but yet the body is his book

It's my birthday! We went to NASA (Space Center Houston!) because I am 41 and still a space kid at heart. I was thinking about space poems to post (or moon poems, or poems about planets), and that got me to a not-super-surprising metaphysical place and then I thought, "I miss inflicting John Donne on people my birthday." So here is a deeply weird Donne poem that I have not posted before. (I posted "The Sun Rising" in 2008, otherwise you'd obviously be getting that one.) But what is this bonkers poem about, you may ask. The body? Sex? Death? Plato? Soul bonds? Being drift compatible with a possibly dead person while sharing a grave? All of the above, probably. It also has one of my favorite and most quintessentially "this is disgusting, bro, what are you doing" Donne couplets, which is the one about the eye-stalks.

Where, like a pillow on a bed
A pregnant bank swell'd up to rest
The violet's reclining head,
Sat we two, one another's best;
Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm, which thence did spring,
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;
So to'intergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As 'twixt two equal armies, fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls (which to advance their state
Were gone out) hung 'twixt her and me.
And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.
If any, so by love refin'd
That he soul's language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,
He (though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same)
Might thence a new concoction take
And part far purer than he came.
This ecstasy doth unperplex,
We said, and tell us what we love;
We see by this it was not sex,
We see we saw not what did move;
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love these mix'd souls doth mix again
And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size,
(All which before was poor and scant)
Redoubles still, and multiplies.
When love with one another so
Interinanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are compos'd and made,
For th' atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But oh alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They are ours, though not we; we are
The intelligences, they the spheres.
We owe them thanks, because they thus
Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses' force to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.
On man heaven's influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air;
So soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.
As our blood labors to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot which makes us man,
So must pure lovers' souls descend
T' affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.
To'our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love reveal'd may look;
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change, when we'are to bodies gone.

—John Donne (1572-1631), "The Ecstasy" (or "The Extasie"), from Songs and Sonnets, originally published in print in 1633, although it certainly circulated in manuscript before then. This is obviously neither a song nor a sonnet.

practice my art

I took a couple of years off from posting John Donne, both because I have already posted many of my top Donne poems and because sometimes you need a break from your favorite poets. In the years since I left grad school in 2016, I've also moved away—in some ways—from my early modernist roots. But I will always love the metaphysical poets for their absolutely bonkers weirdness as much as for the occasionally sublime, so here's a deeply weird poem about oral sex.

