The Complete English Poems

by John Donne, A.J. Smith (Editor)

Yet it is only this century that Donne has been indisputably established as a great poet—and even, many feel, the greatest love poet of them all. Jonson went on to remark that 'That Donne, for not keeping of an accent, deserved hanging', yet Donne's rhythms, once thought 'unmusical' are now recognized as the natural rhythms of the speaking voice; his 'eccentricity' as a complex self-doubt; his 'obscurity' the reflection of a brilliantly learned and allusive mind. Poets such as Eliot and Empson have found Donne's poetry profoundly attuned to our modern age, while Yeats' glowing comment will always be true: 'the intricacy and subtlety of his imagination are the length and depth of the furrow made by his passion.'

This volume, superbly edited by Professor Smith, is the first complete edition to make a serious attempt to guide the reader closely through the complexities of Donne's poetry. Considerable attention has been paid to the text, and a selection of the important manuscript variants are included. This edition is also the first to make use of the newly discovered manuscript of the verse letter to Lady Carey and Mistress Essex Rich.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Literature, 17th Century, Fiction, Renaissance, Religion

688 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1633

About the author

John Donne was an English poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysical poets of the period. His works are notable for their realistic and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially as compared to that of his contemporaries.

Despite his great education and poetic talents, he lived in poverty for several years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. In 1615 he became an Anglican priest and, in 1621, was appointed the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London.

Reviews

[Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend of mine who's learning English has been reading sci-fi hit To Your Scattered Bodies Go, and they asked me in passing why the title is the way it is: some kind of quotation? English graduate Warwick sprang into action, because this is a sonnet whose opening lines I have had by heart since the first time I read it:

At the round earths imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angells, and arise, arise
From death, you numberlesse infinities
Of soules, and to your scattred bodies goe…

…although I forget how it goes on; something something fire shall o'erthrow. This is, please excuse my language, a fucking brilliant way to begin a poem – the protoscientific precision of the first line, the frenzied enjambment and repetition, the dark horrified sweep of the vision being described. Like all the best poetry, it gets memorised by accident: the lines lodge in your brain and refuse to let go. When I pulled out my copy of Donne to check it, I ended up spending more than an hour flicking through the pages here, consumed with total pleasure – he's just so intense, utterly obsessed with sex and utterly terrified of death.

The Holy Sonnets (the above is number VII) are often overlooked when people think of Donne, who tends to be associated primarily with his Songs and Sonnets (none of which, strangely enough, are true sonnets). The most anthologised by far is The Flea, which is one of those ‘male poet tries to talk his way into girl's knickers’ type of poems, and builds on a weirdly long tradition of erotic verse about fleas (especially popular in France, where puce ‘flea’ usually involved some pun on pucelage ‘maidenhead’). Donne's effort, though, is so technically flawless and so pitch-perfect in its mixture of careful reasoning and subterranean desperation that it does stand out:

Marke but this flea, and marke in this,
How little that which thou deny'st me is;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea, our two bloods mingled bee;
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sinne, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
 Yet this enjoyes before it wooe,
 And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two
 And this, alas, is more then wee would doe…

Donne is lying through his teeth, because he is not the sort of person who thinks sex is something free and easy. He wants to, but he can't: he just finds it all too disgusting, too animal, and it's this internal conflict which makes him so fascinating. There's one poem he writes from the point of view of Sappho writing to her female lover (and which has been called ‘the first female homosexual love poem in English’) where he gives free rein to his feelings of disgust for male sexuality:

Thy body is a naturall Paradise,
 In whose selfe, unmanur'd all pleasure lies,
Nor needs perfection; why shouldst thou than
 Admit the tillage of a harsh rough man?
Men leave behinde them that which their sin showes,
 And are, as theeves trac'd, which rob when it snows.
But of our dallyance no more signes there are,
 Then fishes leave in streames, or Birds in aire.

Dude, you make us sound like snails.

Oh, I haven't even talked about all the early scientific experimentation in these poems – Galileo, telescopes, microscopes (‘I am a little world made cunningly / Of Elements’), astrology, biology, geology, he is so open to new knowledge and new ideas, anything to take his mind of the inevitability of his own extinction.

Everyone needs some Donne in their lives – the perfect expression of aesthetic pleasure poised over an underlying sweaty terror.

So, lovers dreame a rich and long delight
But get a winter-seeming summers night.

[Amit Mishra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Donne stressed love's dualism of body and soul, flesh and spirit, its subtle passions, its cynical bitterness. In the best poems, intellect and passion intensify each other by startling and ingenious juxtaposition.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not actually an aficionado of poetry, but I love Donne’s work: the beautiful rhythms and sentiments are just wonderful, as is his unique use of language.

[Robert Browning · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Donne is, with apologies to my unintentional namesake, my absolute favorite poet. He covers all the big three topics that great poetry should - Love, Death, and God - and, more often than not, he's covering all three at the same time in the span of 14 short, beautiful little lines of epic proportion.

Every time I come back to his work I find something new to enjoy. I can marvel at poems that put down Death as a trivial and temporary inconvenience, take a mere object like a mathematical compass and make it a perfect symbol of true love, turn a flea into a lusty surrogate for sex, and address the theological doubts a person can have wondering which faith is the right one for them.

Donne poems are a collection of witty conceits to be puzzled over and they reward me with a little thrill, an "aha!" moment every time I figure out the message hidden within.

If you're at all interested in great classical poetry, you do yourself a disservice if you don't read at least a few of Donne's poems. Masterful stuff.

[Alexis Hall]

I'm a huge fan of Donne: like Rochester he has this rough, rugged poetical style which I find very intriguing, although Donne is less explicitly obscene, and he bends that style towards a kind of hyper-intellectualism.

