Chapter IX: Introduction: To the Poem on the Soul of Man (1)

1 The lights of heaven, which are the world's fair eyes,
Look down into the world, the world to see;
And as they turn or wander in the skies,
Survey all things that on this centre be.

2 And yet the lights which in my tower do shine,
Mine eyes, which view all objects nigh and far,
Look not into this little world of mine,
Nor see my face, wherein they fixed are.

3 Since Nature fails us in no needful thing,
Why want I means my inward self to see?
Which sight the knowledge of myself might bring,
Which to true wisdom is the first degree.

4 That Power, which gave me eyes the world to view,
To view myself, infused an inward light,
Whereby my soul, as by a mirror true,
Of her own form may take a perfect sight.

5 But as the sharpest eye discerneth nought,
Except the sunbeams in the air do shine;
So the best soul, with her reflecting thought,
Sees not herself without some light divine.

6 O light, which mak'st the light which makes the day!
Which sett'st the eye without, and mind within,
Lighten my spirit with one clear heavenly ray,
Which now to view itself doth first begin.

7 For her true form how can my spark discern,
Which, dim by nature, art did never clear,
When the great wits, of whom all skill we learn,
Are ignorant both what she is, and where?

8 One thinks the soul is air; another fire;
Another blood, diffused about the heart;
Another saith, the elements conspire,
And to her essence each doth give a part.

9 Musicians think our souls are harmonies;
Physicians hold that they complexions be;
Epicures make them swarms of atomies,
Which do by chance into our bodies flee.

10 Some think one general soul fills every brain,
As the bright sun sheds light in every star;
And others think the name of soul is vain,
And that we only well-mix'd bodies are.

11 In judgment of her substance thus they vary;
And thus they vary in judgment of her seat;
For some her chair up to the brain do carry,
Some thrust it down into the stomach's heat.

12 Some place it in the root of life, the heart;
Some in the liver, fountain of the veins;
Some say, she's all in all, and all in every part;
Some say, she's not contain'd, but all contains.

13 Thus these great clerks their little wisdom show,
While with their doctrines they at hazard play;
Tossing their light opinions to and fro,
To mock the lewd, as learn'd in this as they.

14 For no crazed brain could ever yet propound,
Touching the soul, so vain and fond a thought;
But some among these masters have been found,
Which in their schools the selfsame thing have taught.

15 God only wise, to punish pride of wit,
Among men's wits hath this confusion wrought,
As the proud tower whose points the clouds did hit,
By tongues' confusion was to ruin brought.

16 But thou which didst man's soul of nothing make,
And when to nothing it was fallen again,
'To make it new, the form of man didst take;
And, God with God, becam'st a man with men.'

17 Thou that hast fashion'd twice this soul of ours,
So that she is by double title thine,
Thou only know'st her nature and her powers,
Her subtle form thou only canst define.

18 To judge herself, she must herself transcend,
As greater circles comprehend the less;
But she wants power her own powers to extend,
As fetter'd men cannot their strength express.

19 But thou bright morning Star, thou rising Sun,
Which in these later times hast brought to light
Those mysteries that, since the world begun,
Lay hid in darkness and eternal night:

20 Thou, like the sun, dost with an equal ray
Into the palace and the cottage shine,
And show'st the soul, both to the clerk and lay,
By the clear lamp of oracle divine.

21 This lamp, through all the regions of my brain,
Where my soul sits, doth spread such beams of grace,
As now, methinks, I do distinguish plain
Each subtle line of her immortal face.

22 The soul a substance and a spirit is,
Which God himself doth in the body make,
Which makes the man; for every man from this
The nature of a man and name doth take.

23 And though this spirit be to the body knit,
As an apt means her powers to exercise,
Which are life, motion, sense, and will, and wit,
Yet she survives, although the body dies.

THE SELF-SUBSISTENCE OF THE SOUL.

1 She is a substance, and a real thing,
Which hath itself an actual working might,
Which neither from the senses' power doth spring,
Nor from the body's humours temper'd right.

2 She is a vine, which doth no propping need,
To make her spread herself, or spring upright;
She is a star, whose beams do not proceed
From any sun, but from a native light.

3 For when she sorts things present with things past,
And thereby things to come doth oft foresee;
When she doth doubt at first, and choose at last,
These acts her own,[1] without her body be.

4 When of the dew, which the eye and ear do take,
From flowers abroad, and bring into the brain,
She doth within both wax and honey make:
This work is hers, this is her proper pain.

5 When she from sundry acts, one skill doth draw;
Gathering from divers fights one art of war;
From many cases like, one rule of law;
These her collections, not the senses' are.

6 When in the effects she doth the causes know;
And seeing the stream, thinks where the spring doth rise;
And seeing the branch, conceives the root below:
These things she views without the body's eyes.

7 When she, without a Pegasus, doth fly
Swifter than lightning's fire from east to west;
About the centre, and above the sky,
She travels then, although the body rest.

8 When all her works she formeth first within,
Proportions them, and sees their perfect end;
Ere she in act doth any part begin,
What instruments doth then the body lend?

9 When without hands she doth thus castles build,
Sees without eyes, and without feet doth run;
When she digests the world, yet is not fill'd:
By her own powers these miracles are done.

10 When she defines, argues, divides, compounds,
Considers virtue, vice, and general things;
And marrying divers principles and grounds,
Out of their match a true conclusion brings.

