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 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 61 62 John Donne THE accompanying selection from the poetry of Donne is 'the softnesses, The shadow, light, the air, and life, of love.' "Here Love's divines-since all divinity Faith's infirmity, they choose Something which they may see and use; For, though mind be the heaven, where love doth sit, 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, 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 The Good-Morrow I WONDER, by my troth, what thou and I Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee. And now good-morrow to our waking souls, My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, Whatever dies was not mix'd equally; Woman's Constancy Now thou hast loved me one whole day, We are not just those persons which we were? Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear? 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 It were but madness now to impart When he, which can have learned the art |