A Hymn to God the Father

(from the series Homage to the Square, by Josef Albers,
1888-1976, German-born American painter, writer, and
theorist of color)

Sooner or later, serious contemplation involves an examination of oneself.

Today’s poem is by John Donne (1572-1631), the greatest of the English Metaphysical poets.

A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER

Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And having done that, Thou hast done;
I fear no more.

O, My Black Soul, Now Thou Art Summoned

(Marble funeral effigy of John Donne, 1631,
at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, where he
is buried)

John Donne (1572-1631) is among the finest of the English poets. He is one of the Metaphysical poets, the lyric poets who often used one surprising metaphor to bring together two very different ideas. And he is a master of the sonnet.

Donne favored the Petrarchan form of the sonnet but added his own touches. Sometimes he made slight changes to the rhyme or to the meter and he used enjambment or the run-on line to allow for a more free expression of sentiment.

His sonnets demonstrate the truth of an interesting paradox about art: the limits imposed by hard and fast rules often encourage creativity.

In the sonnet below, for example, in a mere fourteen lines, Donne reveals a profound insight into man’s most difficult question, how to confront his mortality. Here, as in his other works, he displays his usual fanciful imagery and subtlety of thought.

SONNET IV of the HOLY SONNETS

O, my black soul, now thou art summoned
By sickness, Death’s herald and champion;
Thou’rt like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
Treason, and durst not turn to whence he’s fled;
Or like a thief, which till death’s doom be read,
Wisheth himself deliver’d from prison,
But damn’d and haled to execution,
Wisheth that still he might be imprisoned.
Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lack;
But who shall give thee that grace to begin?
O, make thyself with holy mourning black,
And red with blushing, as thou art with sin;
Or wash thee in Christ's blood, which hath this might,
That being red, it dyes red souls to white.

An Altogether Different Language

(Landscape with Stars, watercolor by Henri Edmond
Cross, 1856-1910, French artist)

“For love all love of other sights controls, / And makes one little room an everywhere.” ~ John Donne (1572-1631), the greatest of the English Metaphysical poets

AN ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT LANGUAGE

There was an old church in Umbria, Little Portion¹,
Already old eight hundred years ago.
It was abandoned and in disrepair
But it was called St. Mary of the Angels
For it was known to be the haunt of angels,
Often at night the country people
Could hear them singing there.

What was it like, to listen to the angels,
To hear those mountain-fresh, those simple voices
Poured out on the bare stones of Little Portion
In hymns of joy?
No one has told us.
Perhaps it needs another language
That we still have to learn,
An altogether different language.

~ Anne Porter, born 1911, American poet

¹ Little Portion or "small portion of land," Porziuncola; the chapel is one of several small chapels now located here inside the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels in Assisi.

No Man Is an Island

(John Donne, 1572-1631, the greatest of the
English Metaphysical poets)

Agape, or charity, is an act of the will. It involves an understanding of our common humanity, of the connections that bind all of us human beings. What happens to you, happens to me. Your suffering is my suffering.

In one of his Meditations, the poet John Donne explains the paradoxical character of this uniquely human vulnerability.

“Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough, that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it.”

from DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS

Meditation XVII

No man is an island, entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends of thine own were;
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

The Triple Fool

(Couple with Bird’s Nest, eighteenth-century
English woodcut)

“She saw no reason against their being happy. Louisa had fine naval fervor to begin with, and they would soon grow more alike. [Captain Benwick] would gain cheerfulness, and she would learn to be an enthusiast for Scott and Lord Byron; nay that was probably learnt already; of course they had fallen in love over poetry.” ~ Jane Austen, from Persuasion

THE TRIPLE FOOL

I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry;
But where’s that wise man, that would not be I,
If she would not deny?
Then as th’earth’s inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water’s fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme’s vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain;
And, by delighting many, frees again
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when ’tis read.
Both are increasèd by such songs,
For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

~ John Donne (1572-1631), the finest of the English Metaphysical poets, lyric poets whose work displayed a subtlety of thought and fanciful imagery and often used one surprising metaphor to bring together two very different ideas

The Flea

(Apple Blossom and Fruit, circa 1890; in
the language of flowers, apple blossoms
can represent deceit, in an allusion to the
serpent’s deception in Paradise)

This poem, by John Donne (1572-1631), is a fine example of a work by one of the English Metaphysical poets. Many of their lyric poems were filled with fanciful imageries and startling metaphors.