Who ever loves, if he do not propose
The right true end of love, he's one that goes
To sea for nothing but to make him sick.
Love is a bear-whelp born: if we o'er lick
Our love, and force it new strange shapes to take,
We err, and of a lump a monster make.
Were not a calf a monster that were grown
Faced like a man, though better than his own?
Perfection is in unity: prefer
One woman first, and then one thing in her.
I, when I value gold, may think upon
The ductileness, the application,
The wholesomeness, the ingenuity,
From rust, from soil, from fire ever free;
But if I love it, 'tis because 'tis made
By our new nature (Use) the soul of trade.
    All these in women we might think upon
(If women had them) and yet love but one.
Can men more injure women than to say
They love them for that, by which they're not they?
Makes virtue woman? Must I cool my blood
Till I both be, and find one, wise and good?
May barren angels love so! But if we
Make love to woman, virtue is not she,
As beauty's not, nor wealth. He that strays thus
From her to hers, is more adulterous,
Then if he took her maid. Search every sphere
And firmament, our Cupid is not there;
He's an infernal god, and under ground
With Pluto dwells, where gold and fire abound;
Men to such gods their sacrificing coals
Did not in altars lay, but pits and holes.
Although we see celestial bodies move
Above the earth, the earth we till and love:
So we her airs contemplate, words and heart
And virtues, but we love the centrique part.
    Nor is the soul more worthy, or more fit,
For love, then this, as infinite as it.
But in attaining this desired place
How much they err, that set out at the face.
The hair a forest is of ambushes,
Of springs, snares, fetters and manacles;
The brow becalms us when 'tis smooth and plain,
And when 'tis wrinkled shipwrecks us again—
Smooth, 'tis a paradise, where we would have
Immortal stay, and wrinkled 'tis our grave.
The nose (like to the first meridian) runs
Not 'twixt an East and West, but 'twixt two suns;
It leaves a cheek, a rosy hemisphere,
On either side, and then directs us where
Upon the islands fortunate we fall,
(Not faint Canaries, but Ambrosial),
Her swelling lips; to which when we are come,
We anchor there, and think ourselves at home,
For they seem all: there Sirens' songs, and there
Wise Delphic Oracles do fill the ear;
There in a creek where chosen pearls do swell,
The remora, her cleaving tongue doth dwell.
These, and the glorious promontory, her chin,
O'erpassed, and the straight Hellespont between
The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts,
(Not of two lovers, but two loves the nests)
Succeeds a boundless sea, but yet thine eye
Some island moles may scattered there descry;
And sailing towards her India, in that way
Shall at her fair Atlantic navel stay;
Though thence the current be thy pilot made,
Yet ere thou be where thou wouldst be embayed
Thou shalt upon another forest set,
Where many shipwreck and no further get.
When thou art there, consider what this chase
Misspent by thy beginning at the face.
    Rather set out below; practice my art,
Some symmetry the foot hath with that part
Which thou dost seek, and is thy map for that,
Lovely enough to stop, but not stay at;
Least subject to disguise and change it is—
Men say the Devil never can change his.
It is the emblem that hath figured
Firmness; 'tis the first part that comes to bed.
Civility we see refined; the kiss
Which at the face began, transplanted is,
Since to the hand, since to the imperial knee,
Now at the papal foot delights to be:
If kings think that the nearer way, and do
Rise from the foot, lovers may do so too;
For as free spheres move faster far than can
Birds, whom the air resists, so may that man
Which goes this empty and ethereal way,
Then if at beauty's elements he stay.
Rich nature hath in women wisely made
Two purses, and their mouths aversely laid:
They then, which to the lower tribute owe
That way which that exchequer looks, must go:
He which doth not, his error is as great
As who by clyster gave the stomach meat.

—John Donne (1572-1631), "Elegy XVIII: Love's Progress," although there is, as is often the case with Donne, some dispute about the title; it could be "An Elegie on Loves Progress" or "Loves Progress" or "On Loves Progress." I made a bunch of choices about the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation that are not really consistent with anything except how I think it should read, so it's a good thing I'm not actually a textual editor. This poem ends with the truly incredible metaphor of a meat enema (that is what clyster means, I am sorry), which sure is a choice.

my soul's form bends

In this house, we post devotional poetry in multiple religions! I've alluded to this poem more than once over the years, but for various reasons I've never posted it; it seemed like it was time.

Let man's soul be a sphere, and then in this
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day
Scarce in a year their natural form obey,
Pleasure or business so our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirled by it.
Hence is't that I am carried towards the West
This day, when my soul's form bends towards the East.
There I should see a sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget;
But that Christ on this cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I'almost be glad I do not see
That spectacle, of too much weight for me.
Who sees God's face, that is self life, must die:
What a death were it then to see God die!
It made his own lieutenant, Nature, shrink:
It made his footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And turn all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?
Could I behold that endless height which is
Zenith to us and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? Or that blood, which is
The seat of all our souls, if not of his,
Make dirt of dust? Or that flesh, which was worn
By God for his apparel, rag'd and torn?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was God's partner here, and furnish'd thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom'd us?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They're present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards me,
O Saviour, as though hang'st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O think me worth thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rusts and my deformity;
Restore thine image so much by thy grace
That thou may'st know me, and I'll turn my face.

