Love’s Usury
 
 
For every hour that thou wilt spare me now,

I will allow,

Usurious God of Love, twenty to thee,

When with my brown, my grey hairs equal be;

Till then, Love let my body reign, and let

Me travel, sojourn, snatch, plot, have, forget,

Resume my last year’s relict: think that yet

We had never met.

 
 
Let me think any rival’s letter mine,

And at next nine

Keep midnight’s promise; mistake by the way

The maid, and tell the Lady of that delay;

Only let me love none, no, not the sport;

From country grass, to comfitures of Court,

Or city’s quelque-choses, let report

My mind transport.

 
 
This bargain’s good; if when I am old, I be

Inflamed by thee,

If thine own honour, or my shame, or pain,

Thou covet, most at that age thou shalt gain.

Do thy will then, then subject and degree,

And fruit of love, Love, I submit to thee,

Spare me till then, I’ll bear it, though she be

One that love me.

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

The Expiration

So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss,

Which sucks two souls, and vapours both away,

Turn thou ghost that way, and let me turn this,

And let ourselves benight our happiest day,

We asked none leave to love; nor will we owe

Any, so cheap a death, as saying, Go;

Go; and if that word have not quite killed thee,

Ease me with death, by bidding me go too.

Oh, if it have, let my word work on me,

And a just office on a murderer do.

Except it be too late, to kill me so,

Being double dead, going, and bidding, go.

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

Holy Sonnets

12

Father, part of his double interest

Unto thy kingdom, thy Son gives to me,

He jointure in the knotty Trinity

He keeps, and gives me his death’s conquest.

This Lamb, whose death with life the world hath blessed,

Was from the world’s beginning slain, and he

Hat made two wills, which with the legacy

Of his and thy kingdom, do thy sons invest.

Yet such are thy laws, that men argue yet

Whether a man those statutes can fulfil;

None doth, but thy all-healing grace and Spirit

Revive again what law and letter kill.

Thy law’s abridgement, and thy last command

Is all but love; oh let that last will stand!

 

 

 

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

Holy Sonnets

10.

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurped town, to another due,

Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end,

Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captived, and proves weak or untrue,

Yet dearly’I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am betrothed unto your enemy,

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I

Except you enthral me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

 

 

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

La Carona

7. Ascension

Salute the last and everlasting day,

Joy at the uprising of this sun, and son,

Ye whose just tears, or tribulation

Have purely washed, or burnt your drossy clay;

Behold the Highest, parting hence away,

Lightens the dark clouds, which he treads upon,

Nor doth he by ascending, show alone,

But first he, and he first enters the way.

O strong ram, which has battered heaven for me,

Mild lamb, which with thy blood, hast marked the path;

Bright torch, which shin’st, that I the way may see,

Oh, with thine own blood quench thine own just wrath,

And if thy holy Spirit, my Muse did raise,

Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise.

 

 

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

 

La Carona

6. Resurrection

Moist with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul

Shall (though she now be in extreme degree

Too stony hard, and yet too fleshly,) be

Freed by that drop, from being starved, hard, or foul,

And life, by this death abled, shall control

Death, whom thy death slew; nor shall to me

Fear of first or last death, bring misery,

If in thy little book my name thou enrol,

Flesh in that long sleep is not putrefied,

But made that there, of which, and for which ’twas;

Nor can by other means be glorified.

May then sin’s sleep, and death’s soon from me pass,

That waked from both, I again risen may

Salute the last, and everlasting day.

 

 

 

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

La Carona

5. Crucifying

By miracles exceeding power of man,

He faith in some, envy in some begat,

For, what weak spirits admire, ambitious hate;

In both affections many to him ran,

But oh! the worst are most, they will and can,

Alas, and do, unto the immaculate,

Whose creature Fate is, now prescribe a fate,

Measuring self-life’s infinity to a span,

Nay to an inch. Lo, where condemned he

Bears his own cross, with pain, yet by and by

When it bears him, he must bear more and die.

Now thou art lifted up, draw me to thee,

And at thy death giving such a liberal dole,

Moist, with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul.

 

 

 

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

La Carona

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

La Carona

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