John Donne

by John Donne

  As any angel’s tongue can sing of thee;

  [40] The subjects differ, though the skill agree;

  For as by infant-years men judge of age,

  Thy early love, thy virtues, did presage

  What an high part thou bear’st in those best songs

  Whereto no burden, nor no end belongs.

  Sing on, thou virgin soul, whose lossful gain

  Thy love-sick parents have bewailed in vain;

  Never may thy name be in our songs forgot

  Till we shall sing thy ditty, and thy note.

  The First Anniversary. An Anatomy of the World

  The entry into the work.

  When that rich soul which to her heaven is gone,

  Whom all they 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 to’her standing house, to heaven did climb,

  Where, loath to make the saints attend her long,

  [10] 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 succoured 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 turned,

  [20] And so the world had fits; it joyed, it mourned.

  And as men think that agues physic are,

  And th’ague being spent, give over care,

  So thou, sick world, mistak’st thyself 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 spared the sun or man;

  That wound was deep, but ’tis more misery,

  That thou hast lost thy sense and memory.

  ’Twas heavy then to hear thy voice of moan,

  [30] But this is worse, that thou art speechless grown.

  Thou hast forgot thy name thou hadst; thou wast

  Nothing but she, and her thou hast o’erpast.

  For as a child kept from the font until

  A prince, expected long, come to fulfil

  The cer’monies, thou unnamed hadst laid,

  Had not her coming, thee her palace made;

  Her name defined thee, gave thee form and frame,

  And thou forget’st to celebrate thy name.

  Some months she hath been dead (but being dead,

  [40] Measures of times are all determined),

  But long she’hath been away, long, long, yet none

  Offers to tell us who it is that’s gone.

  But as in states doubtful of future heirs,

  When sickness without remedy impairs

  The present prince, they’re loath it should be said,

  The prince doth languish, or the prince is dead;

  So mankind feeling now a general thaw,

  A strong example gone equal to law,

  The cement which did faithfully compact

  [50] And glue all virtues, now resolved, and slacked,

  Thought it some blasphemy to say she’was dead,

  Or that our weakness was discovered

  In that confession; therefore, spoke no more

  Than tongues, the soul being gone, the loss deplore.

  But though it be too late to succour thee,

  Sick world, yea dead, yea putrified, since she,

  Thy’intrinsic balm and thy preservative,

  Can never be renewed, thou never live,

  I (since no man can make thee live) will try

  [60] What we may gain by thy anatomy.

  Her death hath taught us dearly that thou art

  Corrupt and mortal in thy purest part.

  Let no man say, the world itself being dead,

  ’Tis labour lost to have discovered

  The world’s infirmities, since there is none

  Alive to study this dissection;

  For there’s a kind of world remaining still,

  What life the world hath still.

  Though she which did inanimate and fill

  The world be gone, yet in this last long night

  [70] Her ghost doth walk: that is, a glimmering light,

  A faint weak love of virtue and of good

  Reflects from her on them which understood

  Her worth. And though she have shut in all day,

  The twilight of her memory doth stay,

  Which, from the carcass of the old world free,

  Creates a new world, and new creatures be

  Produced. The matter and the stuff of this,

  Her virtue, and the form, our practice is.

  And though to be thus elemented, arm

  [80] These creatures from home-born intrinsic harm

  (For all assumed unto this dignity,

  So many weedless paradises be,

  Which of themselves produce no venomous sin,

  Except some foreign serpent bring it in),

  Yet, because outward storms the strongest break,

  And strength itself by confidence grows weak,

  This new world may be safer being told

  The dangers and diseases of the old;

  The sicknesses of the world.

  For with due temper men do then forgo,

  [90] Or covet things, when they their true worth know.

  There is no health: physicians say that we,

  Impossibility of health.

  At best, enjoy but a neutrality.

  And can there be worse sickness than to know

  That we are never well, nor can be so?

  We are born ruinous: poor mothers cry

  That children come not right, nor orderly,

  Except they headlong come, and fall upon

  An ominous precipitation.

  How witty’s ruin? How importunate

  [100] Upon mankind? It laboured to frustrate

  Even God’s purpose, and made woman, sent

  For man’s relief, cause of his languishment.