—John Donne (1572-1631), "Good Friday, 1613: Riding Westward," also known as "Good Friday: Made as I was Riding Westward that Day," "Good Friday," "Riding Westward," "A Meditation upon Good Friday, 1613" and several other variations; presumably written on April 2, 1613. The general consensus is that Donne was riding to visit Sir Edward Herbert in Wales. I had in my head the apocryphal theory that Donne was leaving London to get away from the plague when he wrote this poem, but I don't think that's actually true—1613 doesn't seem to have been a major plague year, even if it would make a good story, here in 2020. I slightly adapted the (modernized) orthography and punctuation from the massive Longman Complete Poems of John Donne, edited by Robin Robbins (2010), but with Donne you're always editing a little, even when you choose an edition. His poetry circulated so widely that there's no true standardized text, which personally I sort of like—e.g. line 22, which could be "tune all spheres" or "turn all spheres," both of which make sense in context and look pretty much exactly the same in secretary hand.

angels and america

While we are on the subject of sonnets, I thought I would post some for my birthday, which is today! I woke up with a scratchy throat and what feels like a cold, which is not awesome given that I am going to see eight hours of theatre—both parts of Angels in America on Broadway. But I will persevere, because both parts of Angels in America.

On the poetry front: it's a John Donne year, but I also missed posting a poem yesterday, so for yesterday and today: one double sonnet about angels, and a single sonnet about America.

Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be;
     Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
     But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
     More subtle than the 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.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught;
     Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
     For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;
     Then, as an angel, face, and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure, doth wear,
     So thy love may be my love's sphere;
          Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.

—John Donne (1572-1631), "Aire and Angels" or "Air and Angels" with modernized spelling, which this version of the poem has. From Songs and Sonnets, which is mostly made up of neither songs nor sonnets, but in this case the poem is a double sonnet, and I love that about it—the notes in my grad school edition say "double sonnet! multiple vultas!" and "more mobile sonnet?" which...I am not sure what I meant by that. But anyway, it's a neat poem. I'm less into the misogyny at the end, but there's not exactly a small amount of misogyny in Songs and Sonnets in general; JD was working through some issues.

*

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

—Emma Lazarus (1849-1887), "The New Colossus." Guys, I've never posted any Emma Lazarus? IN ELEVEN YEARS? Honestly, this isn't even my favorite of her poems; but it's a classic, and it's a sonnet, and despite the last part being immensely famous, I frequently feel like we should read the whole poem more often. So anyway, here is to both angels and America.

new spheres

Speaking of poets who are gay for God, here's a little of our good friend John Donne, for April 17:

I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite,
But black sin hath betray'd 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 lands 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 drown'd no more.
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire
Of lust and envy have 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.

—John Donne (1572-1631), Holy Sonnet V. My favorite thing about the Holy Sonnets is how little chill Donne has about his kinky God feelings. Like, he's got a LOT of kinky God feelings, and he doesn't care who knows about them.

this is the second of our reign

I was going to wait until I was home with my three different editions of Donne, but I have a few minutes now, between a full day of work and my dinner plans, so here we go. IT'S MY BIRTHDAY. IT'S A DONNE YEAR. IT'S TIME FOR THIS POEM.

All kings, and all their favourites,
    All glory of honours, beauties, wits,
The sun itself, which makes time, as they pass,
Is elder by a year now than it was
When thou and I first one another saw.
All other things to their destruction draw,
    Only our love hath no decay;
This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday;
Running it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

    Two graves must hide thine and my corse;
    If one might, death were no divorce.
Alas! as well as other princes, we
—Who prince enough in one another be—
Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears,
Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears;
    But souls where nothing dwells but love
—All other thoughts being inmates—then shall prove
This or a love increasèd there above,
When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove.

    And then we shall be throughly blest;
    But now no more than all the rest.
Here upon earth we're kings, and none but we
Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
Who is so safe as we? where none can do
Treason to us, except one of us two.
    True and false fears let us refrain,
Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore; this is the second of our reign.

—John Donne (1572-1621), "The Anniversarie" or, sometimes, "The Anniversary" (not to be confused with the Anniversaries) from Songs and Sonnets, here with modernized spelling and punctuation courtesy of E. K. Chambers, I think. I mean, honestly, whatever. I could yell about editorial practices for years, but let's just let the poem be, today.

wiser far than I

I missed yesterday because I was feeling like death. I am still kind of feeling like death, but here are two poems that go together, for yesterday and today. I may have posted the first one, back in 2008 when I posted a Renaissance Poetry Miscellany, but it's been a long time, and I've never posted the second. They do, I feel, play best together.

