Death, be not proud, though some have called thee" Ode: "Vengeance will sit above our faults"

A Hymn to Christ.

A Hymn to God the Father

"God grant thee thine own wish, and grant thee mine"

HENRY KING

ELEGIES, ETC.

Upon the death of my ever-desired friend Doctor Donne,

Dean of Paul's

To my dead friend Ben Jonson

The Legacy

The Exequy

The Surrender

The Dirge

On two Children, dying of one disease and buried in one

grave

Silence

To Patience

"Tell me no more how fair she is

Brave Flowers

Sic Vita

An Elegy upon Dr Donne .

THE POEMS OF IZAAK WALTON

On William Marshall's Portrait of Donne

54

56

On the death of my dear friend Mr William Cartwright, relating to [his] Elegies

On Dr Richard Sibbes

To my reverend friend the Author of The Synagogue
The Angler's Wish

In praise of my friend [Lewes Roberts] and his book, ["The Merchant's Map of Commerce," 1638]

To [Edward Sparke, B.D.] upon the sight of the first
sheet of his book, ["Scintillula Altaris," 1652]
To my ingenious friend, Mr Brome, on his various and
excellent Poems: An Humble Eclogue. Written on
the 29th of May 1660.

61

62

John Donne
Appreciatory Note

THE accompanying selection from the poetry of Donne is
not, of course, to be regarded as in any sense representative
of his surprising power as a maker of subtle and strangely-
diversified song.
What may justly be claimed for it, how-
ever, is that-with reference, especially, to the greater part
of it-it does convey some idea of the quality of Donne's
remarkable achievement as a lyrist, and as a singer of

'the softnesses,

The shadow, light, the air, and life, of love.'

"Here Love's divines-since all divinity
Is love or wonder-may find all they seek,
Whether abstract spiritual love they like,
Their souls exhaled with what they do not see;
Or, loth so to amuse

Faith's infirmity, they choose

Something which they may see and use;

For, though mind be the heaven, where love doth sit,
Beauty a convenient type may be to figure it."
(Valediction to His Book.)

In regard to the latter section it may be said that the few pieces therein comprised afford us at least a glimpse of the poet as he has revealed himself on his more 'seraphical' side-alter et idem ego. For, indeed, even in Donne's most pronouncedly erotic verse the spiritual idea is never wholly lost. Though he is 'one of the most full-blooded,' he is, nevertheless, as Professor Saintsbury has truly remarked, 'one of the least earthly of English poets.' The Donne of the Lyrical Poems may, possibly, have been the self-revealer of Mr Gosse's ingenious analysis,*—‘avid for pleasure and for knowledge and experience . a law unto himself.' But there is, informing all the rapture and the passion which * Life and Letters, vol. i. cp. iii.

Appreciatory Note

find expression here, something which sets them on a higher plane of thought and feeling than that on which so many of the men of Donne's age stood when they were singing of love's fleeting joys.

"But we, by a love so far refined

That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,

Care less eyes, lips, and hands to miss."

(A Valediction forbidding Mourning.)

Fantastic and far-fetched his verse often enough is, and those parts of it which exhibit the results of an overstrained and laborious fantasy certainly merit the censure which has been passed upon the so-called 'metaphysical' school in general. But, notwithstanding these, and other defects, it teems with the rich gold of genuine poetry, and glows with the pure fire of a natural passion and of an imagination as powerful as it is free. It is true, also, that Donne is, at times, untidy' in his versifying, and that, as Ben Jonson (though himself not sinless in this respect) suggested, his accent' is not infrequently at fault. Yet what he lacks in rhythmical perfection and limpidness of flow, he atones for by the richness, depth, and pregnancy of his thought, and by his rare faculty of enshrining in some terse phrase or telling line the intense rapture of the moment, or the vivid sense of some overmastering passion.

Not a little care has been exercised in the selection of the accompanying pieces. Exigencies of space have, of course, ruled out many which the admirer of Donne may look for in vain. Those readers, however, who make their first acquaintance with John Donne in these pages-for the anthologists have, in general, done him but scant justice-will unquestionably find their appetite whetted for more, and will find what they wish either in Dr Grosart's volumes, or in the admirable edition which Mr E. K. Chambers has contributed to the Muses' Library.

It only remains to add that the text of the present poems has been carefully collated, and, while making no pretensions to scholarliness or accuracy, should serve all the purposes of those for whom this little volume is primarily designed.

H. K. W.

John Donne

Selected Poems

I. Lyrical and Amatory
Pieces

The Good-Morrow

I WONDER, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not wean'd till then?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?
Or slumbered we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp North, without declining West?

Whatever dies was not mix'd equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

Woman's Constancy

Now thou hast loved me one whole day,
To-morrow, when thou leav'st what wilt thou say?
Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow?
Or say that now

We are not just those persons which we were?
Or that oaths made in reverential fear

Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?
Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,

So lovers' contracts, images of those,

Bind but till sleep, death's image, them unloose? Or, your own end to justify,

For having purposed change and falsehold, you Can have no way but falsehood to be true? Vain lunatic, against these 'scapes I could Dispute, and conquer, if I would; Which I abstain to do,

For by to-morrow I may think so too.

The Undertaking

I HAVE done one braver thing
Than all the Worthies did;
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is, to keep that hid.

It were but madness now to impart
The skill of specular stone,

When he, which can have learned the art
To cut it, can find none.