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  JOHN DONNE

  Collected Poetry

  With an Introduction and Notes by

  ILONA BELL

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Introduction

  Further Reading

  A Note on the Texts

  COLLECTED POETRY

  Songs and Sonnets

  The Good Morrow

  Song (‘Go and catch a falling star’)

  Woman’s Constancy

  The Undertaking

  The Sun Rising

  The Indifferent

  Love’s Usury

  The Canonization

  The Triple Fool

  Lovers’ Infiniteness

  Song (‘Sweetest love, I do not go’)

  The Legacy

  A Fever

  Air and Angels

  Break of Day

  The Anniversary

  A Valediction of My Name in the Window

  Twicknam Garden

  Valediction of the Book

  Community

  Love’s Growth

  Love’s Exchange

  Confined Love

  The Dream

  A Valediction of Weeping

  Love’s Alchemy

  The Flea

  The Curse

  The Message

  A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day

  Witchcraft by a Picture

  The Bait

  The Apparition

  The Broken Heart

  A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

  The Ecstasy

  Love’s Deity

  Love’s Diet

  The Will

  The Funeral

  The Blossom

  The Primrose

  The Relic

  The Damp

  The Dissolution

  A Jet Ring Sent

  Negative Love

  The Prohibition

  The Expiration

  The Computation

  The Paradox

  Farewell to Love

  A Lecture upon the Shadow

  Image of Her Whom I Love

  Sonnet. The Token

  Self Love

  When My Heart Was Mine Own

  Epigrams

  Hero and Leander

  Pyramus and Thisbe

  Niobe

  A Burnt Ship

  Fall of a Wall

  A Lame Beggar

  Cales and Guiana

  Sir John Wingefield

  A Self Accuser

  A Licentious Person

  Antiquary

  The Juggler

  Disinherited

  The Liar

  Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus

  Phrine

  An Obscure Writer

  Klockius

  Raderus

  Ralphius

  Faustus

  Elegies

  Elegy 1. The Bracelet

  Elegy 2. The Comparison

  Elegy 3. The Perfume

  Elegy 4. Jealousy

  Elegy 5. O, Let Me Not Serve So

  Elegy 6. Nature’s Lay Idiot

  Elegy 7. Love’s War

  Elegy 8. To His Mistress Going to Bed

  Elegy 9. Change

  Elegy 10. The Anagram

  Elegy 11. On His Mistress

  Elegy 12. His Picture

  Elegy 13. The Autumnal

  Elegy 14. Love’s Progress

  Elegy 15. His Parting from Her

  Elegy 16. The Expostulation

  Elegy 17. Variety

  Sappho to Philænis

  The Epithalamions or Marriage Songs

  An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song, on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine

  Epithalamion Made at Lincoln’s Inn

  Eclogue at the Marriage of the Earl of Somerset

  Satires

  Satire I

  Satire II

  Satire III

  Satire IV

  Satire V

  Upon Mr Thomas Coryat’s Crudities

  In eundem Macaronicon

  Incipit Ioannes Dones

  Metempsychosis

  Epistle

  The Progress of the Soul

  Verse Letters

  The Storm

  The Calm

  To Mr Henry Wotton (‘Here’s no more news than virtue’)

  To Mr Henry Wotton (‘Sir, more than kisses’)

  H. W. in Hiber. Belligeranti

  To Sir H. W. at His Going Ambassador to Venice

  To Mr Rowland Woodward (‘Like one who’in her third widowhood’)

  To Mr R. W. (‘Zealously my muse doth salute all thee’)

  To Mr R. W. (‘Muse not that by thy mind thy body’is led’)

  To Mr R. W. (‘If, as mine is, thy life a slumber be’)

  To Mr R. W. (‘Kindly’I envy thy song’s perfection’)

  To Mr T. W. (‘All hail sweet poet’)

  To Mr T. W. (‘Haste thee harsh verse’)

  To Mr T. W. (‘Pregnant again with th’old twins’)

  To Mr T. W. (‘At once, from hence’)

  To Mr C. B.

  To Mr E. G.

  To Mr S. B.

  To Mr I. L. (‘Of that short roll’)

  To Mr I. L. (‘Blest are your north parts’)

  To Mr B. B.