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

—Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), "The Passionate Shepherd To His Love," in print in 1599, but certainly in manuscript before then, with a terminus ad quem of 1593. Spelling and punctuation modernized, mostly to my preferences.

*

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

There will the river whispering run
Warmed by thy eyes more than the sun,
And there th'enamoured 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 my heart 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 treach'rously 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 caught thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.

—John Donne (1572-1631), "The Bait," uncertain date, but likely 1590s; 1633 in print. Spelling and punctuation modernized to my preferences, but with reference to the Longman Donne (ed. Robin Robbins), which has the most excessive extensive editing of any Donne edition in my possession.

To do this properly I should probably also include The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd, generally attributed to Walter Ralegh. But I like the strict juxtaposition of Marlowe and Donne, which is all one really needs to be like, "SO METAPHYSICAL POETRY."

love I submit to thee

It's my birthday, and it's a Donne year. I was thinking pretty seriously about posting The Sunne Rising again, even though I posted it in 2008; but then there was this one, and I like this one. Credit to K for picking it out for me. Additional credit to K for cleaning my kitchen and baking me a cake. (Best platonic wife ever.) Anyway, it's a gorgeous day, and I haven't done nearly enough grading, but I did go out this morning and get bagels, and I lay around in the sunshine and read fic, and later I am going out to dinner with a whole bunch of great people, so I'm calling it: fuck yeah, happy birthday to me.

For every houre that thou wilt spare mee now,
I will allow,
Usurious God of Love, twenty to thee,
When with my browne, my gray haires equall bee;
Till then, Love, let my body raigne, and let
Mee travell, sojourne, snatch, plot, have, forget,
Resume my last yeares relict: thinke that yet
We'had never met.

Let mee thinke any rivalls letter mine,
And at next nine
Keepe midnights promise; mistake by the way
The maid, and tell the Lady of that delay;
Onely let mee love none, no, not the sport
From country grasse, to comfitures of Court,
Or cities quelque choses, let report
My minde transport.

This bargaine's good; if when I'am old, I bee
Inflam'd by thee,
If thine owne honour, or my shame, or paine,
Thou covet most, at that age thou shalt gaine.
Doe thy will then, then subject and degree,
And fruit of love, Love I submit to thee,
Spare mee till then, I'll beare it, though she bee
One that loves mee.

—John Donne (1572-1631), "Loves Usury" from Songs and Sonets, which I always feel obliged to note contains neither songs nor sonnets. Donne's poetry was first published in print in 1633, but circulated in manuscript both before and after. I don't know anything like a specific date for this one, and am too lazy to go look it up in the Variorum. Meanwhile, I love it when poets try to bargain with Love. Spoilers: it doesn't usually work.

study our manuscripts

Have you guys noticed that there has been a really distinct lack of sonnets around here, this month? This is still not a sonnet. In fact, there are no (formal) sonnets in all of Donne's "Songs and Sonnets." Donne reserves the actual sonnet form -- associated inevitably with sex and romance, and with thanks to Petrarch (that's an oversimplification, but the point stands) -- to talk to God. I mean, wouldn't you?

I'll tell thee now (dear love) what thou shalt do
To anger destiny, as she doth us,
How I shall stay, though she esloygne me thus,
And how posterity shall know it too;
How thine may out-endure
Sibyl's glory, and obscure
Her who from Pindar could allure,
And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame,
And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name.

Study our manuscripts, those myriads
Of letters, which have past 'twixt thee and me,
Thence write our annals, and in them will be
To all whom love's subliming fire invades,
Rule and example found;
There the faith of any ground
No schismatique will dare to wound,
That sees, how Love this grace to us affords,
To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records.

This book, as long-lived as the elements,
Or as the world's form, this all-graved tome
In cypher writ, or new made idiom;
We for Love's clergy only are instruments,
When this book is made thus,
Should again the ravenous
Vandals and Goths invade us,
Learning were safe; in this our universe,
Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels verse.

