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4. Temple

With his kind mother who partakes thy woe,

Joseph turn back; see where your child doth sit,

Blowing, yea blowing out those sparks of wit,

Which himself on those Doctors did bestow;

The Word but lately could not speak, and lo

It suddenly speaks wonders, whence comes it,

That all which was, and all which should be writ,

A shallow seeming child, should deeply know?

His godhead was not soul to his manhood,

Nor had time mellowed him to this ripeness,

But as for one which hath a long task, ’tis good,

With the sun to begin his business,

He in his age’s morning thus began

By miracles exceeding power of man,

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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3. Nativity

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,

Now leaves his well-beloved imprisonment,

There he hath made himself to his intent

Weak enough, now into our world to come;

But oh, for thee, for him, hath th’ inn no room?

Yet lay him in this stall, and from the orient,

Stars, and wisemen will travel to prevent

Th’ effect of Herrod’s jealous general doom.

See’st thou, my soul, with my faith’s eyes, how he

Which fills all place, yet none hold him, doth life?

Was not his pity towards thee wondrous high

That would have need to be pitied by thee?

Kiss him, and with him into Egypt go,

With his kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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2. Annunciation

Salvation to all that will is nigh,

That all, which always is all everywhere,

Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,

Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,

Lo, faithful Virgin, yields himself to lie

In prison, in thy womb; and though he there

Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet he ‘will wear

Taken from thence, flesh, which death’s force may try.

Ere by the spheres time was created, thou

Wast in his mind, who is thy son, and brother,

Whom thou conceiv’st, conceived; yea thou art now

Thy maker’s maker, and thy father’s mother,

Thou’ hast light in dark; and shutt’st in little room,

Immensity cloistered in the dear womb.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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I

Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise,

Weaved in my low devout melancholy,

Thou which of good, hast, yea art treasury,

All changing unchanged Ancient of days,

But do not, with a vile crown of frail bays,

Reward my muse’s white sincerity,

But what thy thorny crown gained, that give me,

A crown of glory, which doth flower always;

The ends crown our works, but thou crown’st our ends,

For, at our end  begins our endless rest,

This first last end, now zealously possessed

With a strong sober thirst, my soul attends.

‘Tis time that heart and voice be lifted high,

Salvation to all that will is nigh.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward

Let man’s soul be a sphere, and then, in this,

The intelligence that moves, devotion is,

And as the other spheres, by being grown

Subject to foreign motions, lose their own,

And being by others hurried every day,

Scarce in a year their natural form obey:

Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit

For their first mover, and are whirled by it.

Hence is’t, that I am carried towards the west

This day, when my soul’s form bends toward the east.

There I should see a sun, by rising set,

And by that setting endless day beget;

But that Christ on this Cross, did rise and fall,

Sin had eternally benighted all.

Yet dare I’ almost be glad, I do not see

That spectacle of too much weight for me.

Who sees God’s face, that is self life, must die;

What a death were it then to see God die?

It made his own lieutenant Nature shrink,

It made his footstool crack, and the sun wink.

Could I behold those hands which span the poles,

And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?

Could I behold that endless height which is

Zenith to us, and to’our antipodes,

Humbled below us? or that blood which is

The seat of all our souls, if not of his,

Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn,

By God, for his apparel, ragged, and torn?

If on these things I durst not look, durst I

Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,

Who was God’s partner here, and furnished thus

Half of that sacrifice, which ransomed us?

Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,

They are present yet unto my memory,

For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards me,

O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;

I turn my back to thee, but to receive

Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.

O think me worth thine anger, punish me,

Bur off my rusts, and my deformity,

Restore thine image, so much, by thy grace,

That thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

From a sermon preached on Easter Day 1626

[Re-Compacted Bodies]

In natural death, there is Casus in separationem, The man, the person falls into a separation, a divorce of body and soul; and the resurrection from this fall is by re-union, the soul and body are re-united at the last day. A second fall in natural death, is Casus in dissolutionem, The dead body falls by putrefaction into a dissolution, into atoms and grains of dust; and the resurrection from this fall, is by re-efformation: God shall re-compact and re-compile those atoms and grains of dust, into that body, which was before: And then a third fall in natural death, is Casus in Dispersionem, This man being fallen into a divorce of body and soul, this body being fallen into a dissolution of dust, this dust falls into a dispersion, and is scattered unsensibly, undiscernibly upon the face of the earth; and the resurrection from this death, is by way of re-collection; God shall recall and re-collect all these atoms, and grains of dusts, and re-compact that body, and re-unite that soul, and so that resurrection is accomplished…

Where man’s buried flesh hath brought forth grass, and that grass fed beasts, and those beasts fed men,and those men fed other men, God that knows in which box of his cabinet all this seed pearl lies, in what corner of the world every atom, every grain of every man’s dust sleeps, shall recollect that dust, and then recompact that body,and then re-inanimate that man, and that is the accomplishment of all.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990