The young man here thinks he is quite clever and witty as he tries to charm a young lady into temptation — since the flea has already done it for us, he says, with our two bloods becoming one, why don’t you and I just do it, too?

But the lady’s not persuaded.

She kills the flea.

THE FLEA

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deny’st me is;
It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,
And cloister’d in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be;
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck’d from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou
Find’st not thyself, nor me the weaker now.
’Tis true; then learn how false fears be;
Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

The Good-Morrow

(Aleko and Zemphira by Moonlight, study for a backdrop
for the ballet Aleko, watercolor by Marc Chagall, 1887-
1985, Belarusian-French artist)

“A lover is easily found, but someone who is everything at once and who would leave you an orphan, a widow, and friendless, if he left you, would be a miracle. You are that miracle — I adore you!” ~ Colette (1873-1954), French writer, from Young Lady of Paris

THE GOOD-MORROW

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then,
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted 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?
What ever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.

~ John Donne (1572-1631), the finest of the English Metaphysical poets, lyric poets whose work displayed a subtlety of thought and fanciful imagery and often used one surprising metaphor to bring together two very different ideas

Death, Be Not Proud

(Bell by Ann Lovell Rowe, photograph on
note cards sold by the Benedictine Abbey
of Christ in the Desert, Abiquiu, NM)

In these famous lines, the poet looks beyond death.

HOLY SONNETS

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 pictures 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.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
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.

~ John Donne (1572-1631), the finest of the English Metaphysical poets, lyric poets whose work displayed a subtlety of thought and fanciful imagery and often used one surprising metaphor to bring together two very different ideas

The Bait

(portrait of John Donne by unknown painter, c. 1595)

O, those metaphysical poets! What are they on about, with their strange metaphors?

The metaphysical poets were seventeenth-century lyric poets like John Donne, George Herbert, Henry King, Andrew Marvell, and Henry Vaughan. The name “metaphysical” refers to the relations these writers made between the abstract and the concrete, the philosophical and the physical.

They frequently used unusual metaphors to establish these connections. In their extended comparisons, “the idea and the simile become one,” as the poet T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) wrote about one such poem.

The critic Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) popularized the metaphysical label. He was, however, dismissive of their work: “The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises, but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.”

Dr. Johnson could very well have been describing the “metaphysical conceits” or images in this poem by John Donne. The poet’s words do seem incongruous. Few of us would choose such words to invite a beloved into our life.

But does the poem appeal to us? Yes, if we let the paradox, the surprise, the contradiction, the unexpected, the wit, the images, do their work and make us stop and think.

THE BAIT

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.

There will the river whisp’ring run
Warm’d by thy eyes, more than the sun;
And there th’enamour’d fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou, to be so seen, be’st loth,
By sun, or moon, thou dark’nest both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare or windowy net.

Let coarse bold hands, from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;
Or curious traitors, sleevesilk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes’ wand’ring eyes.

For thee, thou need’st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait:
That fish, that is not catch’d thereby,
Alas ! is wiser far than I.

~ John Donne (1572-1631), the finest of the English Metaphysical poets

O Day of Mourning, final part

The best poem that connects us to all of us was written almost four hundred years ago as part of a sermon. It’s the one that always comes to mind when the news is of another natural or man-made disaster.

from DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS

No man is an island, entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends of thine own were;
Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

~John Donne (1572-1631), the greatest of the English Metaphysical poets, lyric poets whose work displayed a subtlety of thought and fanciful imagery and often used one (surprising) metaphor to bring together two very different ideas