  They were to good ends, and they are so still,

  But accessory, and principal in ill.

  For that first marriage was our funeral:

  One woman at one blow then killed us all,

  And singly, one by one, they kill us now.

  We do delightfully ourselves allow

  To that consumption; and profusely blind,

  [110] We kill ourselves to propagate our kind.

  And yet we do not that, we are not men:

  There is not now that mankind which was then

  When as the sun and man did seem to strive

  (Joint tenants of the world) who should survive

  Shortness of life.

  When stag, and raven, and the long-lived tree,

  Compared with man, died in minority;

  When, if a slow-paced star had stol’n away

  From the observer’s marking, he might stay

  Two or three hundred years to see’it again,

  [120] And then make up his observation plain;

  When, as the age was long, the size was great:

  Man’s growth confessed, and recompensed the meat,

  So spacious and large, that every soul

  Did a fair kingdom and large realm control;

  And when the very stature thus erect,

  Did that soul a good way towards heaven direct.

  Where is this mankind now? Who lives to age,

  Fit to be made Methusalem his page?

  Alas, we scarce live long e
nough to try

  [130] Whether a new-made clock run right or lie.

  Old grandsires talk of yesterday with sorrow,

  And for our children we reserve tomorrow.

  So short is life that every peasant strives

  In a torn house, or field, to have three lives.

  And as in lasting, so in length is man

  Contracted to an inch, who was a span.

  Smallness of stature.

  For had a man at first in forests strayed,

  Or shipwrecked in the sea, one would have laid

  A wager that an elephant or whale

  [140] That met him would not hastily assail

  A thing so equal to him; now, alas,

  The fairies and the pigmies well may pass

  As credible; mankind decays so soon,

  We’re scarce our fathers’ shadows cast at noon.

  Only death adds to’our length, nor are we grown

  In stature to be men, till we are none.

  But this were light, did our less volume hold

  All the old text; or had we changed to gold

  Their silver; or disposed into less glass,

  [150] Spirits of virtue, which then scattered was.

  But ’tis not so: we’re not retired, but damped;

  And as our bodies, so our minds are cramped:

  ’Tis shrinking, not close-weaving, that hath thus

  In mind and body both be-dwarfed us.

  We seem ambitious, God’s whole work to’undo;

  Of nothing He made us, and we strive too

  To bring ourselves to nothing back; and we

  Do what we can to do’it so soon as He.

  With new diseases on ourselves we war,

  [160] And with new physic, a worse engine far.

  Thus man, this world’s vice-emperor, in whom

  All faculties, all graces are at home,

  And if in other creatures they appear,

  They’re but man’s ministers, and legates there,

  To work on their rebellions, and reduce

  Them to civility, and to man’s use.

  This man, whom God did woo, and loath to’attend

  Till man came up, did down to man descend,

  This man, so great, that all that is, is His,

  [170] O what a trifle and poor thing he is!

  If man were anything, he’s nothing now;

  Help, or at least some time to waste, allow

  To’his other wants, yet when he did depart

  With her whom we lament, he lost his heart.

  She, of whom th’ancients seemed to prophesy

  When they called virtues by the name of she;

  She in whom virtue was so much refined

  That for alloy unto so pure a mind

  She took the weaker sex; she that could drive

  [180] The poisonous tincture, and the stain of Eve,

  Out of her thoughts and deeds, and purify

  All by a true religious alchemy;

  She, she is dead, she’s dead; when thou knowest this,

  Thou know’st how poor a trifling thing man is.

  And learn’st thus much by our anatomy:

  The heart being perished, no part can be free.

  And that except thou feed (not banquet) on

  The supernatural food, religion,

  Thy better growth grows withered and scant;

  [190] Be more than man, or thou’rt less than an ant.

  Then, as mankind, so is the world’s whole frame

  Quite out of joint, almost created lame;

  For, before God had made up all the rest,

  Corruption entered and depraved the best;

  It seized the angels, and then first of all

  The world did in her cradle take a fall,

  And turned her brains, and took a general maim,

  Wronging each joint of th’universal frame.

  The noblest part, man, felt it first; and then

  [200] Both beasts and plants, cursed in the curse of man.