Here Love's Divines—since all divinity
Is love or wonder—may find all they seek,
Whether abstract spiritual love they like,
Their souls exhaled with what they do not see,
Or, loth so to amuse
Faith's infirmity, they choose
Something which they may see and use;
For, though mind be the heaven, where love doth sit,
Beauty a convenient type may be to figure it.

Here more than in their books may lawyers find,
Both by what titles mistresses are ours,
And how prerogative these states devours,
Transferr'd from Love himself, to womankind,
Who, though from heart and eyes,
They exact great subsidies,
Forsake him who on them relies;
And for the cause, honour, or conscience give,
Chimeras, vain as they, or their prerogative.

Here statesmen (or of them, they which can read),
May of their occupation find the grounds,
Love and their art alike it deadly wounds,
If to consider what 'tis, one proceed.
In both they do excel
Who the present govern well,
Whose weakness none doth, or dares tell;
In this thy book, such will there something see,
As in the Bible some can find out alchemy.

Thus vent thy thoughts; abroad I'll study thee,
As he removes far off, that great heights takes;
How great love is, presence best trial makes,
But absence tries how long this love will be;
To take a latitude
Sun, or stars, are fitliest view'd
At their brightest, but to conclude
Of longitudes, what other way have we,
But to mark when, and where the dark eclipses be?

—John Donne (1572-1631), "Valediction to his Book," from "Songs and Sonnets," first published in print in the Poems of 1633. I made some slightly random editorial decisions about punctuation and orthography. One of these days I'll post a satire or a verse letter, but I really fucking love the songs and sonnets. Even if none of them are sonnets.

before, behind, between, above, below

When I made my new reorganized spreadsheet for National Poetry Month, I discovered a pattern: on my birthday, every year since I began in 2007, I have alternated between Donne and Auden. (There has only been one exception: in 2008, which was a weird year in general, I posted the entire first book of Paradise Lost on my birthday.) Last year was an Auden year, so this year is a Donne year; I love Donne, both dirty and sublime, and I thought perhaps this was a year to break into the Elegies. Also I like to post sexy poems on my birthday.

Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tir'd with standing, though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glittering,
But a fair fairer world incompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopt there.
Unlace your self, for that harmonious chime,
Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th'hill's shadow steals.
Off with your wyerie Coronet and show
The hairy Diademe which on you doth grow.
Now off with those shoes, and then softly tread
In this love's hallow'd temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven's Angels used to be
Receaved by men: thou Angel bring'st with thee
A heaven like Mahomet's Paradise, and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know,
By this these Angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
    Licence my roaving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America, my new-found-land,
My kingdome, safeliest when with one man man'd,
My mine of precious stones, my Emperie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
    Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth'd must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta's balls cast, in men's views,
That when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them:
Like pictures, or like books gay coverings made
For laymen, are all women thus array'd.
Themselves are mystick books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see reveal'd. Then since that I may know;
As liberally, as to a Midwife show
Thy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance, much less innocence:
To teach thee, I am naked first; why then,
What needst thou have more covering than a man?

—John Donne (1572-1631), Elegie XIX, "To His Mistress Going To Bed." I made some random editorial decisions about punctuation and orthography.

It's been a good birthday. Some of my friends are still here, and we've been talking about Donne and how there should be a Doctor Who episode called "Jack and the Doctor" in which Donne is a companion, and Clarissa, and 18th century fanfiction, and YA fantasy, and the Wizard's Oath. We also had cake and ice cream cake, and earlier today I took my roommate out to breakfast and went and bought myself things and wandered around in the beautiful weather and cleaned my apartment and painted my toenails. I am also wearing lots and lots of glitter and a little black dress. Here's to 27.

Also: a very happy birthday to all the other birthdays today and this week (it is a week of birthdays!); and I love you all. ♥

and let me love

It's still April on the East Coast for another half hour, and so, my last poem of the month. What a fucking month. There's been a lot of bad, but there's been some good, too; the poetry made it a lot better than it could have been, especially this year. I wish I'd been able to keep up with other people's poetry posts more regularly, but I look forward to back-reading them, when I can. I'm not sad to see April go, and I'm looking forward to May, even though looking forward to things catches me up, sometimes, and the fact that time is moving forward just like normal still seems a little strange.