  To E. of D. with Six Holy Sonnets

  To Sir Henry Goodyere (‘Who makes the past a pattern’)

  A Letter Written by Sir H. G. and J. D. alternis vicibus

  To Mrs M. H.

  To the Countess of Bedford (‘Reason is our soul’s left hand’)

  To the Countess of Bedford (‘Honour is so sublime perfection’)

  To the Countess of Bedford (‘You have refined me’)

  To the Countess of Bedford (‘T’have written then’)

  To the Countess of Bedford, on New Year’s Day

  To the Countess of Bedford, Begun in France but never perfected

  To the Lady Bedford (‘You that are she’)

  To Sir Edward Herbert, at Juliers

  To the Countess of Huntingdon (‘That unripe side of earth’)

  To the Countess of Huntingdon (‘Man to God’s image’)

  A Letter to the Lady Carey, and Mistress Essex Rich, from Amiens

  To the Countess of Salisbury, August, 1614

  Funeral Elegies

  Anniversaries

  To the Praise of the Dead, and the Anatomy, [Probably by Joseph Hall]

  The First Anniversary. An Anatomy of the World

  A Funeral Elegy

  The Harbinger to the Progress, [Probably by Joseph Hall]

  The Second Anniversary. Of the Progress of the Soul

  Epicedes and Obsequies

  Elegy (‘Sorrow, who to this house’)

  Elegy on the Lady Markham

  Elegy on Mrs Bulstrode (‘Death I recant’)

  Elegy upon the Death of Mrs Boulstred (‘Language, thou art too narrow’)

  Elegy, On the Untimely Death of the Incomparable Prince, Henry

  Obsequies upon the Lord Harrington, the Last that Died

  A Hymn to the Saints, and to Marquesse Hamilton

  Epitaph on Himself. To the Countess of Bedford

  Epitaph on Anne Donne

  Divine Poems

  To the Lady Magdalen Herbert, of St Mary Magdalen

  La Corona

  Holy Sonnet 1 (II) (‘As due by many titles’)

  Holy Sonnet 2 (IV) (‘O my black soul’)

  Holy Sonnet 3 (VI) (‘This is my play’s last scene’)

  Holy Sonnet 4 (VII) (‘At the round earth’s imagined corners’)

  Holy Sonnet 5 (IX) (‘If poisonous minerals’)

  Holy Sonnet 6 (X) (‘Death be not proud’)

  Holy Sonnet 7 (XI) (‘Spit in my face, you Jews’)

>   Holy Sonnet 8 (XII) (‘Why are we by all creatures’)

  Holy Sonnet 9 (XIII) (‘What if this present’)

  Holy Sonnet 10 (XIV) (‘Batter my heart’)

  Holy Sonnet 11 (XV) (‘Wilt thou love God’)

  Holy Sonnet 12 (XVI) (‘Father, part of His double interest’)

  Holy Sonnet 13 (I) (‘Thou hast made me’)

  Holy Sonnet 14 (III) (‘O might those sighs and tears’)

  Holy Sonnet 15 (V) (‘I am a little world’)

  Holy Sonnet 16 (VIII) (‘If faithful souls be alike glorified’)

  Holy Sonnet 17 (XVII) (‘Since she whom I loved’)

  Holy Sonnet 18 (XVIII) (‘Show me, dear Christ’)

  Holy Sonnet 19 (XIX) (‘O, to vex me’)

  The Cross

  Resurrection, Imperfect

  The Annunciation and Passion

  A Litany

  Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward

  The Lamentations of Jeremy, for the most part according to Tremelius

  Translated out of Gazæus, Vota Amico Facta

  Upon the Translation of the Psalms by Sir Philip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke, His Sister

  To Mr Tilman after He Had Taken Orders

  A Hymn to Christ, at the Author’s Last Going into Germany

  Hymn to God my God, in my Sickness

  A Hymn to God the Father

  To Mr George Herbert, with One of my Seals, of the Anchor and Christ

  Prose

  Prose Letters

  Madam (‘I will have leave to speak like a lover’)

  ‘I send to you now that I may know how I do’