11 These actions in her closet, all alone,
Retired within herself, she doth fulfil;
Use of her body's organs she hath none,
When she doth use the powers of wit and will.

12 Yet in the body's prison so she lies,
As through the body's windows she must look,
Her divers powers of sense to exercise,
By gathering notes out of the world's great book.

13 Nor can herself discourse or judge of ought,
But what the sense collects, and home doth bring;
And yet the powers of her discoursing thought,
From these collections is a diverse thing.

14 For though our eyes can nought but colours see,
Yet colours give them not their power of sight;
So, though these fruits of sense her objects be,
Yet she discerns them by her proper light.

15 The workman on his stuff his skill doth show,
And yet the stuff gives not the man his skill;
Kings their affairs do by their servants know,
But order them by their own royal will.

16 So, though this cunning mistress, and this queen,
Doth, as her instruments, the senses use,
To know all things that are felt, heard, or seen;
Yet she herself doth only judge and choose.

17 Even as a prudent emperor, that reigns
By sovereign title over sundry lands,
Borrows, in mean affairs, his subjects' pains,
Sees by their eyes, and writeth by their hands:

18 But things of weight and consequence indeed,
Himself doth in his chamber then debate;
Where all his counsellors he doth exceed,
As far in judgment, as he doth in state.

19 Or as the man whom princes do advance,
Upon their gracious mercy-seat to sit,
Doth common things of course and circumstance,
To the reports of common men commit:

20 But when the cause itself must be decreed,
Himself in person in his proper court,
To grave and solemn hearing doth proceed,
Of every proof, and every by-report.

21 Then, like God's angel, he pronounceth right,
And milk and honey from his tongue doth flow:
Happy are they that still are in his sight,
To reap the wisdom which his lips doth sow.

22 Right so the soul, which is a lady free,
And doth the justice of her state maintain:
Because the senses ready servants be,
Attending nigh about her court, the brain:

23 By them the forms of outward things she learns,
For they return unto the fantasy,
Whatever each of them abroad discerns,
And there enrol it for the mind to see.

24 But when she sits to judge the good and ill,
And to discern betwixt the false and true,
She is not guided by the senses' skill,
But doth each thing in her own mirror view.

25 Then she the senses checks, which oft do err,
And even against their false reports decrees;
And oft she doth condemn what they prefer;
For with a power above the sense she sees.

26 Therefore no sense the precious joys conceives,
Which in her private contemplations be;
For then the ravish'd spirit the senses leaves,
Hath her own powers, and proper actions free.

27 Her harmonies are sweet, and full of skill,
When on the body's instruments she plays;
But the proportions of the wit and will,
Those sweet accords are even the angels' lays.

28 These tunes of reason are Amphion's lyre,
Wherewith he did the Theban city found:
These are the notes wherewith the heavenly choir,
The praise of Him which made the heaven doth sound.

29 Then her self-being nature shines in this,
That she performs her noblest works alone:
'The work, the touchstone of the nature is;
And by their operations things are known.'

[1] That the soul hath a proper operation without the body.

SPIRITUALITY OF THE SOUL.

1 But though this substance be the root of sense,
Sense knows her not, which doth but bodies know:
She is a spirit, and heavenly influence,
Which from the fountain of God's Spirit doth flow.

2 She is a spirit, yet not like air or wind;
Nor like the spirits about the heart or brain;
Nor like those spirits which alchymists do find,
When they in everything seek gold in vain.

3 For she all natures under heaven doth pass,
Being like those spirits, which God's bright face do see,
Or like Himself, whose image once she was,
Though now, alas! she scarce his shadow be.

4 For of all forms, she holds the first degree,
That are to gross, material bodies knit;
Yet she herself is bodiless and free;
And, though confined, is almost infinite.

5 Were she a body,[1] how could she remain
Within this body, which is less than she?
Or how could she the world's great shape contain,
And in our narrow breasts contained be?

6 All bodies are confined within some place,
But she all place within herself confines:
All bodies have their measure and their space;
But who can draw the soul's dimensive lines?

7 No body can at once two forms admit,
Except the one the other do deface;
But in the soul ten thousand forms do fit,
And none intrudes into her neighbour's place.

8 All bodies are with other bodies fill'd,
But she receives both heaven and earth together:
Nor are their forms by rash encounter spill'd,
For there they stand, and neither toucheth either.

9 Nor can her wide embracements filled be;
For they that most and greatest things embrace,
Enlarge thereby their mind's capacity,
As streams enlarged, enlarge the channel's space.

10 All things received, do such proportion take,
As those things have, wherein they are received:
So little glasses little faces make,
And narrow webs on narrow frames are weaved.

11 Then what vast body must we make the mind,
Wherein are men, beasts, trees, towns, seas, and lands;
And yet each thing a proper place doth find,
And each thing in the true proportion stands?

12 Doubtless, this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to spirits, by sublimation strange;
As fire converts to fire the things it burns:
As we our meats into our nature change.

13 From their gross matter she abstracts the forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things,
Which to her proper nature she transforms,
To bear them light on her celestial wings.

14 This doth she, when, from things particular,
She doth abstract the universal kinds,
Which bodiless and immaterial are,
And can be only lodged within our minds.

