|
WHEN that rich soul which to her heaven is gone, |
|
Whom all do celebrate, who know they’ve 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, |
5 |
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, loth to make the saints attend her long, |
|
She’s now a part both of the choir and song, |
10 |
This world in that great earthquake languished; |
|
For in a common bath of tears it bled, |
|
Which drew the strongest vital spirits out. |
|
But succour’d then with a perplexed doubt, |
|
Whether the world did lose, or gain in this |
15 |
—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 turn’d, |
|
And so the world had fits; it joy’d, it mourn’d; |
20 |
And as men think that agues physic are, |
|
And th’ ague being spent, give over care; |
|
So thou, sick world, mistakest thyself to be |
|
Well, when, alas! thou’rt in a lethargy. |
|
Her death did wound and tame thee then, and then |
25 |
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, |
|
But this is worse, that thou art speechless grown. |
30 |
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 fount, until |
|
A prince, expected long, come to fulfil |
|
The ceremonies, thou unnamed hadst laid, |
35 |
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, |
|
Measures of time are all determined— |
40 |
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 loth it should be said, |
45 |
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 |
|
And glue all virtues, now resolved and slack’d, |
50 |
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, |
55 |
Sick world, yea dead, yea putrefied, since she, |
|
Thy intrinsic balm and thy preservative, |
|
Can never be renew’d, thou never live, |
|
I—since no man can make thee live—will try |
|
What we may gain by thy Anatomy. |
60 |
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 |
65 |
Alive to study this dissection; |
|
For there’s a kind of world remaining still; |
|
Though she, which did inanimate and fill |
|
The world, be gone, yet in this last long night |
|
Her ghost doth walk, that is, a glimmering light, |
70 |
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 carcase of the old world free, |
75 |
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 |
|
These creatures from home-born intrinsic harm |
80 |
—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, |
85 |
And strength itself by confidence grows weak, |
|
This new world may be safer, being told |
|
The dangers and diseases of the old. |
|
For with due temper men do then forego, |
|
Or covet things, when they their true worth know. |
90 |
There is no health; physicians say that we, |
|
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 |
95 |
That children come not right, nor orderly, |
|
Except they headlong come and fall upon |
|
An ominous precipitation. |
|
How witty’s ruin, how importunate |
|
Upon mankind! it labour’d to frustrate |
100 |
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; |
105 |
One woman, at one blow, then kill’d us all; |
|
And singly, one by one, they kill us now. |
|
We do delightfully ourselves allow |
|
To that consumption; and, profusely blind, |
|
We kill ourselves to propagate our kind. |
110 |
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; |
|
When stag, and raven, and the long-lived tree, |
115 |
Compared with man, died in minority; |
|
When if a slow-paced star had stolen away |
|
From the observer’s marking, he might stay |
|
Two or three hundred years to see it again, |
|
And then make up his observation plain; |
120 |
When, as the age was long, the size was great; |
|
Man’s growth confess’d, 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, |
125 |
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 enough to try |
|
Whether a true-made clock run right, or lie. |
130 |
Old grandsires talk of yesterday with sorrow; |
|
And for our children we reserve to-morrow. |
|
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, |
135 |
Contracted to an inch, who was a span. |
|
For had a man at first in forests stray’d, |
|
Or shipwreck’d in the sea, one would have laid |
|
A wager, that an elephant or whale, |
|
That met him, would not hastily assail |
140 |
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 |
145 |
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 |
|
Spirits of virtue, which then scatter’d was. |
150 |
But ’tis not so; we’re not retired, but damp’d; |