But I think the thing I most compelling and fascinating is the way the passion of his secular verse infuses also his religious writings. My favourite being 'Batter my heart, three person'd God.' Such a marvellously physical response to the idea of Divine love.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Donne is one of my favorite poets. This collection is excellent. His poems are spiritual and his poems are sensual. I love his mindset and the time in which he lived. He may have been a cleric, but I'm not being preached at. I can open this book and just enjoy.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Donne undoubtedly belongs to another time. His English is not our contemporary English, and therefore, at times, he is a bit hard to read. That being said, he is an absolute master at putting words together. Some of his phrasing is funny, much is romantic, and most is extraordinarily pious. A couple of my favorite examples of his phrasing are as follows:

“I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so.”

“And to 'scape stormy days, I choose an everlasting night.”

Most of his poems, however, require the full context to be appreciated. I love the opening of “Air and Angels”

Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorius nothing I did see,
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than a parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too,
And therefore what thou wert, and who
I bid love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Similarly, the opening of “The Progress of the Soul” is deeply reflective:

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.

Donne seeks to understand the universe writ large, and why things are the way they are. A great example can be taken from “An Anatomy of the World”:

That this world’s general sickness doth not lie
In any humour, or one certain part;
But as thou sawest it rotten at the heart,
Thou seest a hectic fever hath got hold
Of the whole substance, not to be controlled,
And that thou hast but one way, not to admit
The world’s infection, to be none of it.

The “Divine Meditations” contains not only some of his most famous phrasing, but a sincere examination of death:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whome thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me;
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures 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.

Donne, however, for me is at his best in his purely religious poems. My favorite is “A Hymn to God the Father”:

I
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, though which I run,
And do run still: though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For, I have more.

II
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin? And, made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year, or two: but wallowed in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

III
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thy self, that at my death thy son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done,
I fear no more.

This is a magnificent collection.

See my other reviews here!

[Jan-Maat]

Donne's poems were never published in his own lifetime but circulated in manuscript form.

THE SUN RISING.

BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think ?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

She's all states, and all princes I ;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.

There will the river whispering run
Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun;
And there the 'enamour'd fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou, to be so seen, be'st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy net.

Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;
Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes.

For thee, thou need'st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait:
That fish, that is not catch'd thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.

[Davis Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Donne is one of the most uncompromising and most extraordinary of poets. There are some ways in which I admire him more than Shakespeare, and even if that seems like hyperbole, his body of work is a stunning counterpart to that of the Bard. They are both gifted with an unfathomable range of tone and style, and make many demands on the reader who is unfamiliar with the Elizabethan world picture in which they worked (Read Tillyard! Read Tillyard! Read Tillyard! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...) They deal equally in the sensuous and the sublime, the bawdy and the transcendent. Their best work is often shot through with suffering, but toward the end of their lives they emerge into a realm of enraptured wonder in which that same suffering is redeemed beyond words—compare the world of The Winter's Tale and The Tempest with that of the Holy Sonnets. They ravish our ears and hearts even as they teach us how to love, pray, contemplate; and, yes, even how to sin. Man is revealed as the half-angel, half-clay that he really is.

Even outside of the fact that Donne's life was perhaps the most interesting, variegated, and poignant of all great literary figures; one marvels at, despite the sheer density of the language he weaves, the unalloyed personality he reveals in his compositions. His love poetry arguably represents the highest feelings that can be had between a man and a woman (though not the "Elegies," which are essentially artless soft pornography), and some of the images in these poems, like the parting of lovers being compared to a mere turning away from each other in bed, are some of the most beautiful that man has ever dreamed up. (Also, I love saying "Busy old fool, unruly sun!" to people to see their reactions). I have spent minimal time with the Satires and Anniversaries, which make my head spin in the best way possible, but there is much to admire in their labyrinthine depths. And the divine poems, few as they may be, are achingly honest expressions of penitence and earnest longing for eternal harmony. "A Hymn to God the Father" lives in my head almost daily; it is the most perfect example of transcendent simplicity in the written word that I know. Donne has his faults. C.S. Lewis saw his love poetry as objectively bad because he "held love and lust at arm's length," failing to provide a teleological or authentically spiritual basis for his passions. I sympathize with that criticism, even though I tend to see that same near-baseness as a moving affirmation of embodied-ness and earthy, elevated Eros. But even with his crudities and frequent lack of lyricism, he is one of that small handful of poets I would advise all devotees of serious literature to read as often as possible. He is a unique genius with very few parallels.

FYI, the Penguin edition is very good. A full half of the thick volume is devoted to detailed notes and glosses on the poems, which are absolutely essential for understanding Donne's Metaphysical style—it's as well-annotated as you could ask for (though oddly without a formal introduction). The only downside is that the spelling and punctuation are modernized, which won't make it the ideal volume for the serious scholar. But I don't mind this as much as some.

Amusing postscript: In "The Triple Fool," Donne anticipated by four centuries the legions of disgruntled Goodreaders railing against immortal classics: "I am two fools, I know/For loving, and for saying so/In whining poetry."

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

An epic poet, even if in this day and age he may be seen as slightly cheesy. However, other then Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, he is still my favorite poet! He has an amazing use of conceits. and imagery that are pictures to your mind. You can read his poems again and again and see new meaning to his world of words. Unappreciated in his time, this gentleman-like player should be known and shared now.

[NinjaMuse · Rating 5 out of 5]

In brief: Donne was a contemporary of Shakespeare, but a writer of poems, not plays. He was largely passed over in life, but is now regarded as one of the greats, and reading this, you can see why.

Thoughts: Before picking this up, I’d only read two or three of Donne’s poems in a high school English class. I liked what I saw and found him more readable than Shakespeare, and I still agree with that assessment now that I’ve read everything. His rhythms and words are plainer, more like spoken English than anything, without the stylistic complexity that Shakespeare seems to inject into everything longer than four lines, and so there’s a different sort of beauty to it. And the meanings come through better, at least for me.

I think where Donne really shines is his love poems (and I’m not alone in that view, I don’t think). He gets the tenderness and submissiveness of romance, and the flattery of wooing, and can get downright erotic without ever getting racy—though the poem where he gently and persistently talks his lover into taking all her clothes off in front of him was probably close at the time, even if he’s using religious metaphors.

He’s also good at memorial poems and wrote a lot of religious poems as well, and there was this whole genre of letter-poems which I didn’t know about, in which you’d write a friend about your life or to continue a conversation, except you’d do it in rhyming verse. There were some miscellaneous sorts of poems as well, and the overall tone of his poems is gentleness and reverence, with a quiet wit. I was as taken with that as I was with his technique, and did I mention he has some truly impressive rhymes?

All that said, though, this is 17th century poetry. It’s not the easiest of reads, especially the longer poems that go on for pages, and I definitely found myself rereading poems a few times to understand what he was saying in them. By the time I was nearing the end of the collection, I was also very ready to be. The poems are wonderful but they’re also 200 pages of moderately difficult verse so y’know. I really liked the collection and am glad I picked it up, but unless you’re like me and willing to commit to the experience, it might be better if you simply look up Donne’s poems and read a few of them. (Which I absolutely suggest you do.)

To bear in mind: Donne was writing in the 1600s and, while more open-minded than some of his peers, was still a man of his time. Do not expect perfect 21st-century ideas about women—but you weren’t going to, were you?

9/10

[Clay Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know if it still is, but 10 years ago it was very en vogue to love John Donne. For a lot of people, he was the perfect marriage of modern sensibilities and non-shitty poetry, a combination that is not readily found. Finally, they thought, a Dead White Male I can enjoy while still maintaining my self-respect! Well, let me say, I'm happy for them. I like John Donne, too. But then, I mostly read Dead White Males. In fact, I'm not going to hold his passing or his penis against him, or anyone else for that sake.

Cards on the table, Donne's technical skill is often wanting, which is not something I forgive easily. It can be distracting. Nonetheless, he makes for a fascinating read. He did nothing halfway (except prosody). His poems all exist somewhere along a line drawn from sensuality to religious fervor, and they frequently waver rapidly back and forth along the spectrum, spitting out beautiful and original imagery along the way. From the playful despondency of "Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star" to the delightfully macabre "The Flea" to the touchingly somber "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," Donne's war against his own impulses, his victories and defeats, are a great way to spend a relaxing afternoon.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Donne's poems are never less than challenging, and the degree of challenge represented by the whole corpus of his English poems that this book contains ranges from the relatively manageable to the almost insurmountable. When viewed as a whole, it is probably true to say that the rewards of reading Donne's poems are not in simple proportion to their difficulty. The hardest group of poems here are the occasional ones (in particular, the Verse Letters and the Epicedes and Obsequies) not simply because their specific relationships to particular recipients and/or addressees makes them not easily accessible to readers at a 400-year distance, but also because each packs a huge range of reference into a frequently discursive length that often lacks the dramatic, compact focus of the more famous poems. Reading through the whole set of the occasional poems, and to a lesser degree the Satires, one after another feels something like running an intellectual marathon once a day for a couple of months; a challenge probably best left to only the most dedicated of Donne specialists. For the average reader, it might be less exhausting and more efficient to get a picture of these works, and the personal and patronage relationships that they enshrine, from a biography like John Stubb's John Donne: The Reformed Soul: A Biography, reviewed here, instead of working through the poems themselves.

For most of us, though, Donne's greatest appeal as a poet equally of the heart, the mind, and the soul, is to be found in the unmissable poems: the Songs and Sonnets, and the Divine Poems, works of great beauty, dramatic vitality, and sinewy intellectual complexity that cannot be easily separated into the secular and the sacred, but gain much of their thrill from the intertwined and often tensely conflicting demands of these spheres in Donne's life and in the world in which he lived (explored brilliantly in John Carey's John Donne, Life, Mind, and Art. And these poems are thrilling and emotionally engaging, as well as demanding of some effort on the part of the reader. Donne's poems grip from the first line ("Now thou hast loved me one whole day," "When by thy scorn, O murderess, I am dead," "What if this present were the world's last night," "Batter my heart, three-personed God"), even if you have to work hard to keep up with their twisting, struggling, posing, boasting, doubting, supplicating, seducing, connecting, and discovering thereafter. I have loved many of these poems since I was introduced to them by great teachers, as well as shared with friends, as an A-Level student, and I have no doubt I shall continue to do so until I myself "'scape stormy days" in "an everlasting night."

The sheer comprehensiveness of The Complete English Poems means that it is not the ideal way into Donne, but like the poet whose work it presents, it is an exhaustive and erudite edition: 300+ pages of detailed notes for 300 pages of poems (much more comprehensive than the comparatively perfunctory annotations in the Oxford edition of The Major Works, although that volume does also include a generous selection of Donne's prose). It is a book that I will return to when I revisit my favourite Donne poems, although I doubt I shall spend another 18 months re-reading its entirety!

[Patrick Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I worked for the Chautauqua Opera when I was 22. It’s a summer music festival. I had an affair with a married woman in her 40’s lasting eight weeks. It was luscious and thrilling. Chautauqua is the perfect place for romance and opera. Come fall when the leaves started plummeting and the artist Diaspora sent actors and crew on their way, we parted, my paramour and I. She gave me a book of Donne—with dried flowers pressed in the pages. I now place the book on my Goodreads shelf. The flowers are still holding the pages together. His poetry has traveled far with me—and served me well.

Here is one of my favorites, to remind you there needs to be a little Donne in you life every now and again. (Besides, who do you know can use the word ‘unjoint’ and have it make sense?)


This Is My Play’s Last Scene, Here Heavens Appoint
John Donne, Holy Sonnet 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, t’ 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.

[Kevin Albrecht · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Donne's work is witty and full of many different forms of poetry. I was greatly inspired by his poetry, but frequently found his poems difficult to get deeply interested in at first. I am certain that I will only like him more as time goes on and I reread his poems. My favorite poems were "The good-morrow", "A feaver", "Communitie", and "Sir John Wingefield". "Communitie" especially is very intriguing, for while most of Donne's work seems to respect women, this poem considers them to be nothing more than possessions that men may use and discard as they see fit:

Chang'd loves are but chang'd sorts of meat,
And when hee hat the kernal eate,
Who doth not fling away the shell?

I can't speak highly enough about the quality of this volume in particular. The book is put together spectacularly and copious footnotes provide clarification of difficult or obscure references. The material is treated with the respect that is usually reserved for the Bible, and it is very clear that the editor, C.A. Patrides, put a huge amount of love and time into making this a superb comprehensive collection of Donne's work.

[ See my blog post here: http://lifeanepicpoem.blogspot.com/20... ]

[grllopez ~ with freedom and books · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only read selected poems for TWEM poetry:

Elegy 1, 12, The Flea, Song, The Sun Rising, The Canonization, Air and Angels, Love's Alchemy, The Bait, A Valediction: Forbidding and Mourning, The Ecstasy, and the last one, Holy Sonnets, I did not find in my copy (it was probably there and I did not look thoroughly enough). Instead I read A Hymn to Christ.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

John, you beauty.

[Elizabeth Pyjov · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Must I, who came to travail thorough you, / Grow your fixed subject, 'cause you're true?" -- John Donne, poem The Indifferent, p. 61

"All love is wonder; if we justly do / Account her wonderful, why not lovely too?" - John Donne, Elegies, The Anagram, p. 96

"For one night's revels, silk and gold we choose, / But, in long journeys, cloth, and leather use." -- John Donne, Elegies, The Anagram, p 96

"Likeness glues love: then if so thou do, / To make us like and love, must I change too? / More than they hate, I hate it, rather let me / Allow her change, than change as oft as she" -- John Donne, Elegy 3, The Perfume, p 98

"But when they kiss one bank, and leaving this / Never look back, but the next bank do kiss, / Then are they purest; change is the nursery / Of music, joy, life and eternity" -- John Donne, Elegy 3, The Perfume, p 98

"If you were good, your good doth soon decay; / And you are rare, that takes the good away." - John Donne, Elegy 3, The Perfume, p 100

"Here take my picture, though I bid farewell; / Thine, in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell." -- John Donne, Elegy 5, His Picture, p 100

"My mind to scorn; and Oh, love dulled with pain / Was ne'er so wise, nor well armed as disdain" -- John Donne, Elegy 6, p 101

"Though hope bred faith and love; thus taught, I shall / As nations do from Rome, from thy love fall." -- John Donne, Elegy 6, p 101

"No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace, / As I have seen in one autumnal face." -- John Donne, Elegy 9, The Autumnal, p 105

"When you are gone, and reason gone with you, / Then fantasy is queen and soul, and all" -- John Donne, The Dream, p 106

"But I forgive; repent thee honest man: / Gold is restorative, restore it then." -- John Donne, The Bracelet, p 110

"Since she must go, and I must mourn, come night, / Environ me with darkness, whilst I write" -- John Donne, His Parting from Her, p 110

"That I may grow enamored on your mind, / When my own thoughts I there reflected find. / For this to the comfort of my dear I vow, / My deeds shall still be what my words are now." - John Donne, poem Julia, p 113

"Thought I, but one had breathed purest air, / And must she needs be false because she's fair? / Is it your beauty's mark, or of your youth, / Or your perfection, not to study truth?" -- John Donne, Elegy 15, p 116

"Sooner that rivers will run back, or Thames / With ribs of ice in June would bind his streams, / Or Nature, whose strength the world endures, / Would change her course, before you alter yours." -- John Donne, Elegy 15, p 117

"Cursed may he be, that so our love hath slain, / And wander on our earth, wretched as Cain, / Wretched as he, and not deserve least pity; / In plaguing him, let misery be witty." -- John Donne, Elegy 115, p 117

"Now I have cursed, let us our love revive; / In me the flame was never more alive; / I could begin again to court and praise, / And in that pleasure lengthen the short days / Of my life's lease; like painters that do take / Delight, not in made work, but whilest they make; / I could renew those times, when first I saw / Love in your eyes, that gave my tongue the law / To like what you liked; and at masks and plays / Commend the self-same actors, the same ways; / Ask how you did, and often with intent / Of being officious, be impertinent; / All which were such soft pastimes, as in these / Love was subtly catched, as a disease; / But being got it is a treasure sweet, / Which to defined is harder than to get: / And ought not be profaned in either part, / For though 'tis got by chance, 'tis kept by art." - John Donne, Elegies, p 118

"Temper, O fair love, love's impetuous rage / Be my true mistress still, not my feigned page" - John Donne, Elegies, p 118

"Richly clothed apes, are called apes, and as soon / Eclipsed as bright we call the moon the moon" -- John Donne, On his Mistress, p 119

"When I am gone, dream me some happiness" -- John Donne, On his Mistress, p 119 #poem

"The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I / Abjure my so much loved variety, / And not with many youth and love divide? / Pleasure is none, if not diversified" -- John Donne, Variety, p 120

"All things do willingly in change delight / The fruitful mother of our appetite: / Rivers the clearer and more pleasing are, / Where their fair spreading streams run wide and far" - John Donne, Variety, p 120

"The law is hard, and shall not have my voice. / The last I saw in all extremes is fair, / And holds me in the sun-beams of her hair" - John Donne, Variety, p 120

"How happy were our sires in ancient time, / Who held plurality of love no crime!" - John Donne, Variety, p 120

"Our liberty's reversed, our charter's gone / And we made servants to opinion" - John Donne, Variety, p 121

"Only some few strong in themselves and free / Retain the seeds of ancient liberty" - John Donne, Variety, p 121

"Perfection is in unity: prefer / One woman first, and then one thing in her." - John Donne, Variety, p 122 #17thcentury

"Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy, / Until I labour, I in labour lie" - John Donne, Elegy 19, p 124

"How blessed am I in this discovering thee! / To enter into these bonds, is to be free" - John Donne, Elegy 19, p 125

"Yea they are deaths, is't not all one to fly / Into another world, as 'tis to die?" - John Donne, poem Love's War, p 126

"Thine arms imprison me, and mine arms thee, / Thy heart thy ransom is, take mind for me" - John Donne, Love's War, p 127 #love #poem #17thcenturyEnglish

"Other men war that they their rest may gain, / But we will rest that we may fight again" - John Donne, Love's War, p 127

"These wars the ignorant, these th' experienced love, / There we are always under, here above" - John Donne, Love's Wars, p 127

"Thoughts, my mind's creatures, often are with thee, / But I, their maker, want their liberty.

