Classic Poem

TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD

Madam, I have learned by those laws wherein I am a little conversant, that he which bestows any cost upon the dead, obliges him which is dead, but not the heir; I do not therefore send this paper to your Ladyship, that you should thank me for it, or think that I thank you in it; your favours and benefits to me are so much above my merits, that they are even above my gratitude, if that were to be judged by words which must express it: but, Madam, since your noble brother's fortune being yours, the evidences also concerning it are yours: so his virtue being yours, the evidences concerning it, belong also to you, of which by your acceptance this may be one piece, in which quality I humbly present it, and as a testimony how entirely your family possesseth
Your Ladyship's most humble and thankful servant
John Donne

Fair soul, which wast, not only, as all souls be,
Then when thou wast infused, harmony,
But didst continue so; and now dost bear
A part in God's great organ, this whole sphere:
If looking up to God; or down to us,
Thou find that any way is pervious,
'Twixt heaven and earth, and that men's actions do
Come to your knowledge, and affections too,
See, and with joy, me to that good degree
Of goodness grown, that I can study thee,
And, by these meditations refined,
Can unapparel and enlarge my mind,
And so can make by this soft ecstasy,
This place a map of heaven, myself of thee.
Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest;
Time's dead-low water; when all minds divest
Tomorrow's business, when the labourers have
Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave,
Subject to change, will scarce be'a type of this,
Now when the client, whose last hearing is
Tomorrow, sleeps, when the condemned man,
(Who when he opes his eyes, must shut them then
Again by death), although sad watch he keep,
Doth practice dying by a little sleep,
Thou at this midnight seest me, and as soon
As that sun rises to me, midnight's noon,
All the world grows transparent, and I see
Through all, both church and state, in seeing thee;
And I discern by favour of this light,
Myself, the hardest object of the sight.
God is the glass; as thou when thou dost see
Him who sees all, seest all concerning thee,
So, yet unglorified, I comprehend
All, in these mirrors of thy ways, and end.
Though God be our true glass, through which we see
All, since the being of all things is he,
Yet are the trunks which do to us derive
Things, in proportion fit, by perspective,
Deeds of good men; for by their living here,
Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.
But where can I affirm, or where arrest
My thoughts on his deeds? which shall I call best?
For fluid virtue cannot be looked on,
Nor can endure a contemplation;
As bodies change, and as I do not wear
Those spirits, humours, blood I did last year,
And, as if on a stream I fixed mine eye,
That drop, which I looked on, is presently
Pushed with more waters from my sight, and gone,
So in this sea of virtues, can no one
Be insisted on; virtues, as rivers, pass,
Yet still remains that virtuous man there was;
And as if man feed on man's flesh, and so
Part of his body to another owe,
Yet at the last two perfect bodies rise,
Because God knows where every atom lies;
So, if one knowledge were made of all those,
Who knew his minutes well, he might dispose
His virtues into names, and ranks; but I
Should injure nature, virtue, and destiny,
Should I divide and discontinue so,
Virtue, which did in one entireness grow.
For as, he that would say, spirits are framed
Of all the purest parts that can be named,
Honours not spirits half so much, as he
Which says, they have no parts, but simple be;
So is 't of virtue; for a point and one
Are much entirer than a million.
And had Fate meant to have his virtues told,
It would have let him live to have been old,
So, then that virtue in season, and then this,
We might have seen, and said, that now he is
Witty, now wise, now temperate, now just:
In good short lives, virtues are fain to thrust,
And to be sure betimes to get a place,
When they would exercise, lack time, and space.
So was it in this person, forced to be
For lack of time, his own epitome:
So to exhibit in few years as much,
As all the long-breathed chronicles can touch.
As when an angel down from heaven doth fly,
Our quick thought cannot keep him company,
We cannot think, now he is at the sun,
Now through the moon, now he through th' air doth run,
Yet when he's come, we know he did repair
To all 'twixt heaven and earth, sun, moon, and air;
And as this angel in an instant knows,
And yet we know, this sudden knowledge grows
By quick amassing several forms of things,
Which he successively to order brings;
When they, whose slow-paced lame thoughts cannot go
So fast as he, think that he doth not so;
Just as a perfect reader doth not dwell,
On every syllable, nor stay to spell,
Yet without doubt, he doth distinctly see
And lay together every A, and B;
So, in short-lived good men, is not understood
Each several virtue, but the compound good;
For, they all virtue's paths in that pace tread,
As angels go, and know, and as men read.
O why should then these men, these lumps of balm
Sent hither, this world's tempests to becalm,
Before by deeds they are diffused and spread,
And so make us alive, themselves be dead?
O soul, O circle, why so quickly be
Thy ends, thy birth and death closed up in thee?
Since one foot of thy compass still was placed
In heaven, the other might securely have paced
In the most large extent, through every path,
Which the whole world, or man the abridgement hath.
Thou know'st, that though the tropic circles have
(Yea and those small ones which the poles engrave),
All the same roundness, evenness, and all
The endlessness of the equinoctial;
Yet, when we come to measure distances,
How here, how there, the sun affected is,
Where he doth faintly work, and where prevail,
Only great circles, then, can be our scale:
So, though thy circle to thyself express
All, tending to thy endless happiness,
And we, by our good use of it may try,
Both how to live well young, and how to die,
Yet, since we must be old, and age endures
His torrid zone at Court, and calentures
Of hot ambitions, irreligion's ice,
Zeal's agues, and hydroptic avarice,
Infirmities which need the scale of truth,
As well, as lust and ignorance of youth;
Why didst thou not for these give medicines too,
And by thy doing tell us what to do?
Though as small pocket-clocks, whose every wheel
Doth each mismotion and distemper feel,
Whose hand gets shaking palsies, and whose string
(His sinews) slackens, and whose soul, the spring,
Expires, or languishes, whose pulse, the fly,
Either beats not, or beats unevenly,
Whose voice, the bell, doth rattle, or grow dumb,
Or idle, 'as men, which to their last hours come,
If these clocks be not wound, or be wound still,
Or be not set, or set at every will;
So, youth is easiest to destruction,
If then we follow all, or follow none.
Yet, as in great clocks, which in steeples chime,
Placed to inform whole towns, to employ their time,
An error doth more harm, being general,
When, small clocks' faults, only'on the wearer fall;
So work the faults of age, on which the eye
Of children, servants, or the state rely.
Why wouldst not thou then, which hadst such a soul,
A clock so true, as might the sun control,
And daily hadst from him, who gave it thee,
Instructions, such as it could never be
Disordered, stay here, as a general
And great sundial, to have set us all?
O why wouldst thou be any instrument
To this unnatural course, or why consent
To this, not miracle, but prodigy
That when the ebbs, longer than flowings be,
Virtue, whose flood did with thy youth begin,
Should so much faster ebb out, than flow in?
Though her flood was blown in, by thy first breath,
All is at once sunk in the whirlpool death.
Which word I would not name, but that I see
Death, else a desert, grown a Court by thee.
Now I grow sure, that if a man would have
Good company, his entry is a grave.
Methinks all cities now, but anthills be,
Where, when the several labourers I see,
For children, house, provision, taking pain,
They'are all but ants, carrying eggs, straw, and grain;
And churchyards are our cities, unto which
The most repair, that are in goodness rich.
There is the best concourse, and confluence,
There are the holy suburbs, and from thence
Begins God's city, New Jerusalem,
Which doth extend her utmost gates to them.
At that gate then triumphant soul, dost thou
Begin thy triumph; but since laws allow
That at the triumph day, the people may,
All that they will, 'gainst the triumpher say,
Let me here use that freedom, and express
My grief, though not to make thy triumph less.
By law, to triumphs none admitted be,
Till they as magistrates get victory;
Though then to thy force, all youth's foes did yield,
Yet till fit time had brought thee to that field,
To which thy rank in this state destined thee,
That there thy counsels might get victory,
And so in that capacity remove
All jealousies 'twixt Prince and subject's love,
Thou couldst no title, to this triumph have,
Thou didst intrude on death, usurp'st a grave.
Then (though victoriously) thou hadst fought as yet
But with thine own affections, with the heat
Of youth's desires, and colds of ignorance,
But till thou shouldst successfully advance
Thine arm's 'gainst foreign enemies, which are
Both envy, and acclamations popular,
(For, both these engines equally defeat,
Though by a divers mine, those which are great,)
Till then thy war was but a civil war,
For which to triumph, none admitted are;
No more are they, who though with good success,
In a defensive war, their power express.
Before men triumph, the dominion
Must be enlarged and not preserved alone;
Why shouldst thou then, whose battles were to win
Thyself, from those straits nature put thee in,
And to deliver up to God that state,
Of which he gave thee the vicariate,
(Which is thy soul and body) as entire
As he, who takes endeavours, doth require,
But didst not stay, to enlarge his kingdom too,
By making others, what thou didst, to do;
Why shouldst thou triumph now, when heaven no more
Hath got, by getting thee, than it had before?
For, heaven and thou, even when thou lived'st here,
Of one another in possession were.
But this from triumph most disables thee,
That, that place which is conquered, must be
Left safe from present war, and likely doubt
Of imminent commotions to break out.
And hath he left us so? or can it be
His territory was no more than he?
No, we were all his charge, the diocese
Of every exemplar man, the whole world is,
And he was joined in commission
With tutelar angels, sent to every one.
But though his freedom to upbraid, and chide
Him who triumphed, were lawful, it was tied
With this, that it might never reference have
Unto the Senate, who this triumph gave;
Men might at Pompey jest, but they might not
At that authority, by which he got
Leave to triumph, before, by age, he might;
So, though, triumphant soul, I dare to write,
Moved with a reverential anger, thus,
That thou so early wouldst abandon us;
Yet am I far from daring to dispute
With that great sovereignty, whose absolute
Prerogative hath thus dispensed for thee,
'Gainst nature's laws, which just impugners be
Of early triumphs; and I (though with pain)
Lessen our loss, to magnify thy gain
Of triumph, when I say, it was more fit,
That all men should lack thee, than thou lack it.
Though then in our time, be not suffered
That testimony of love, unto the dead,
To die with them, and in their graves be hid,
As Saxon wives, and Frenchsoldurii did;
And though in no degree I can express
Grief in great Alexander's great excess,
Who at his friend's death, made whole towns divest
Their walls and bulwarks which became them best:
Do not, fair soul, this sacrifice refuse,
That in thy grave I do inter my Muse,
Who, by my grief, great as thy worth, being cast
Behind hand, yet hath spoke, and spoke her last.