15 And thus from divers accidents and acts,
Which do within her observation fall,
She goddesses and powers divine abstracts;
As nature, fortune, and the virtues all.

16 Again; how can she several bodies know,
If in herself a body's form she bear?
How can a mirror sundry faces show,
If from all shapes and forms it be not clear?

17 Nor could we by our eyes all colours learn,
Except our eyes were of all colours void;
Nor sundry tastes can any tongue discern,
Which is with gross and bitter humours cloy'd.

18 Nor can a man of passions judge aright,
Except his mind be from all passions free:
Nor can a judge his office well acquit,
If he possess'd of either party be.

19 If, lastly, this quick power a body were,
Were it as swift as in the wind or fire,
Whose atoms do the one down sideways bear,
And the other make in pyramids aspire;

20 Her nimble body yet in time must move,
And not in instants through all places slide:
But she is nigh and far, beneath, above,
In point of time, which thought cannot divide;

21 She's sent as soon to China as to Spain;
And thence returns as soon as she is sent:
She measures with one time, and with one pain.
An ell of silk, and heaven's wide-spreading tent.

22 As then the soul a substance hath alone,
Besides the body in which she's confined;
So hath she not a body of her own,
But is a spirit, and immaterial mind.

23 Since body and soul have such diversities,
Well might we muse how first their match began;
But that we learn, that He that spread the skies,
And fix'd the earth, first form'd the soul in man.

24 This true Prometheus first made man of earth,
And shed in him a beam of heavenly fire;
Now in their mothers' wombs, before their birth,
Doth in all sons of men their souls inspire.

25 And as Minerva is in fables said,
From Jove, without a mother, to proceed;
So our true Jove, without a mother's aid,
Doth daily millions of Minervas breed.

[1] That it cannot be a body.

GILES FLETCHER.

Giles Fletcher was the younger brother of Phineas, and died twenty-three years before him. He was a cousin of Fletcher the dramatist, and the son of Dr Giles Fletcher, who was employed in many important missions in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and, among others, negotiated a commercial treaty with Russia greatly in the favour of his own country. Giles is supposed to have been born in 1588. He studied at Cambridge; published his noble poem, 'Christ's Victory and Triumph,' in 1610, when he was twenty- three years of age; was appointed to the living of Alderston, in Suffolk, where he died, in 1623, at the early age of thirty-five, 'equally loved,' says old Wood, 'of the Muses and the Graces.'

The poem, in four cantos, entitled 'Christ's Victory and Triumph,' is one of almost Miltonic magnificence. With a wing as easy as it is strong, he soars to heaven, and fills the austere mouth of Justice and the golden lips of Mercy with language worthy of both. He then stoops down on the Wilderness of the Temptation, and paints the Saviour and Satan in colours admirably contrasted, and which in their brightness and blackness can never decay. Nor does he fear, in fine, to pierce the gloom of Calvary, and to mingle his note with the harps of angels, saluting the Redeemer, as He sprang from the grave, with the song, 'He is risen, He is risen--and shall die no more.' The style is steeped in Spenser--equally mellifluous, figurative, and majestic. In allegory the author of the 'Fairy Queen' is hardly superior, and in the enthusiasm of devotion Fletcher surpasses him far. From the great light, thus early kindled and early quenched, Milton did not disdain to draw with his 'golden urn.' 'Paradise Regained' owes much more than the suggestion of its subject to 'Christ's Victory;' and is it too much to say that, had Fletcher lived, he might have shone in the same constellation with the bard of the 'Paradise Lost?' The plan of our 'Specimens' permits only a few extracts. Let those who wish more, along with a lengthened and glowing tribute to the author's genius, consult _Blackwood_ for November 1835. The reading of a single sentence will convince them that the author of the paper was Christopher North.

THE NATIVITY.

I.

Who can forget, never to be forgot, The time, that all the world in slumber lies: When, like the stars, the singing angels shot To earth, and heaven awaked all his eyes, To see another sun at midnight rise On earth? was never sight of pareil fame: For God before, man like himself did frame, But God himself now like a mortal man became.

II.

A child he was, and had not learned to speak, That with his word the world before did make: His mother's arms him bore, he was so weak, That with one hand the vaults of heaven could shake. See how small room my infant Lord doth take, Whom all the world is not enough to hold. Who of his years, or of his age hath told? Never such age so young, never a child so old.

III

And yet but newly he was infanted, And yet already he was sought to die; Yet scarcely born, already banished; Not able yet to go, and forced to fly: But scarcely fled away, when by and by, The tyrant's sword with blood is all denied, And Rachel, for her sons with fury wild, Cries, O thou cruel king, and O my sweetest child!

IV.

Egypt his nurse became, where Nilus springs, Who straight, to entertain the rising sun, The hasty harvest in his bosom brings; But now for drought the fields were all undone, And now with waters all is overrun: So fast the Cynthian mountains poured their snow, When once they felt the sun so near them glow, That Nilus Egypt lost, and to a sea did grow.

V.

The angels carolled loud their song of peace, The cursed oracles were stricken dumb, To see their shepherd, the poor shepherds press, To see their king, the kingly sophics come, And them to guide unto his Master's home, A star comes dancing up the orient, That springs for joy over the strawy tent, Where gold, to make their prince a crown, they all present.

VI.