/ Only thine image, in my heart doth sit, / But that is wax, and fires environ it.

/ My fires have driven, thine have drawn it hence; / And I am robbed of picture, heart, and sense. /

Dwells with me still mine irksome memory, / Which, both to keep, and lose, grieves equally. /

That tells me how fair thou art; thou art so fair, / As gods, when gods to thee I do compare." -- John Donne, Sappho to Philaenis, p 127

"For, if we justly call each silly man / A little world, what shall we call then then?" -- John Donne, Sappho to Philaenis, p 128

"And between us all sweetness may be had; / All, all that Nature yields, or Art can add." -- John Donne, Sappho to Philaenis, p 128

"O cure this loving madness, and restore / Me to me; thee, my half, my all, my more" -- John Donne, Sappho to Philaenis, p 129

"Come glad from thence, go gladder than you came, / Today put on perfection, and a woman's name" -- John Done, poem, p 133

"Love and courage never shall decline, / Make the whole year, thy day, O Valentine" -- John Donne, poem, p 136

"Thy flattering picture, Phryne, is like thee, / Only in this, that you both painted be." -- John Donne, Epigrams, p. 151

"Shall I leave all this constant company, / And follow headlong, wild uncertain thee?" -- John Donne, Satire, p. 155

"Oh we allow, / Good works as good, but out of fashion now." -- John Donne, Satires, p. 160

[trestitia ⵊⵊⵊ deamorski]

en çok merak ettiğim Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets'i olmasına rağmen her şeyini okumak istiyorum senin Donne'cuğum ve bu edisyonun içinde var mı acaba ağıt ve sonelerin, ummalı mıyım böyle bişi; Seçilmiş Şiirler'in içinde neye göre kime göre nasıl seçtiler, baskısı yok, sahafta 40 lira en düşük, alsam mı, taraması var mıdır; bir delilik yapıp seni orijinal dilden mi okusam, bilmiyorum resmen "un-donne (ben uydurmadım bunu)".

[Niraj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, so I didn't read every SINGLE poem in this mighty anthology, but did get through the vast majority of them. And read far more of him than I last encountered in A-Level English. I love the two contrasting sides of Donne's life: the young libertine, poetry obsessed with proving masculinity and bedding women, of clever conceits and wit, against the older Donne, worldly-wise, with his meditations on life and Death. It's an apt summary of the run of life we all go through, and Donne's use of wit and clever conceits really goes straight to my soul. A very lovely book to be in the company of.

[Brian Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Donne is quite simply the most profound poet not named William Shakespeare. Reading his dense, intricate, sublime metaphysical poetry is an exercise for the mind and the senses. Any lover of poetry is simply required to have a fair amount of reading background on Donne and probably this edition in their library. Essential.

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

"No man is an island" is so profound that it even shows up in dialog on tv shows.

Donne's English poems often make me cry.

[Shelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Adria Guinart · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review only focus in the poem Butter my heart and it is a paper I wrote for my course in English Literature:


A triple but unique way of addressing God in John Donne’s Butter my heart

In the following essay the relationship established between the speaker and God in Batter my heart by John Donne (1572-1631) will be commented, but before developing the analysis it could be convenient to set the stage. John Donne is a well known author usually attached to the group of poets called the Metaphysical Poets. Their most notable characteristic is the conceit, that could be defined as “ A complex and arresting metaphor… which simulates understanding by combining objects and concepts in unconventional ways… the term denotes a rhetorical op-eration which is specifically intellectual rather than sensual in origin ”. That definition fits very well to the words used by Castiglione on describing “conceptismo”, one of the bases of baroque artists . We are not going to talk about the similarity between Donne and Quevedo here, but it is important to keep it in mind. The complex metaphor is sometimes enclosed with a certain pleasure for the paradox. In Batter my heart these elements are essential in the structure of the poem. It could be said that paradox and metaphor hold on the topic of the sonnet. Donne is talking about sin and redemption through one speaker. The speaker is ad-dressing God in order to believe in Him, to let Him enter his heart, meaning his mind and his life rather than the organ that allows life or the place where emotions are placed . The topic, then, is the reflection through images about war and love of the conflict between the speaker and his faith. The way of illustrating this conflict is not new, the almost leitmotiv of love and death as tools of expressing either metaphysical or amorous pain is previously well known. We mentioned Quevedo before, but another concept should be introduced about this issue. Donne used to reproduce images of violence linked to these topics in his poems as Quevedo or some other poets did. The original source was probably the replacement of the amorous object in troubadour poetry for God instead of a woman, using the imagery of this genre, which was based on hunting and chevalier concepts, mirroring the classic commonplace of the militia amoris. The relationship between Donne and Ovid has been studied before, the clearest ex-ample of this commonplace. This is important in order to explain the military metaphors which are used in the sonnet. In this sense it must also be commented that John Donne was a priest, who knew the Bible very well, which links the religious explicit content of the poem to the topic that has been established before. This brief introduction to some issues allows us to deal with a deeper analysis of the poem.
The sonnet can be divided in two parts. The first one embraces the quatrains and the second one the sestet. Every one of the two initial stanzas develop different kind of images, the first one is about getting a new beginning built upon the grace and the faith, and the second one goes into the description of the state of mind of the speaker, identifying it with a besieged city. The second part of the poem links the references of the first one subordinating them to the topic of love and marriage, but acting as a whole that drives the ending paradox, linking the poem with its beginning and its reference to the Trinity. The speakers ask to the “three-persona God” of batter his heart, and as we mentioned before, “by heart he means no simply the machine which acts as a life-saving blood pump or the seat of tender or willful emotions, but rather, in accordance with customary Biblical usage, the whole inner life or character of the human being ”. The violent language is introduced here in terms of changing life, but an-ticipates the general tone of the poem. It is important to pay attention to the way the speaker is asking God to change his life, instead of knock, breathe and shine; break, blow and burn. These actions are Biblical terms referring to these three persons of the Trinity, but it must be noticed that the traditional order has been altered, “the very order of knocke, breathe, shine, and of Donne’s translation of these to the violent breake, blow, burn, suggests the inaccuracy of as-signing each word exclusively respectively to the Father, the God and the Holy Ghost: to re-flect the traditional order Donne could have written instead ‘knocke, shine and breathe’ and ‘breake, burn, blowe’ ”. So the speaker is addressing God by stressing the paradox of the trin-ity, he is not asking for those transformer actions separately but as a unity; which allows Donne to identify God with the figure of the loved one / soldier who is sacking the city in the second part of the poem. The change of the actions for more violent ones is not casual. He is foreshadowing in some way the ending and at the same time he is referring to Biblical passages, for example, by blowing he could be talking about the way the Father used to make Adam alive . The same connotation of “make me new” could be related to the resurrection of the Son, and going further we could say that line two is referring to the New Testament and line three to the Old Testament, mixing them through the image of the Trinity, conciliating the messages of justice and love that spread in different ways over each book. Anyway, the speaker is addressing this kind of plea for a new life to God, who will be later identified with the sol-dier and the lover.
The image of a besieged city has been commented before, but now it should be added another possible source: “the daughter of Zion... is left as a besieged city”, Isaiah 1:8; and “How is the faithful city becomes an harlot! It was full of judgement, righteousness lodged in it, but now murderers”, Isaiah, 1:21 . Anyway the pagan source should not be ruled out, or almost, the way military images could express love feelings. But here, Donne is adding something we may have missed before. The only image of a besieged city inhabited by someone who wishes the arrival of the enemy advances in some way the kind of expressions of the existentialism of authors such as Sartre. This feeling of anguish is well expressed here, but meaning the battle between reason and faith, one could say between reality and desire who motions the action of the poem. The metaphor of the city and the state of the speaker is built upon two images, the one who mentions “an usurped town” and the other about reason, “your viceroy in me ”. The rea-son is the authority who rules the besieged city, while God and faith are the ones who are wait-ing outside. The term usurped must be commented. It means that the city is not legitimately ruled by reason; it belongs to faith, or to God. In some way, there is a double image of submis-sion, one forced, untrue, and the other, the legitimate one, which must sack the town. This links with line 13 “Except you enthrall me, never shall be free”, and gives some sense to the ending paradox. The enemy mentioned after that, then, must be understood as a betrayer who allows us to identify that enemy with the Devil, following the Christian doctrine, a fallen angel. The speaker here is identifying God with the legitimate sovereign of a city who has been usurped. Until now, we are being introduced to the pain of the speaker through two ideas that help building the final image: the wish of the sacking and the triumph of faith.
In the second part of the poem the speaker is addressing God in two ways. The first one is the love manner, where the speaker is married to the enemy but loving God. The second one is the violent form which seems to be addressed to a soldier. Both ways of speaking converge in a single one by the use of the dilogy through the word “ravish”. The sexual image of a rape or of a sexual act represents both senses, the military one, as a result of a sacking, and the amorous code. The conflict expressed by the speaker before is also present. In the first stanza, he is ask-ing God of becoming “a new one” by opposing terms with the same connotation but different grades of violence. In the second stanza, he is symbolizing the conflict between the one pre-sent in a city usurped by a traitor where the people inside must be loyal to their viceroy but at the same time wish the return of the King. Now, the conflict is expressed in terms of marriage, where the woman is married to the enemy of the one who she really loves. This emphasizes the triple structure of the ideas in the poem which links to the concept of the Trinity. The con-flict is always expressed by opposite terms. The final plea combines the violent ones which have a connotation of breaking and entering, “Divorce me, untie or break that knot again”. Here again the term deserves further explanation. It reveals that is not the first time the speaker is besieged by this situation of anguish provoked by doubt, maybe justifying the ap-pealing to the violence, to the rape, as the only way of becoming free, free of the doubt. It must be noticed as well, that here is also some echoes from the Bible, for example that “Take me to You” that mirrors in some way the Song of Solomon . However, the figure of the en-emy and the allusions to the lover, are clearly elements referring to the sin, and this connota-tion is important in order to understand the relationship between the speaker and God, and the way he addresses Him. These ways are three in the poem, as a plea to the Father in order to start again, as a plea to the legitimate King and as a plea to the real lover. The speaker is submitted to the weakness, he needs more violent actions that the ones which used to repre-sent the Trinity; to the doubt, he is fighting against his reason; and to the sin, he wants to break the marriage with the Enemy who is the devil as we mentioned before. These three con-ditions of the speaker belong to one single voice, to one single person, just as the Trinity to one single God. There is a reflection of the triple character of God into the speaker and that fact marks the way he address Him, and echoes all the poem and its structure.
Donne has built a poem that represents the conflict of concealing life and faith in a way close to Quevedo and other poets from that time as we commented at the beginning. But what is more interesting of them is not the religious topic; beyond that one could admire the structure and the way of expressing the existentialist anguish, which adds an universal meaning to the poem that allows us to understand in the same way a person from the XXI Century than an-other from the time this sonnet was written, and that has been possible, as we mentioned in the introduction, translating elements from the tradition. This fact traces a line that joins hu-manity, and these ways of addressing the Christian God can be suitable for a way of addressing Life and Existence.
_____________________________________________________________

BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Alan Armstrong “The Apprenticeship of John Donne: Ovid and the Elegies” in ELH, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Autumn, 1977), The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 419-442, accessed on line http://www.jstor.org/stable/2872566, 14/11/2008
Arthur L. Clements, “Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV”, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 76, No. 6 (Jun., 1961), The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, p. 484-489 accessed on line http://www.jstor.org/stable/3040128 13/11/08
John Donne, The Complete English Poems, A.J. Smith (ed.), Penguin, Londres, 1986
Tom Furniss & Michael Bath, Reading poetry, Pearson Longman, Harlow, 2007
Roger Gower, Past Into Present. An Anthology of British and American Literature, Longman, Harlow, 1990
William R. Muller, “Donne’s Adulterous Female Town” in Modern Language Notes, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Apr., 1961), The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 312-314, accessed on-line http://www.jstor.org/stable/3040508 13/11/2008
Nueva Biblia de Jerusalén, Desclée de Brouwer, Bilbao, 1999
José María Valverde, Breve historia y antología de la estética, Ariel, Barcelona, 2006

[Antonio Gallo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il "Notturnale" di Santa Lucia. Il cammino verso il Natale è disseminato da molte occasioni per festeggiare. Feste antiche e moderne, pagane e religiose, tradizionali e popolari, le occasioni non mancano in tutte le culture. Prima e dopo la Natività i giorni del calendario religioso si intrecciano con quello atmosferico. Come è il caso della festa dedicata a Santa Lucia, una figura storica femminile nella quale si celano diversi simboli.

Lucia era una donna di origine siciliana, proveniente da una ricca famiglia di Siracusa. Venne martirizzat a a causa della sua fede cristiana durante le persecuzioni anticristiane dell’imperatore Diocleziano. Visse a cavallo tra il III e IV secolo dell’era moderna. La leggenda narra che sua madre si fosse ammalata e che Lucia andasse in pellegrinaggio fino a Catania a pregare sulla tomba di Sant’Agata martire per guadagnare la sua salute. La Santa le apparve e le preannunziò il suo martirio. Lucia, tornata a casa lasciò il suo fidanzato promesso sposo e si dedicò completamente alla vocazione religiosa. La tradizione dice inoltre che visitasse anche i malati nelle catacombe con una candela sulla testa per farsi luce. Il promesso sposo la denunziò per la sua fede. Venne sottoposta a torture per farla abiurare. Non riuscirono a piegare la sua fede nemmeno quando venne condannata a morte. Prima di morire preannunziò sia la morte di Diocleziano che la fine delle persecuzioni contro i cristiani.

Ciò avvenne di fatto nel 313 d.C. con l’editto di Costantino. Il 13 dicembre viene festeggiato il giorno della sua nascita che secondo il calendario giuliano, in vigore fino al 1582, era il giorno più breve dell’anno. Tutt’oggi la festa di santa Lucia rappresenta, quindi, dopo i giorni invernali più bui, il cammino ancora lungo verso il ritorno della luce. E’ sull’origine del suo nome che si gioca tutto il significato di una festa che ha risonanze oltre che pagane e religiose anche poetiche e letterarie. Basta pensare al significato della parola latina “lux”, di qui la considerazione importante del fatto che Santa Lucia è anche la protettrice dei ciechi. Fu il giorno di Santa Lucia ad ispirare al poeta metafisico inglese John Donne la poesia “A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day…”.

‘TIS the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world’s whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

E’ la mezzanotte dell’anno.
E’ la mezzanotte del giorno di Lucia,
per sette ore a stento si disvela.
Il sole è sfinito e dalle sue fiasche
non raggi costanti, ma deboli bagliori ora manda.
La linfa del mondo tutta fu assorbita.
Bevve la terra idropica l’universale balsamo.
Morta e interrata la vita si è ritratta,
là, ai piedi del letto, quasi. Eppure,
tutto ciò non par che un riso
rispetto a me che sono il suo epitaffio.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring ;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;
He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.

E allora studiatemi, voi che sarete amanti
in un altro mondo, in un’altra primavera,
perchè io sono ogni cosa morta
che nuova alchimia d’amore ha trasmutato.
Perchè anche dal nulla la sua arte
ha distillato una quintessenza,
da opaca privazione, da povera vuotezza.
Annichilito, ora rinasco
dall’assenza, dal buio, dalla morte,
cose che non sono.

All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ;
I, by Love’s limbec, am the grave
Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown’d the whole world, us two ; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else ; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

Da ogni cosa, ogni altro prende ciò che è bene,
vita, anima, forma, spirito, ne trae esistenza.
Dall’alambicco dell’amore così fatto,
sono la tomba io, di tutto quel che è nulla. Spesso
fu un diluvio il nostro pianto,
ne sommergemmo il mondo. Noi due. E spesso
siamo mutati sino a essere due caos
quando parve che d’altro ci curassimo. E spesso
l’assenza ci privò dell’anima. Fece di noi carcasse.

But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing the elixir grown ;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know ; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love ; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

Ma per la sua morte (parola che le fa torto)
del primigenio nulla un elisir son fatto.
Se fossi un uomo, che sono uno
dovrei di necessità saperlo. Seguirei,
se fossi un animale, un fine, un mezzo.
Le stesse piante, le stesse pietre
odiano, amano; e tutto, tutto possiede una proprietà.
Se fossi un qualunque nulla,
come lo è un’ombra, vi dovrebbe pur essere
una luce, un corpo.

But I am none ; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight is.

Ma io sono il Nulla; il mio sole non si rinnoverà.
E voi amanti, voi per cui il sole minore
è trascorso ora in Capricorno
per prendere nuova passione, e a voi donarla,
godete intera la vostra estate perchè lei gode
la festa della sua lunga notte.
Io a lei mi disporrò e chiamerò quest’ora
la sua vigilia, la sua veglia,
in questa profonda mezzanotte
del giorno e dell’anno.