  So did the world from the first hour decay,

  Decay of nature in other parts.

  The 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,

  [210] 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 there can be

  None of that kind, of which he is, but he.

  This is the world’s condition now, and now

  [220] She that should all parts to reunion bow,

  She that had all magnetic force alone,

  To draw and fasten sundered parts in one;

  She whom wise nature had invented then

  When she observed 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

  [230] Gilt the West Indies and perfumed the East;

  Whose having breathed in this world did bestow

  Spice on those isles, and bade them still smell so,

  And that rich Indie which doth gold inter

  Is but as single money, coined from her;

  She to whom this world must itself 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.

  And learn’st thus much by our anatomy,

  [240] That this world’s general sickness doth not lie

  In any humour, or one certain part;

  But, as thou saw’st it rotten at the heart,

  Thou see’st a hectic fever hath got hold

  Of the whole substance, not to be controlled;

  And that thou hast but one way not to’admit

  The world’s infection, to be none of it.

  For the world’s subtlest immaterial parts

  Feel this consuming wound and age’s darts.

  [249] For the world’s beauty is decayed, or gone,

  Beauty, that’s colour, and proportion.

  Disformity of parts.

  We think the heavens enjoy their spherical,

  Their round proportion embracing all.

  But yet their various and perplexed course,

  Observed in diverse ages, doth enforce

  Men to find out so many’eccentric parts,

  Such diverse downright lines, such overthwarts,

  As disproportion that pure form. It tears

  The firmament in eight and forty shares,

  And in those constellations there arise

  [260] New stars, and old do vanish from our eyes,

  As though heav’n suffered earthquakes, peace, or war,

  When new towns rise, and old demolished are.

  They have impaled within a zodiac

  The free-born sun, and keep twelve signs awake

  To watch his steps; the Goat and Crab control,

  And fright him back, who else to either pole

  (Did not these tropics fetter him) might run,

  For his course is not round; nor can the sun

  Perfect a circle, or maintain his way

  [270] One inch direct; but wh
ere he rose today

  He comes no more, but with a cozening line,

  Steals by that point, and so is serpentine;

  And seeming weary with his reeling thus,

  He means to sleep, being now fallen nearer us.

  So, of the stars which boast that they do run

  In circle still, none ends where he begun.

  All their proportion’s lame, it sinks, it swells.

  For of meridians and parallels,

  Man hath weaved out a net, and this net thrown

  [280] Upon the heavens, and now they are his own.

  Loath to go up the hill, or labour thus

  To go to heaven, we make heaven come to us.

  We spur, we rein the stars, and in their race

  They’re diversely content to’obey our pace.

  But keeps the earth her round proportion still?

  Doth not a Tenerife, or higher hill,

  Rise so high like a rock, that one might think

  The floating moon would shipwreck there and sink?

  Seas are so deep that whales, being struck today,

  [290] Perchance tomorrow, scarce at middle way

  Of their wished journey’s end, the bottom, die.

  And men, to sound depths, so much line untie,

  As one might justly think that there would rise

  At end thereof one of the’antipodes;

  If under all, a vault infernal be

  (Which sure is spacious, except that we

  Invent another torment, that there must

  Millions into a strait hot room be thrust),

  Then solidness and roundness have no place.

  [300] Are these but warts and pockholes in the face

  Of th’earth? Think so, but yet confess, in this

  The world’s proportion disfigured is,

  That those two legs whereon it doth rely,

  Disorder in the world.

  Reward and punishment, are bent awry.

  And, O, it can no more be questioned

  That beauty’s best, proportion, is dead,

  Since even grief itself, which now alone

  Is left us, is without proportion.

  She by whose lines proportion should be

  [310] Examined, measure of all symmetry,

  Whom had that ancient seen, who thought souls made

  Of harmony, he would at next have said

  That harmony was she, and thence infer

  That souls were but resultances from her,

  And did from her into our bodies go,

  As to our eyes the forms from objects flow;

  She, who if those great doctors truly said

  That th’ark to man’s proportions was made,

  Had been a type for that, as that might be

  [320] A type of her in this, that contrary

  Both elements and passions lived at peace

  In her, who caused all civil war to cease;