O let me not launch out, but let me save
Th’expense of brain and spirit, that my grave
[50] His right and due, a whole unwasted man may have.
VI.
But if my days be long and good enough,
In vain this sea shall enlarge or enrough
Itself; for I will through the wave and foam,
And shall in sad love ways a lively spright
Make my dark, heavy poem light, and light.
For though through many straits and lands I roam,
I launch at paradise, and I sail towards home.
The course I there began shall here be stayed,
Sails hoised there, stroke here, and anchors laid
[60] In Thames, which were at Tigris and Euphrates weighed.
VII.
For the great soul which here amongst us now
Doth dwell, and moves that hand and tongue and brow,
Which, as the moon the sea, moves us, to hear
Whose story, with long patience you will long
(For ’tis the crown and last strain of my song),
This soul to whom Luther and Mahomet were
Prisons of flesh, this soul which oft did tear
And mend the wracks of th’empire and late Rome,
And lived when every great change did come
[70] Had first, in paradise, a low but fatal room.
VIII.
Yet no low room, nor than the greatest, less,
If (as devout and sharp men fitly guess)
That cross, our joy and grief where nails did tie
That all, which always was all, everywhere,
Which could not sin, and yet all sins did bear,
Which could not die, yet could not choose but die,
Stood in the selfsame room in Calvary
Where first grew the forbidden, learned tree,
For on that tree hung in security
[80] This soul, made by the maker’s will from pulling free.
IX.
Prince of the orchard, fair as dawning morn,
Fenced with the law, and ripe as soon as born,
That apple grew, which this soul did enlive,
Till the then climbing serpent that now creeps
For that offence, for which all mankind weeps,
Took it, and t’her whom the first man did wive
(Whom and her race only forbiddings drive)
He gave it, she, t’her husband. Both did eat,
So perished the eaters and the meat,
[90] And we (for treason taints the blood) thence die and sweat.
X.
Man all at once was there by woman slain,
And one by one we’are here slain o’er again
By them. The mother poisoned the well-head;
The daughters here corrupt us, rivulets,
No smallness ’scapes, no greatness breaks their nets.
She thrust us out, and by them we are led
Astray from turning to whence we are fled.
Were prisoners judges, ’twould seem rigorous:
She sinned, we bear. Part of our pain is thus
[100] To love them whose
fault to this painful love yoked us.
XI.
So fast in us doth this corruption grow,
That now we dare ask why we should be so.
Would God (disputes the curious rebel) make
A law, and would not have it kept? Or can
His creatures’ will cross His? Of every man
For one, will God (and be just) vengeance take?
Who sinned? ’Twas not forbidden to the snake
Nor her who was not then made; nor is’t writ
That Adam cropped or knew the apple. Yet
[110] The worm, and she, and he, and we endure for it.
XII.
But snatch me, heavenly spirit, from this vain
Reckoning their vanities; less is their gain
Than hazard still to meditate on ill,
Though with good mind; their reasons, like those toys
Of glassy bubbles which the gamesome boys
Stretch to so nice a thinness through a quill
That they themselves break, do themselves spill.
Arguing is heretics’ game, and exercise,
As wrestlers, perfects them. Not liberties
[120] Of speech, but silence, hands, not tongues, end heresies.
XIII.
Just in that instant when the serpent’s grip
Broke the slight veins and tender conduit-pipe
Through which this soul from the tree’s root did draw
Life and growth, to this apple fled away
This loose soul, old, one and another day.
As lightning, which one scarce dares say he saw,
’Tis so soon gone (and better proof the law
Of sense than faith requires); swiftly she flew
To a dark and foggy plot. Her, her fates threw
[130] There through th’earth’s pores, and in a plant housed her anew.
XIV.
The plant, thus abled, to itself did force
A place where no place was; by nature’s course,
As air from water, water fleets away
From thicker bodies, by this root thronged so
His spongy confines gave him place to grow,
Just as in our streets, when the people stay
To see the prince, and so fill up the way
That weasels scarce could pass when she comes near,
They throng and cleave up, and a passage clear,
[140] As if for that time their round bodies flattened were.
XV.
His right arm he thrust out towards the east,
Westward his left; th’ends did themselves digest