Young John, glad child, before he could be born, Leapt in the womb, his joy to prophesy: Old Anna, though with age all spent and worn, Proclaims her Saviour to posterity: And Simeon fast his dying notes doth ply. Oh, how the blessed souls about him trace! It is the fire of heaven thou dost embrace: Sing, Simeon, sing; sing, Simeon, sing apace.

VII.

With that the mighty thunder dropt away From God's unwary arm, now milder grown, And melted into tears; as if to pray For pardon, and for pity, it had known, That should have been for sacred vengeance thrown: There too the armies angelic devowed Their former rage, and all to mercy bowed, Their broken weapons at her feet they gladly strowed.

VIII.

Bring, bring, ye Graces, all your silver flaskets, Painted with every choicest flower that grows, That I may soon unflower your fragrant baskets, To strow the fields with odours where he goes, Let whatsoe'er he treads on be a rose. So down she let her eyelids fall, to shine Upon the rivers of bright Palestine, Whose woods drop honey, and her rivers skip with wine.

SONG OF SORCERESS SEEKING TO TEMPT CHRIST.

Love is the blossom where there blows Everything that lives or grows: Love doth make the heavens to move, And the sun doth burn in love: Love the strong and weak doth yoke, And makes the ivy climb the oak; Under whose shadows lions wild, Softened by love, grow tame and mild: Love no medicine can appease, He burns the fishes in the seas; Not all the skill his wounds can stench, Not all the sea his fire can quench: Love did make the bloody spear Once a leafy coat to wear, While in his leaves there shrouded lay Sweet birds, for love, that sing and play: And of all love's joyful flame, I the bud, and blossom am. Only bend thy knee to me, The wooing shall thy winning be.

See, see the flowers that below, Now as fresh as morning blow, And of all, the virgin rose, That as bright Aurora shows: How they all unleaved die, Losing their virginity; Like unto a summer-shade, But now born, and now they fade. Everything doth pass away, There is danger in delay: Come, come gather then the rose, Gather it, ere it you lose. All the sand of Tagus' shore Into my bosom casts his ore; All the valley's swimming corn To my house is yearly borne: Every grape of every vine Is gladly bruised to make me wine. While ten thousand kings, as proud, To carry up my train have bowed, And a world of ladies send me In my chambers to attend me. All the stars in heaven that shine, And ten thousand more, are mine: Only bend thy knee to me, Thy wooing shall thy winning be.

CLOSE OF 'CHRIST'S VICTORY AND TRIUMPH.'

I

Here let my Lord hang up his conquering lance, And bloody armour with late slaughter warm, And looking down on his weak militants, Behold his saints, midst of their hot alarm, Hang all their golden hopes upon his arm. And in this lower field dispacing wide, Through windy thoughts, that would their sails misguide, Anchor their fleshly ships fast in his wounded side.

II.

Here may the band, that now in triumph shines, And that (before they were invested thus) In earthly bodies carried heavenly minds, Pitched round about in order glorious, Their sunny tents, and houses luminous, All their eternal day in songs employing, Joying their end, without end of their joying, While their Almighty Prince destruction is destroying.

III.

Full, yet without satiety, of that Which whets and quiets greedy appetite, Where never sun did rise, nor ever sat, But one eternal day, and endless light Gives time to those, whose time is infinite, Speaking without thought, obtaining without fee, Beholding him, whom never eye could see, Magnifying him, that cannot greater be.

IV.

How can such joy as this want words to speak? And yet what words can speak such joy as this? Far from the world, that might their quiet break, Here the glad souls the face of beauty kiss, Poured out in pleasure, on their beds of bliss, And drunk with nectar torrents, ever hold Their eyes on him, whose graces manifold The more they do behold, the more they would behold.

V.

Their sight drinks lovely fires in at their eyes, Their brain sweet incense with fine breath accloys, That on God's sweating altar burning lies; Their hungry ears feed on the heavenly noise That angels sing, to tell their untold joys; Their understanding naked truth, their wills The all, and self-sufficient goodness fills, That nothing here is wanting, but the want of ills.

VI.

No sorrow now hangs clouding on their brow, No bloodless malady empales their face, No age drops on their hairs his silver snow, No nakedness their bodies doth embase, No poverty themselves, and theirs disgrace, No fear of death the joy of life devours, No unchaste sleep their precious time deflowers, No loss, no grief, no change wait on their winged hours.

VII.

But now their naked bodies scorn the cold, And from their eyes joy looks, and laughs at pain; The infant wonders how he came so old, And old man how he came so young again; Still resting, though from sleep they still restrain; Where all are rich, and yet no gold they owe; And all are kings, and yet no subjects know; All full, and yet no time on food they do bestow.

VIII.

For things that pass are past, and in this field The indeficient spring no winter fears; The trees together fruit and blossom yield, The unfading lily leaves of silver bears, And crimson rose a scarlet garment wears: And all of these on the saints' bodies grow, Not, as they wont, on baser earth below; Three rivers here of milk, and wine, and honey flow.

IX.

About the holy city rolls a flood Of molten crystal, like a sea of glass, On which weak stream a strong foundation stood, Of living diamonds the building was That all things else, besides itself, did pass: Her streets, instead of stones, the stars did pave, And little pearls, for dust, it seemed to have, On which soft-streaming manna, like pure snow, did wave.

X.