(Traduzione di Rosa Tavelli)

Una poesia quanto mai difficile che qui presento in una buona traduzione. Anche a distanza di tanto tempo, il poeta inglese riesce a trasmettere al lettore moderno il senso di questa festa dedicata sì a Santa Lucia ed alla morte dell’amata del poeta, ma in effetti all’importanza della LUCE nella vita degli uomini. Quella luce che da lì a qualche giorno dalla festa della Santa comincerà lentamente ad aumentare con il solstizio d’inverno il 22 dicembre. Ancora qualche giorno e poi la luce vera del Natale e della Natività darà luce agli uomini portata dalla cometa su quella stalla a Nazareth. In Costa d’Amalfi si suole cadenzare l’aumento della luce seguendo lo scorrere della festa di Santa Lucia dicendo: “A Santa Lucia nu passe ‘e gallina, a Sant’Aniello nu passe ‘e pecuriello”. Ci si riferisce, appunto, allo scorrere del tempo nel giorno 13 dicembre (Santa Lucia). La giornata si allunga di un po’, come un passo di gallina, il giorno successivo (si festeggia sant’Aniello) il giorno avanza ancora di più, come un passo di pecora.

[Kristopher Swinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.65. This contained an assortment of subjects. To put it bluntly, some material was much better than other material. His verse letters were pretty bad and, for reasons I’ll go into below, he probably should have stayed clear of most love panegyrics. However, this began to improve in his themes on marriage (with the recurrent development of a union of souls, 38-40, 71, 89), satires, and holy sonnets. But how complete was this selection, anyway? It didn’t even contain his famous Meditation XVII, though we find another reference to the “passing bell” (144). Death was another thing about which he wrote a great deal (see 215). John Donne is a religious writer par excellence, and that is what I enjoyed most!

Donne writes of love as a “feaver” (18) that will burn the world, which was reminiscent of Will Durant’s observation, ever so applicable to our day, that “sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group.” (He touches on a moralistic application on 144.) “Breake of Day” reminded me of an Air Supply song. ;-) He has a rather romantic ring early on—since it’s hard to improve on “If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desir’d, and got, t’was but a dreame of thee” (8)—but this rapidly descends into bitterness (9, 27). I prefer to view much of his love poetry as conflicted emotions rather than what certainly appears to be a sort of malicious, pre-Victorian objectization of women (26, 31, 84, then contradicted or affirmed by 160's “You, for whose body God made better clay”). We ask ourselves whether he actually hates women (56), only to have that apparently answered in the affirmative (113, 125, 189) upon reading his ready acceptance of a jaded interpretation (and continuation) of original sin. He expostulates rather directly “that no woman’s true” (75; 150: “for you are here The first good Angell, since the worlds frame stood, That ever did in womans shape appear”; see 164).

Some of his stanzas place love on par with warfare (28, 37, 84-85), suffering (70), and even death (17, 52), feelings which I can share if understood carefully. In terms of the warfare, how true it is that “though ‘tis got by chance, ‘tis kept by art” (77). In his ire, he deviates from the acceptable norm. He has some strange thoughts on monogamy (29, 78-79) or adultery (75) and there are hints here and there that he goes so far as to become homosexual or bisexual because he is so tired of “mind” appreciation only (46). He references as “negative love” that which “soare[s:] no higher Than vertue or the minde to’admire” (50), which reminded me of a Frasier episode in which he retorted to his brother something like, “Are you accusing me of only being interested in her mind?”

Sad to relate, I read only too well into what became a Valentine’s Day theme—and he wrote one of his poems in commemoration of the day—that of being doomed to “love her, that loves not me” (41-42, 142), or “Thou Love taught’st me, by appointing mee To love there, where no love receiv’d can be, Only to give to such as have an incapacitie” (43).

Among his insightful epigrams, I find one on “An Obscure Writer”: “Philo, with twelve yeares study, hath beene griev’d To be understood; when will hee be beleev’d” (89). I once copied something from a letter Robert Burns wrote to his father: “As for this world, I despair of ever making a figure in it. I am not formed for the bustle of the busy, nor the flutter of the gay. I shall never again be capable of entering into such scenes. Indeed, I am altogether unconcerned at the thoughts of this life. I foresee that poverty and obscurity probably await me.” Clearly, fame finds the man, and not the other way around. I also rather enjoyed his quipped, “To will, implyes delay, therefore now doe . . .” (98).

We find shared thoughts, as with Milton’s “The mind is its own place, and in it self Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n” (Paradise Lost, 1.254-255) possibly echoing Donne’s “Be thou thine owne home, and in thy selfe dwell; Inne any where, continuance maketh hell” (130). I also read (http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quo...) that “the idea that ‘all the world’s a stage’ was already cliched when Shakespeare wrote As You Like It,” so we are not surprised at Donne’s usage of “all this world was but a stage” (201). Elizabeth Drury (eulogized well in 201, 206) inspired him in a weird way like Dante’s Beatrice.

He had a very serious and fairly critical bent of mind, yet the intonation of his poetry often picked up an almost rollicking pace (particularly on 76). He was similarly, and confusingly, capable of very shallow (79) and sensual (81-84, 86, 170, 173) language. His commentary on false religious notions (95, 97, 109, 211) was so thoroughly on the mark! I’m inclined to think that he shone the most when actually being worshipful to God or commenting on the absence of virtue at court. He really was quite the religious thinker. I liked such observations as “He which said, Plough And looke not back, to looke up doth allow” (155), “Vertue hath some perversenesse; For she will Neither beleeve her good, nor others ill” (156), “Nor smels it well to hearers, if one tell Them their disease, who faine would think they’re well” (196), or “What fragmentary rubbidge this world is Thou knowest, and that it is not worth a thought; He honors it too much that thinkes it nought” (201). And yet most of his writing on the progress of the soul was inane nonsense.

It’s my fault for using what was once my father’s old edition, but this book could certainly have used some notes and commentary, if not taken to excess.

[Austin Hoffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the first hundred or two hundred pages, I skipped ahead to the religious poems. I probably should be finding a “greatest hits” anthology, since I don’t think I need to wade through every single poem a given author has written unless I have specific reason to.

[sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

genuinely some of the most beautiful love poetry i have ever read.

[Drew Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book of poetry I’ll be coming back to for a while