|
And, as our bodies, so our minds are cramp’d. |
|
’Tis shrinking, not close weaving that hath thus |
|
In mind and body both bedwarfed us. |
|
We seem ambitious God’s whole work to undo; |
155 |
Of nothing He made us, and we strive too |
|
To bring ourselves to nothing back; and we |
|
Do what we can to do ’t so soon as He. |
|
With new diseases on ourselves we war, |
|
And with new physic, a worse engine far. |
160 |
This 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 |
165 |
Them to civility, and to man’s use— |
|
This man, whom God did woo, and, loth to attend |
|
Till man came up, did down to man descend; |
|
This man so great, that all that is, is his, |
|
O, what a trifle, and poor thing he is! |
170 |
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, |
175 |
When they called virtues by the name of she; |
|
She, in whom virtue was so much refined, |
|
That for allay unto so pure a mind |
|
She took the weaker sex; she that could drive |
|
The poisonous tincture, and the stain of Eve, |
180 |
Out of her thoughts and deeds, and purify |
|
All by a true religious alchemy; |
|
She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this |
|
Thou know’st how poor a trifling thing man is, |
|
And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, |
185 |
The heart being perish’d, no part can be free, |
|
And that except thou feed, not banquet, on |
|
The supernatural food, religion, |
|
Thy better growth grows withered and scant; |
|
Be more than man, or thou’rt less than an ant. |
190 |
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 enter’d and depraved the best. |
|
It seized the angels, and then first of all |
195 |
The world did in her cradle take a fall, |
|
And turn’d her brains, and took a general maim, |
|
Wronging each joint of th’ universal frame. |
|
The noblest part, man, felt it first; and then |
|
Both beasts and plants, cursed in the curse of man. |
200 |
So did the world from the first hour decay; |
|
That 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; |
205 |
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, |
|
When in the planets, and the firmament |
210 |
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, |
215 |
For every man alone thinks he hath got |
|
To be a phœnix, and that then can be |
|
None of that kind of which he is, but he. |
|
This is the world’s condition now, and now |
|
She that should all parts to reunion bow; |
220 |
She that had all magnetic force alone, |
|
To draw and fasten sunder’d 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, |
225 |
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 |
|
Gilt the West Indies, and perfumed the East; |
230 |
Whose having breathed in this world did bestow |
|
Spice on those isles, and bade them still smell so; |
|
And that rich Indy, which doth gold inter, |
|
Is but as single money coin’d from her; |
|
She to whom this world must itself refer, |
235 |
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, |
|
That this world’s general sickness doth not lie |
240 |
In any humour, or one certain part, |
|
But as thou saw’st it, rotten at the heart. |
|
Thou seest a hectic fever hath got hold |
|
Of the whole substance, not to be controll’d; |
|
And that thou hast but one way, not to admit |
245 |
The world’s infection—to be none of it. |
|
For the world’s subtlest immaterial parts |
|
Feel this consuming wound and age’s darts; |
|
For the world’s beauty is decay’d, or gone |
|
—Beauty; that’s colour and proportion. |
250 |
We think the heavens enjoy their spherical, |
|
Their round proportion, embracing all; |
|
But yet their various and perplexed course, |
|
Observed in divers ages, doth enforce |
|
Men to find out so many eccentric parts, |
255 |
Such diverse downright lines, such overthwarts, |
|
As disproportion that pure form; it tears |
|
The firmament in eight-and-forty shares, |
|
And in these constellations then arise |
|
New stars, and old do vanish from our eyes; |
260 |
As though heaven suffered earthquakes, peace or war, |
|
When new towers rise, and old demolish’d 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, |
265 |
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 |
|
One inch direct; but where he rose to-day |
270 |
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 |
275 |
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 |
|