In midst of this city celestial, Where the eternal temple should have rose, Lightened the idea beatifical: End and beginning of each thing that grows, Whose self no end, nor yet beginning knows, That hath no eyes to see, nor ears to hear; Yet sees, and hears, and is all eye, all ear; That nowhere is contained, and yet is everywhere.

XI.

Changer of all things, yet immutable; Before, and after all, the first, and last: That moving all is yet immoveable; Great without quantity, in whose forecast, Things past are present, things to come are past; Swift without motion, to whose open eye The hearts of wicked men unbreasted lie; At once absent, and present to them, far, and nigh.

XII.

It is no flaming lustre, made of light; No sweet consent, or well-timed harmony; Ambrosia, for to feast the appetite: Or flowery odour, mixed with spicery; No soft embrace, or pleasure bodily: And yet it is a kind of inward feast; A harmony that sounds within the breast; An odour, light, embrace, in which the soul doth rest.

XIII.

A heavenly feast no hunger can consume; A light unseen, yet shines in every place; A sound no time can steal; a sweet perfume No winds can scatter; an entire embrace, That no satiety can e'er unlace: Ingraced into so high a favour, there The saints, with their beau-peers, whole worlds outwear; And things unseen do see, and things unheard do hear.

XIV.

Ye blessed souls, grown richer by your spoil, Whose loss, though great, is cause of greater gains; Here may your weary spirits rest from toil, Spending your endless evening that remains, Amongst those white flocks, and celestial trains, That feed upon their Shepherd's eyes; and frame That heavenly music of so wondrous fame, Psalming aloud the holy honours of his name!

XV.

Had I a voice of steel to tune my song; Were every verse as smooth as smoothest glass; And every member turned to a tongue; And every tongue were made of sounding brass: Yet all that skill, and all this strength, alas! Should it presume to adorn (were misadvised) The place, where David hath new songs devised, As in his burning throne he sits emparadised.

XVI.

Most happy prince, whose eyes those stars behold, Treading ours underfeet, now mayst thou pour That overflowing skill, wherewith of old Thou wont'st to smooth rough speech; now mayst thou shower Fresh streams of praise upon that holy bower, Which well we heaven call, not that it rolls, But that it is the heaven of our souls: Most happy prince, whose sight so heavenly sight beholds!

XVII.

Ah, foolish shepherds! who were wont to esteem Your God all rough, and shaggy-haired to be; And yet far wiser shepherds than ye deem, For who so poor (though who so rich) as he, When sojourning with us in low degree, He washed his flocks in Jordan's spotless tide; And that his dear remembrance might abide, Did to us come, and with us lived, and for us died?

XVIII.

But now such lively colours did embeam His sparkling forehead; and such shining rays Kindled his flaming locks, that down did stream In curls along his neck, where sweetly plays (Singing his wounds of love in sacred lays) His dearest Spouse, Spouse of the dearest Lover, Knitting a thousand knots over and over, And dying still for love, but they her still recover.

XIX.

Fairest of fairs, that at his eyes doth dress Her glorious face; those eyes, from whence are shed Attractions infinite; where to express His love, high God all heaven as captive leads, And all the banners of his grace dispreads, And in those windows doth his arms englaze, And on those eyes, the angels all do gaze, And from those eyes, the lights of heaven obtain their blaze.

XX.

But let the Kentish lad,[1] that lately taught His oaten reed the trumpet's silver sound, Young Thyrsilis; and for his music brought The willing spheres from heaven, to lead around The dancing nymphs and swains, that sung, and crowned Eclecta's Hymen with ten thousand flowers Of choicest praise; and hung her heavenly bowers With saffron garlands, dressed for nuptial paramours.

XXI.

Let his shrill trumpet, with her silver blast, Of fair Eclecta, and her spousal bed, Be the sweet pipe, and smooth encomiast: But my green muse, hiding her younger head, Under old Camus' flaggy banks, that spread Their willow locks abroad, and all the day With their own watery shadows wanton play; Dares not those high amours, and love-sick songs assay.

XXII.

Impotent words, weak lines, that strive in vain;
In vain, alas, to tell so heavenly sight!
So heavenly sight, as none can greater feign,
Feign what he can, that seems of greatest might:
Could any yet compare with Infinite?
Infinite sure those joys; my words but light;
Light is the palace where she dwells; oh, then, how bright!

[1] The author of 'The Purple Island.'

JOHN DONNE.

John Donne was born in London, in the year 1573. He sprung from a Catholic family, and his mother was related to Sir Thomas More and to Heywood the epigrammatist. He was very early distinguished as a prodigy of boyish acquirement, and was entered, when only eleven, of Harthall, now Hertford College. He was designed for the law, but relinquished the study when he reached nineteen. About the same time, having studied the controversies between the Papists and Protestants, he deliberately went over to the latter. He next accompanied the Earl of Essex to Cadiz, and looked wistfully over the gulf dividing him from Jerusalem, with all its holy memories, to which his heart had been translated from very boyhood. He even meditated a journey to the Holy Land, but was discouraged by reports as to the dangers of the way. On his return he was received by the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere into his own house as his secretary. Here he fell in love with Miss More, the daughter of Sir George More, Lord- Lieutenant of the Tower, and the niece of the Chancellor. His passion was returned, and the pair were imprudent enough to marry privately. When the matter became known, the father-in-law became infuriated. He prevailed on Lord Ellesmere to drive Donne out of his service, and had him even for a short time imprisoned. Even when released he continued in a pitiable plight, and but for the kindness of Sir Francis Wooley, a son of Lady Ellesmere by a former marriage, who received the young couple into his family and entertained them for years, they would have perished.