  To the Right Worshipful Sir George More, Knight (‘If a very respective fear of your displeasure’)

  Sir (‘I write not to you out of mine poor library’)

  To Sir H[enry] Good[y]ere (‘Every Tuesday I make account’)

  To Sir H[enry] G[oodyere] (‘It should be no interruption to your pleasures’)

  Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

  1. Meditation

  4. Meditation

  17. Meditation

  19. Expostulation

  Death’s Duel, Selections

  Appendix: Memorial Verses

  To the Deceased Author, upon the Promiscuous Printing of his Poems, the Looser Sort, with the Religious, By [Sir] Tho[mas] Browne

  To the Memory of My Ever Desired Friend Dr Donne, By H[enry] K[ing]

  On the Death of Dr Donne, By Edw[ard] Hyde

  On Doctor Donne, By Dr C. B. of O.

  An Elegy upon the Incomparable Dr Donne, By Hen[ry] Valentine

  An Elegy upon Dr Donne, By Iz[aak] Wa[lton] (‘Is Donne, great Donne deceased’)

  Elegy on D. D., By Sidney Godolphin

  On Dr John Donne, Late Dean of St Paul’s, London, By J[ohn] Chudleigh

  An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Paul’s, Dr John Donne, By Mr Tho[mas] Carey

  An Elegy on Dr Donne, By Sir Lucius Carie

  On Dr Donne’s Death, By Mr Mayne of Christ-Church in Oxford

  Upon Mr J. Donne and his Poems, By Arth[ur] Wilson

  Epitaph upon Dr Donne, By Endy[mion] Porter

  In Memory of Doctor Donne, By Mr R. B.

  Epitaph (‘Here lies Dean Donne’)

  Notes

  Chronology

  Acknowledgements

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  GENERAL EDITOR, POETRY: CHRISTOPHER RICKS

  COLLECTED POETRY

  JOHN DONNE was born in 1572 into a family of devout Catholics. He studied at Oxford University, travelled on the Continent, and then studied law at Lincoln’s Inn. In 1596–7 Donne joined the military expeditions to Cadiz and the Azores. In 1597 he became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Donne fell in love with Egerton’s niece, Anne More; having made a clandestine marriage contract, they were secretly married in December 1601. Donne lost his position in Egerton’s service, but the marriage was declared legal in April 1602. In the years following his marriage, Donne was a Member of Parliament and Justice of the Peace. He obtained temporary positions and patronage from a number of aristocrats who are the subjects of his poems. He was ordained as an Anglican minister in 1615, becoming Royal Chaplain and first Reader in Divinity at Lincoln’s Inn. In 1617 Anne Donne died, after giving birth to their twelfth child. In 1621 Donne was appointed Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral. John Donne died in 1631, at the age of fifty-nine. The first collected edition of his poetry was published posthumously in 1633.

  ILONA BELL is Clarke Professor of English Literature at Williams College. She has a BA from Harvard College and a Ph.D. from Boston College. She has received fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Bunting Institute and the Mellon Foundation. She is the author of Elizabethan Women and the Poetry of Courtship (1998) and Elizabeth I: the Voice of a Monarch (2010), and has published numerous articles and book chapters on John Donne, William Shakespeare, George Herbert, Ben Jonson, Elizabeth I, Mary Wroth, John Milton, the Maydens of London and Elizabeth Cary. She has also edited John Donne: Selected Poems (2006) for Penguin Classics.

  Introduction

  Around 1618 Ben Jonson predicted that John Donne ‘for not being understood would perish’. Since we might think the passage of time has made Donne’s poetry difficult, it is telling to hear this from Donne’s contemporary, a learned poet who ‘esteemeth John Donne the first poet in the world in some things’. When the first edition of Donne’s poems was published in 1633, Thomas Carey, one of Donne’s most astute disciples, contributed ‘An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Paul’s, Dr John Donne’ which described Donne’s formidable poetic powers: ‘Thou hast … drawn a line / Of masculine expression, … shot such heat and light / As burnt our earth, and made our darkness bright, / Committed holy rapes upon our will … [T]o the awe of thy imperious wit / Our stubborn language bends’.