Upon the heavens, and now they are his own. |
280 |
Loth 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? |
285 |
Doth not a Teneriffe 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 to-day, |
|
Perchance to-morrow scarce at middle way |
290 |
Of their wish’d 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 th’ antipodes. |
|
If under all a vault infernal be |
295 |
—Which sure is spacious, except that we |
|
Invent another torment, that there must |
|
Millions into a straight hot room be thrust— |
|
Then solidness and roundness have no place. |
|
Are these but warts and pockholes in the face |
300 |
Of th’ earth? Think so; but yet confess, in this |
|
The world’s proportion disfigured is; |
|
That those two lees whereon it doth rely, |
|
Reward and punishment, are bent awry. |
|
And, O, it can no more be questioned, |
305 |
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 |
|
Examined, measure of all symmetry, |
310 |
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, |
315 |
As to our eyes the forms from objects flow; |
|
She, who if those great doctors truly said |
|
That th’ ark to man’s proportion was made, |
|
Had been a type for that, as that might be |
|
A type of her in this, that contrary |
320 |
Both elements and passions lived at peace |
|
In her, who caused all civil war to cease. |
|
She, after whom what form soe’er we see |
|
Is discord and rude incongruity; |
|
She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this, |
325 |
Thou know’st how ugly a monster this world is; |
|
And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, |
|
That here is nothing to enamour thee; |
|
And that not only faults in inward parts, |
|
Corruptions in our brains, or in our hearts, |
330 |
Poisoning the fountains whence our actions spring, |
|
Endanger us; but that if everything |
|
Be not done fitly and in proportion, |
|
To satisfy wise and good lookers-on |
|
—Since most men be such as most think they be— |
335 |
They’re loathsome too, by this deformity. |
|
For good, and well, must in our actions meet; |
|
Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet. |
|
But beauty’s other second element, |
|
Colour and lustre, now is as near spent. |
340 |
And had the world his just proportion, |
|
Were it a ring still, yet the stone is gone. |
|
As a compassionate turquoise, which doth tell, |
|
By looking pale, the wearer is not well; |
|
As gold falls sick being stung with mercury, |
345 |
All the world’s parts of such complexion be. |
|
When nature was most busy, the first week, |
|
Swaddling the new-born earth, God seem’d to like |
|
That she should sport herself sometimes, and play, |
|
To mingle and vary colours every day; |
350 |
And then, as though she could not make enow, |
|
Himself his various rainbow did allow. |
|
Sight is the noblest sense of any one; |
|
Yet sight hath only colour to feed on, |
|
And colour is decay’d; summer’s robe grows |
355 |
Dusky, and like an oft dyed garment shows. |
|
Our blushing red, which used in cheeks to spread, |
|
Is inward sunk, and only our souls are red. |
|
Perchance the world might have recovered, |
|
If she whom we lament had not been dead. |
360 |
But she, in whom all white, and red, and blue |
|
(Beauty’s ingredients) voluntary grew, |
|
As in an unvex’d paradise; from whom |
|
Did all things’ verdure, and their lustre come; |
|
Whose composition was miraculous, |
365 |
Being all colour, all diaphanous, |
|
For air and fire but thick gross bodies were, |
|
And liveliest stones but drowsy and pale to her; |
|
She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this, |
|
Thou know’st how wan a ghost this our world is; |
370 |
And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, |
|
That it should more affright than pleasure thee; |
|
And that, since all fair colour then did sink, |
|
’Tis now but wicked vanity, to think |
|
To colour vicious deeds with good pretence, |
375 |
Or with bought colours to illude men’s sense. |
|
Nor in ought more this world’s decay appears, |
|
Than that her influence the heaven forbears, |
|
Or that the elements do not feel this. |
|
The father or the mother barren is; |
380 |
The clouds conceive not rain, or do not pour, |
|
In the due birth-time, down the balmy shower; |
|
Th’ air doth not motherly sit on the earth, |
|
To hatch her seasons, and give all things birth. |
|
Spring-times were common cradles, but are tombs, |
385 |
And false conceptions fill the general wombs. |
|
Th’ air shows such meteors, as none can see, |
|
Not only what they mean, but what they be; |
|
Earth such new worms, as would have troubled much |
|
Th’ Egyptian Mages to have made more such. |
390 |
What artist now dares boast that he can bring |
|
Heaven hither, or constellate anything, |
|
So as the influence of those stars may be |
|
Imprison’d in an herb, or charm, or tree, |
|
And do by touch, all which those stars could do? |
395 |
The art is lost, and correspondence too, |
|
For heaven gives little, and the earth takes less, |
|
And man least knows their trade and purposes. |
|
If this commerce ’twixt heaven and earth were not |
|
Embarr’d, and all this traffic quite forgot, |
400 |
She, for whose loss we have lamented thus, |
|
Would work more fully, and powerfully on us. |
|
Since herbs and roots by dying lose not all, |
|
But they, yea ashes too, are medicinal; |
|
Death could not quench her virtue so, but that |
405 |
It would be—if not follow’d—wonder’d at; |
|
And all the world would be one dying swan, |
|
To sing her funeral praise, and vanish then. |
|
But as some serpents’ poison hurteth not, |
|
Except it be from the live serpent shot, |
410 |
So doth her virtue need her here, to fit |
|
That unto us, she working more than it. |
|
But she, in whom to such maturity |
|
Virtue was grown, past growth, that it must die; |
|
She, from whose influence all impression came, |
415 |
But by receivers’ impotencies lame; |
|
Who, though she could not transubstantiate |
|
All states to gold, yet gilded every state, |
|
So that some princes have some temperance; |
|
Some counsellors, some purpose to advance |
420 |
The common profit; and some people have |
|
Some stay, no more than kings should give, to crave; |
|
Some women have some taciturnity; |
|
Some nunneries some grains of chastity; |
|
She, that did thus much, and much more could do, |
425 |
But that our age was iron, and rusty too, |
|
(She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this |
|
Thou know’st how dry a cinder this world is; |
|
And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, |
|
That ’tis in vain to dew, or mollify |
430 |
It with thy tears, or sweat, or blood; nothing |
|
Is worth our travail, grief, or perishing, |
|
But those rich joys which did possess her heart, |
|
Of which she’s now partaker, and a part. |
|
But as in cutting up a man that’s dead, |
435 |
The body will not last out, to have read |
|
On every part, and therefore men direct |
|
Their speech to parts that are of most effect; |
|
So the world’s carcase would not last, if I |
|
Were punctual in this Anatomy; |
440 |
Nor smells it well to hearers, if one tell |
|
Them their disease, who fain would think they’re well. |
|
Here therefore be the end; and blessed maid, |
|
Of whom is meant whatever has been said, |
|
Or shall be spoken well by any tongue, |
445 |
Whose name refines coarse lines, and makes prose song, |
|
Accept this tribute, and his first year’s rent; |
|
Who till his dark short taper’s end be spent, |
|
As oft as thy feast sees this widow’d earth, |
|
Will yearly celebrate thy second birth; |
450 |
That is, thy death; for though the soul of man |
|
Be got when man is made, ’tis born but then |
|
When man doth die; our body ’s as the womb, |
|
And as a mid-wife death directs it home. |
|
And you, her creatures, whom she works upon, |
455 |
And have your last and best concoction |
|
From her example and her virtue, if you |
|
In reverence to her do think it due, |
|
That no one should her praises thus rehearse, |
|
As matter fit for chronicle, not verse; |
460 |
Vouchsafe to call to mind that God did make |
|
A last and lasting’st piece, a song. He spake |
|
To Moses to deliver unto all |
|
That song, because He knew they would let fall |
|
The law, the prophets, and the history, |
465 |
But keep the song still in their memory. |
|
Such an opinion, in due measure, made |
|
Me this great office boldly to invade; |
|
Nor could incomprehensibleness deter |
|
Me from thus trying to imprison her; |
470 |
Which when I saw that a strict grave could do, |
|
I saw not why verse might not do so too. |
|
Verse hath a middle nature; heaven keeps souls, |
|
The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrolls. |
John Donne (1572–1631). The Poems of John Donne. 1896.
|