When Donne reached the age of thirty-four, Dr Merton, afterwards Bishop of Durham, urged him to take orders, and offered him a benefice, which he was generously to relinquish in his favour. Donne declined, on account, he said, of some past errors of life, which, 'though repented of and pardoned by God, might not be forgotten by men, and might cast dishonour on the sacred office.'

When Sir F. Wooley died, Sir Robert Drury became his next protector. Donne attended him on an embassy to France, and his wife formed the romantic purpose of accompanying her husband in the disguise of a page. Here was a wife fit for a poet! In order to restrain her from her purpose, he had to address to her some verses, commencing,

'By our strange and fatal interview.'

Isaak Walton relates how the poet, one evening, as he sat alone in Paris, saw his wife appearing to him in vision, with a dead infant in her arms--a proof at once of the strength of his love and of his imagination. This beloved and admirable woman died in 1617, a few days after giving birth to her twelfth child, and Donne's grief approached distraction.

When he had reached the forty-second year of his age, our poet, at the instance of King James, became a clergyman, and was successively appointed Chaplain to the King, Lecturer to Lincoln's Inn, Dean of St Dunstan's in the West, and Dean of St Paul's. In the pulpit he attracted great attention, particularly from the more thoughtful and intelligent of his auditors. He continued Dean of St Paul's till his death, which took place in 1631, when he was approaching sixty. He died of consumption, a disease which seldom cuts down a man so near his grand climacteric.

'He was buried,' says Campbell, 'in St Paul's, where his figure yet remains in the vault of St Faith's, carved from a painting, for which he sat a few days' (it should be weeks) 'before his death, dressed in his winding-sheet.' He kept this portrait constantly by his bedside to remind him of his mortality.

Donne's Sermons fill a large folio, with which we were familiar in boyhood, but have not seen since. De Quincey says, alluding partly to them, and partly to his poetry,--'Few writers have shewn a more extraordinary compass of powers than Donne, for he combined--what no other man has ever done--the last sublimation of dialectical subtlety and address with the most impassioned majesty. Massy diamonds compose the very substance of his poem on the 'Metempsychosis,'--thoughts and descriptions which have the fervent and gloomy sublimity of Ezekiel or Aeschylus; while a diamond-dust of rhetorical brilliances is strewed over the whole of his occasional verses and his prose.' We beg leave to differ, in some degree, from De Quincey in his estimate of the 'Metempsychosis,' or 'The Progress of the Soul,' although we have given it entire. It has too many far-fetched conceits and obscure allegories, although redeemed, we admit, by some very precious thoughts, such as

'This soul, to whom Luther and Mahomet were Prisons of flesh.'

Or the following quaint picture of the apple in Eden--

'Prince of the orchard, fair as dawning morn,
Fenced with the law, and ripe as soon as born.'

Or this--

'Nature hath no jail, though she hath law.'

If our readers, however, can admire the account the poet gives of Abel and his bitch, or see any resemblance to the severe and simple grandeur of Aeschylus and Ezekiel in the description of the soul informing a body, made of a '_female fish's sandy roe' 'newly leavened with the male's jelly_,' we shall say no more.

Donne, altogether, gives us the impression of a great genius ruined by a false system. He is a charioteer run away with by his own pampered steeds. He begins generally well, but long ere the close, quibbles, conceits, and the temptation of shewing off recondite learning, prove too strong for him, and he who commenced following a serene star, ends pursuing a will-o'-wisp into a bottomless morass. Compare, for instance, the ingenious nonsense which abounds in the middle and the close of his 'Progress of the Soul' with the dark, but magnificent stanzas which are the first in the poem.

In no writings in the language is there more spilt treasure--a more lavish loss of beautiful, original, and striking things than in the poems of Donne. Every second line, indeed, is either bad, or unintelligible, or twisted into unnatural distortion, but even the worst passages discover a great, though trammelled and tasteless mind; and we question if Dr Johnson himself, who has, in his 'Life of Cowley,' criticised the school of poets to which Donne belonged so severely, and in some points so justly, possessed a tithe of the rich fancy, the sublime intuition, and the lofty spirituality of Donne. How characteristic of the difference between these two great men, that, while the one shrank from the slightest footprint of death, Donne deliberately placed the image of his dead self before his eyes, and became familiar with the shadow ere the grim reality arrived!

Donne's Satires shew, in addition to the high ideal qualities, the rugged versification, the fantastic paradox, and the perverted taste of their author, great strength and clearness of judgment, and a deep, although somewhat jaundiced, view of human nature. That there must have been something morbid in the structure of his mind is proved by the fact that he wrote an elaborate treatise, which was not published till after his death, entitled, 'Biathanatos,' to prove that suicide was not necessarily sinful.

HOLY SONNETS.

I.

Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay? Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste; I run to death, and death meets me as fast, And all my pleasures are like yesterday. I dare not move my dim eyes any way; Despair behind, and death before, doth cast Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh, Only thou art above, and when towards thee By thy leave I can look, I rise again; But our old subtle foe so tempteth me, That not one hour myself I can sustain: Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art, And thou, like adamant, draw mine iron heart.