  The next century failed to appreciate the challenges Donne’s poetry posed, just as Jonson predicted. The neoclassical poet John Dryden protested that Donne ‘affects the metaphysics’ and ‘perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love’. Samuel Johnson, the great eighteenth-century man of letters, also objected: ‘The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.’1

  The nineteenth century was both more appreciative and more critical.2 The Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge found Donne’s poems – ‘where the writer thinks, and expects the reader to do so’ – electrifying: ‘Wit! – Wonder-exciting vigour, intenseness and peculiarity of thought … this is the wit of Donne!’3 The most popular Victorian anthology omitted Donne’s poems because, as Alexander Grosart explained when he published The Complete Poems of John Donne in 1872, ‘It needs courage to print the poetry of Dr John Donne in our day.’ On the value of Donne’s poems the nineteenth century was divided. ‘Few are good for much’, Henry Hallam wrote in the late 1830s: ‘the conceits have not even the merit of being intelligible, and it would perhaps be difficult to select three passages that we should care to read again.’ Yet Robert Browning was so fond of quoting the love poems in his own love letters to Elizabeth Barrett that she referred to Donne as ‘your Donne’.4

  By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, thanks to Sir Edmund Gosse’s and Sir Herbert Grierson’s seminal editions and T. S. Eliot’s oracular modernist essays, the originality and strength of Donne’s poetry were widely recognized as the mark of his particular genius.5 In his ground-breaking 1921 anthology Grierson observed that the ‘central theme of [Donne’s] poetry is ever his own intense personal moods, as a lover, a friend, an analyst of his own experiences worldly and religious’ – a view of Donne that dominated criticism for much of the twentieth century. The most important theoretical justification came from T. S. Eliot, whose much-cited definition of the lyric as ‘the voice of the poet talking to himself – or to nobody�
�, maintained that it makes no difference whether the lyric addresses a friend, a lover, a god, a personified abstraction, or a natural object since the poet only pretends to be talking to himself or to someone else: ‘He is not concerned, at this stage, with other people at all: only with finding the right words or, anyhow, the least wrong words. He is not concerned whether anybody else will ever listen to them or not.’ Eliot saw Donne’s poetry as ‘a kind of cypher which will yield clues to a peculiarly interesting personality behind [the] poetry’.6

  In the second half of the twentieth century Donne’s poetry came to seem even more intriguingly self-analytical as the biographical identity of Donne, the man behind the poems, gave way to the persona or the ‘identity of the speaker’ (the term is from that catechism of New Criticism, Understanding Poetry, by Brooks and Warren). The dramatic situations, the windows and curtains, the suns and ladies, provided an imaginary backdrop for what really mattered: ‘the conflict of attitudes within the mind of an individual’.7

  New Historicism precipitated another major shift in Donne criticism, from the self-contained, coherent verbal construct to the interpenetration of poetry and society. Stressing Donne’s apostasy from his Roman Catholic upbringing, John Carey described Donne as a powerful egotist driven to continual self-advertisement, his professional ambitions thwarted by his clandestine marriage. Arthur Marotti represented Donne as a coterie poet, writing not for print but for manuscript circulation.8 As the world permeated Donne’s satires, verse epistles, epithalamions, funeral elegies and religious writing, the imaginative world of the Songs and Sonnets receded.

  Yet even as critical currents shifted, Donne’s poems continued to be seen as a predominantly male undertaking that reduced the woman to a shadowy reflection of male desire or a figure of male exchange.9 Feminist critiques offered explanations: the patriarchal organization of early modern society encouraged Donne’s misogynist wit; the lyric was a monologic and deeply male genre; the very structure of language empowered men by silencing women. Most twentieth-century criticism disregarded the women to whom so many of Donne’s poems were originally addressed.10

  Much as the voice of Eliot’s modernist poet speaking to himself morphed into the self-dramatization and self-analysis of the new critical persona, Donne the self-fashioning, self-advertising careerist succumbed to Donne, the self-deconstructing, unstable postmodern subject. With the death of the author, the spread of intertextuality, and the allure of self-reflexivity, the solidity of the poems themselves began to dissolve. Yet, the very process of deconstruction invited constant rereading and reconstruction: