Mine ingenuity and openness

To Jesuits; to Buffoons my pensiveness;
My silence to any who abroad have been;
My money to a Capuchin.

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by appointing me
To love there, where no love receiv'd can be,
Only to give to such as have an incapacity.

My faith I give to Roman Catholics;
All my good works unto the Schismatics
Of Amsterdam; my best civility
And courtship to an university;
My modesty I give to soldiers bare;
My patience let gamesters share :

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me
Love her that holds my love disparity,

Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity.

I give my reputation to those

Which were my friends; mine industry to foes;

To schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulness;

My sickness to physicians, or excess;

To NATURE all that I in rhyme have writ!
And to my company my wit:

Thou, Love, by making me adore

Her who begot this love in me before,

Taught'st me to make as tho' I gave, when I do but restore.

To him for whom the passing bell next tolls

I give my physic books; my written rolls

Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give;

My brazen medals, unto them which live

In want of bread; to them which pass among

All foreigners, my English tongue :

Thou, Love, by making me love one

Who thinks her friendship a fit portion

For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.

Therefore I'll give no more, but I'll undo

The world by dying, because love dies too.
Then all your beauties will be no more worth
Than gold in mines, where none doth draw it forth.
And all your graces no more use shall have
Than a sun-dial in a grave.

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me

Love her who doth neglect both me and thee,

To invent and practice this one way to annihilate all three."

express;

The following (particularly the first stanza) seems to us to express even more than it is intended to which is very rarely the case with the productions of this writer. The love expressed by it is a love for the passion excited, rather than the object exciting it; it is a love that lives by "chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy," rather than by hungering after fresh food-that broods, like the stock dove, over its own voice, and listens for no other that is all sufficient to itself, and (like virtue) its own reward.

"I never stooped so low as they
Which on an eye, cheek, lip, can prey;
Seldom to them which soar no higher
Than virtue, or the mind to admire ;
For sense and understanding may
Know what gives fuel to their fire:
My love, though silly, is more brave;
For may I miss, whene'er I crave,
If I know yet what I would have.

What follows is in a different style, and it offers a singular specimen of the perverse ingenuity with which Donne sometimes bandies a thought about (like a shuttle-cock) from one hand to the other, only to let it fall to the ground at last.

"The Prohibition.

Take heed of loving me:

At least remember I forbade it thee.

Not that I shall repair my unthrifty waste

Of breath and blood upon thy sighs and tears,

By being to thee then what thou wast to me;
But so great joy at once our life outwears.
Then, lest thy love by my death frustrate be,
If thou love me, take heed of loving me.

Take heed of hating me,

Or too much triumph in the victory.
Not that I shall be mine own officer,
And hate again with hate retaliate;
But thou wilt lose the style of conqueror, :
If I, thy conquest, perish by thy hate.
Then, lest my being nothing lessen thee,
If thou hate me, take heed of hating me.

Yet, love and hate me too;

So these extremes shall ne'er their office do:
Love me, that I may die the gentler way;
Hate me, because thy love's too great for me:
Or let these two, themselves, not me, decay:
So shall I live thy stage, not triumph be.
Then, lest thy love hate, and me thou undo,
Oh let me live, yet love and hate me too."

The following, in common with many other whole pieces and detached thoughts of this writer, has been imitated by later love-poets in proportion as it has not been read.

Go and catch a falling star,

calmed the mandrake, root,

*

Tell me where all past years are,

Or who cleft the devil's foot.

Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,

Ride ten thousand days and nights,

Till age snow white hairs on thee;
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,

And swear,

No where

Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know;
Such a pilgrimage were sweet:
Yet do not-I would not go,

Though at next door we might meet:
Though she were true when you met her,
And last till you write your letter,
Yet she

Will be

False, ere I come, to two or three.”

The following is to the same purpose, but more imbued with the writer's subtlety of thought and far-fetched ingenuity of illustration.

"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?
(For, 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 falsehood, 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

The whole of the foregoing extracts are taken from the first department of Donne's poetry-the Love-verses. only others that we shall choose from these, will be a few specimens of the truth and beauty that are frequently to be met with in Donne, in the shape of detached thoughts, images, &c. Nothing was ever more exquisitely felt or expressed, than this opening stanza of a little poem, entitled "The Blossom."

"Little thinkest thou, poor flower,

Whom I have watched six or seven days,

And seen thy birth, and seen what every hour
Gave to thy growth, thee to this height to raise,
And now dost laugh and triumph on this bough,-
Little thinkest thou

That it will freeze anon, and that I shall

To-morrow find thee fallen, or not at all."

The admirer of Wordsworth's style of language and versification will see, at once, that it is, at its best, nothing more than a return to this.

How beautiful is the following bit of description!

"When I behold a stream, which from the spring
Doth with doubtful melodious murmuring,

Or in a speechless slumber calmly ride

Her wedded channel's bosom, and there chide,
And bend her brows, and swell, if any bough

Do but stoop down to kiss her utmost brow," &c.

The following is exquisite in its way. It is part of an epithalamion.

and night is come; and yet we see

Formalities retarding thee.

What mean these ladies, which (as though
They were to take a clock to pieces) go
So nicely about the bride?

A bride, before a good-night could be said,
Should vanish from her cloathes into her bed,
As souls from bodies steal, and are not spy'd."

The simile of the clock is an example (not an offensive one) of Donne's peculiar mode of illustration. He scarcely writes a stanza without some ingenious simile of this kind.

The two first lines of the following are very solemn and far-thoughted. There is nothing of the kind in poetry superior to them. I add the lines which succeed them, merely to shew the manner in which the thought is applied.

"I long to talk with some old lover's ghost,
Who died before the God of Love was born :
I cannot think that he, who then lov'd most,
Sunk so low, as to love one which did scorn.
But since this god produced a destiny,
And that vice-nature, Custom, lets it be,
I must love her that loves not me."