II.

As due by many titles, I resign Myself to thee, O God! First I was made By thee, and for thee; and when I was decayed Thy blood bought that, the which before was thine. I am thy son, made with thyself to shine, Thy servant, whose pains thou hast still repaid, Thy sheep, thine image; and, till I betrayed Myself, a temple of thy Spirit divine. Why doth the devil then usurp on me? Why doth he steal, nay, ravish, that's thy right? Except thou rise, and for thine own work fight, Oh! I shall soon despair, when I shall see That thou lov'st mankind well, yet wilt not choose me, And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.

III.

Oh! might these sighs and tears return again Into my breast and eyes which I have spent, That I might, in this holy discontent, Mourn with some fruit, as I have mourned in vain! In mine idolatry what showers of rain Mine eyes did waste! what griefs my heart did rent! That sufferance was my sin I now repent; 'Cause I did suffer, I must suffer pain. The hydroptic drunkard, and night-scouting thief, The itchy lecher, and self-tickling proud, Have th' remembrance of past joys for relief Of coming ills. To poor me is allow'd No ease; for long yet vehement grief hath been The effect and cause, the punishment and sin.

IV.

Oh! my black soul! now thou art summoned By sickness, death's herald and champion, Thou 'rt like a pilgrim which abroad hath done Treason, and durst not turn to whence he is fled; Or like a thief, which, till death's doom be read, Wisheth himself delivered from prison; But damn'd, and haul'd to execution, Wisheth that still he might be imprisoned: Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lack; But who shall give thee that grace to begin? Oh! make thyself with holy mourning black, And red with blushing, as thou art with sin; Or wash thee in Christ's blood, which hath this might, That, being red, it dyes red souls to white.

V.

I am a little world, made cunningly Of elements and an angelic sprite; But black sin hath betrayed to endless night My world's both parts, and oh! both parts must die. You, which beyond that heaven, which was most high, Have found new spheres, and of new land can write, Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might Drown my world with my weeping earnestly, Or wash it, if it must be drowned no more: But oh! it must be burnt; alas! the fire Of lust and envy burnt it heretofore, And made it fouler; let their flames retire, And burn me, O Lord! with a fiery zeal Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

VI.

This is my play's last scene; here Heavens appoint My pilgrimage's last mile; and my race, Idly yet quickly run, hath this last pace, My span's last inch, my minute's latest point, And gluttonous Death will instantly unjoint My body and soul, and I shall sleep a space: But my ever-waking part shall see that face Whose fear already shakes my every joint. Then as my soul to heaven, her first seat, takes flight, And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell, So fall my sins, that all may have their right, To where they're bred, and would press me to hell. Impute me righteous; thus purged of evil, For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.

VII.

At the round earth's imagined corners blow Your trumpets, angels! and arise, arise From death, you numberless infinities Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go, All whom the flood did, and fire shall, overthrow; All whom war, death, age, ague's tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain; and you whose eyes Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe. But let them sleep, Lord! and me mourn a space; For if above all these my sins abound, 'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace When we are there. Here on this holy ground Teach me how to repent, for that's as good As if thou hadst sealed my pardon with thy blood.

VIII.

If faithful souls be alike glorified As angels, then my father's soul doth see, And adds this even to full felicity, That valiantly I hell's wide mouth o'erstride; But if our minds to these souls be descried By circumstances and by signs that be Apparent in us not immediately, How shall my mind's white truth by them be tried? They see idolatrous lovers weep and mourn, And style blasphemous conjurors to call On Jesus' name, and pharisaical Dissemblers feign devotion. Then turn, O pensive soul! to God, for he knows best Thy grief, for he put it into my breast.

IX

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree Whose fruit threw death on (else immortal) us; If lecherous goats, if serpents envious, Cannot be damn'd, alas! why should I be? Why should intent or reason, born in me, Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous? And mercy being easy and glorious To God, in his stern wrath why threatens he? But who am I that dare dispute with thee! O God! oh, of thine only worthy blood, And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood, And drown in it my sins' black memory: That thou remember them some claim as debt, I think it mercy if thou wilt forget!

X

Death! be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death! nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be, Much pleasure, then, from thee much more must flow; And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness, dwell, And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well, And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou, then? One short sleep past we wake eternally; And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

XI.

Spit in my face, you Jews, and pierce my side, Buffet and scoff, scourge and crucify me, For I have sinned, and sinned, and only he Who could do no iniquity hath died, But by my death cannot be satisfied My sins, which pass the Jews' impiety: They killed once an inglorious man, but I Crucify him daily, being now glorified. O let me then his strange love still admire. Kings pardon, but he bore our punishment; And Jacob came, clothed in vile harsh attire, But to supplant, and with gainful intent: God clothed himself in vile man's flesh, that so He might be weak enough to surfer woe.

XII.

Why are we by all creatures waited on? Why do the prodigal elements supply Life and food to me, being more pure than I, Simpler, and further from corruption? Why brook'st thou, ignorant horse, subjection? Why do you, bull and boar, so sillily Dissemble weakness, and by one man's stroke die, Whose whole kind you might swallow and feed upon? Weaker I am, woe's me! and worse than you: You have not sinned, nor need be timorous, But wonder at a greater, for to us Created nature doth these things subdue; But their Creator, whom sin nor nature tied, For us, his creatures and his foes, hath died.

XIII.

What if this present were the world's last night? Mark in my heart, O Soul! where thou dost dwell, The picture of Christ crucified, and tell Whether his countenance can thee affright; Tears in his eyes quench the amazing light; Blood fills his frowns, which from his pierced head fell. And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell Which prayed forgiveness for his foes' fierce spite? No, no; but as in my idolatry I said to all my profane mistresses, Beauty of pity, foulness only is A sign of rigour, so I say to thee: To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assigned; This beauteous form assumes a piteous mind.

XIV.

Batter my heart, three-person'd 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, we 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.

XV.

Wilt thou love God as he thee? then digest, My Soul! this wholesome meditation, How God the Spirit, by angels waited on In heaven, doth make his temple in thy breast. The Father having begot a Son most blest, And still begetting, (for he ne'er begun.) Hath deigned to choose thee by adoption, Co-heir to his glory, and Sabbath's endless rest: And as a robbed man, which by search doth find His stol'n stuff sold, must lose or buy 't again; The Sun of glory came down and was slain, Us, whom he had made, and Satan stole, to unbind. 'Twas much that man was made like God before, But that God should be made like man much more.

XVI.

Father, part of his double interest Unto thy kingdom thy Son gives to me; His jointure in the knotty Trinity He keeps, and gives to me his death's conquest. This Lamb, whose death with life the world hath blest, Was from the world's beginning slain, and he Hath made two wills, which, with the legacy Of his and thy kingdom, thy sons invest: Yet such are these 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 abridgment and thy last command Is all but love; oh, let this last will stand!

THE PROGRESS OF THE SOUL.

I.

I sing the progress of a deathless Soul, Whom Fate, which God made, but doth not control, Placed in most shapes. All times, before the law Yoked us, and when, and since, in this I sing, And the great World to his aged evening, From infant morn through manly noon I draw: What the gold Chaldee or silver Persian saw, Greek brass, or Roman iron, 'tis in this one, A work to outwear Seth's pillars, brick and stone, And, Holy Writ excepted, made to yield to none.

II

Thee, Eye of Heaven, this great Soul envies not; By thy male force is all we have begot. In the first east thou now beginn'st to shine, Suck'st early balm, and island spices there, And wilt anon in thy loose-reined career At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danow, dine, And see at night this western land of mine; Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she That before thee one day began to be, And, thy frail light being quench'd, shall long, long outlive thee.

III

Nor holy Janus, in whose sovereign boat The church and all the monarchies did float; That swimming college and free hospital Of all mankind, that cage and vivary Of fowls and beasts, in whose womb Destiny Us and our latest nephews did install, (From thence are all derived that fill this all,) Didst thou in that great stewardship embark So diverse shapes into that floating park, As have been moved and inform'd by this heavenly spark.

IV.

Great Destiny! the commissary of God! Thou hast marked out a path and period For everything; who, where we offspring took, Our ways and ends seest at one instant: thou Knot of all causes; thou whose changeless brow Ne'er smiles nor frowns, oh! vouchsafe thou to look, And shew my story in thy eternal book, That (if my prayer be fit) I may understand So much myself as to know with what hand, How scant or liberal, this my life's race is spann'd.

V.

To my six lustres, almost now outwore, Except thy book owe me so many more; Except my legend be free from the lets Of steep ambition, sleepy poverty, Spirit-quenching sickness, dull captivity, Distracting business, and from beauty's nets, And all that calls from this and t'other's whets; Oh! let me not launch out, but let me save The expense of brain and spirit, that my grave His right and due, a whole unwasted man, may have.

VI.

But if my days be long and good enough, In vain this sea shall enlarge or enrough Itself; for I will through the wave and foam, And hold, in sad lone ways, a lively sprite, Make my dark heavy poem light, and light: For though through many straits and lands I roam, I launch at Paradise, and sail towards home: The course I there began shall here be stayed; Sails hoisted there struck here, and anchors laid In Thames which were at Tigris and Euphrates weighed.

VII.

For the great Soul which here amongst us now Doth dwell, and moves that hand, and tongue, and brow, Which, as the moon the sea, moves us, to hear Whose story with long patience you will long, (For 'tis the crown and last strain of my song;) This Soul, to whom Luther and Mohammed were Prisons of flesh; this Soul,--which oft did tear And mend the wrecks of the empire, and late Rome, And lived when every great change did come, Had first in Paradise a low but fatal room.

VIII.

Yet no low room, nor then the greatest, less If, as devout and sharp men fitly guess, That cross, our joy and grief, (where nails did tie That All, which always was all everywhere, Which could not sin, and yet all sins did bear, Which could not die, yet could not choose but die,) Stood in the self-same room in Calvary Where first grew the forbidden learned tree; For on that tree hung in security This Soul, made by the Maker's will from pulling free.

IX.

Prince of the orchard, fair as dawning morn, Fenced with the law, and ripe as soon as born, That apple grew which this soul did enlive, Till the then climbing serpent, that now creeps For that offence for which all mankind weeps, Took it, and t' her, whom the first man did wive, (Whom and her race only forbiddings drive,) He gave it, she to her husband; both did eat: So perished the eaters and the meat, And we, for treason taints the blood, thence die and sweat.