I've been circling around John Donne all month long, and I thought I would end with this one. It's a famous one, and I love it -- but then, there's not a lot of Donne that I don't love.

For Godsake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsie, or my gout,
My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with Arts improve,
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his honour, or his grace,
Or the King's real, or his stamped face
Contemplate, what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.

Alas, alas, who's injur'd by my love?
What merchants ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguie Bill?
Soldiers find wars, and Lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, wee are made such by love;
Call her one, me another fly,
We'are Tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And wee in us find the'Eagle and the dove,
The Phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us, we two being one, are it.
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit,
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of Chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us Canoniz'd for Love.

And thus invoke us; You whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage,
Who did the whole worlds soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize,
Countries, Townes, Courts: Beg from above
A pattern of our love.

—John Donne (1572-1631), 'The Canonization'.

I have three editions of Donne's poetry on my desk right now, and I typed this up from one of them and modernized the spelling to my own liking, because while I am just the sort of person who would actually go to the library and check out the Donne Variorum -- actually while typing this I have learned that there is an online version of the Donne Variorum, oh my god I love academics with internet -- I am also lazy, and this poem is this poem, gorgeous and heady and wild and lovely, whatever the spelling and punctuation.

better hemispheres

My favorite poem in the entire world is John Donne's A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, but I'm not going to post it, because I posted it on my birthday three years ago, and I posted it a year and a half ago for a poetry meme, and I try not to repeat myself too often. Here is a different John Donne poem about love; this one is for you guys.

I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not wean'd till then?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

~John Donne (1572-1631), The Good-Morrow.

Thus far today I have had excellent Thai food, put money in the bank, gotten free iced tea and a cupcake at my favorite tea house, and tried on ridiculous hats. I also did a little bit of work, and laughed at my Mom when she called to wish me happy birthday from a Starbucks line in an airport, and started planning my summer vacation to Mexico. Later, I am going to go sit by the lake with some friends, and eat fried food, and probably wish I had bug spray, because it is gorgeous, and very hot, and feels like summer.

teach me to hear the mermaids singing

I went to Borough Market this morning, which was utterly wonderful, although I think in future I need to be out of there by noon, because the last hour was kind of miserably crowded. I bought many delicious things, however, including strawberries and cream and fancy mushrooms and focaccia and pesto and eggplants and sage. I think I will eat very well, this week. As a consequence of Borough Market, I considered posting Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market, but the truth is, I don't really like it all that much. I also thought about posting Keats's Eve of St. Agnes, for similar dangerously delectable fruit-imagery reasons, but many of the same principles apply. So, circuitously:

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

~John Donne (1572-1631), Song: Go and catch a falling star.

Poll: Did you first encounter this poem in a) Neil Gaiman's Stardust, b) Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle, c) school, d) here, or e) somewhere else entirely? It was Howl's Moving Castle, for me, and I've loved it since. Maybe I can thank Sophie - though probably not Howl - for letting me overlook the misogyny for a while.

saucy pedantic wretch

I. John Donne, "The Sun Rising," Poems, 1633.

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 tomorrow late, tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst 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 honor'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.

II. Sir Philip Sidney, Sonnet I, Astrophel and Stella, 1591.

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,--
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,--
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn'd brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows;
And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."

III. Christopher Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd To His Love," 1599.

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle:

A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold:

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning;
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

IV. Robert Herrick, "Upon The Nipples Of Julia's Breast," Hesperides, 1648

Have ye beheld (with much delight)
A red rose peeping through a white?
Or else a cherry, double grac'd,
Within a lily centre plac'd?
Or ever mark'd the pretty beam
A strawberry shows half-drown'd in cream?
Or seen rich rubies blushing through
A pure smooth pearl and orient too?
So like to this, nay all the rest,
Is each neat niplet of her breast.

V. Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress," 1651-2, published 1681. I posted this one last year, and I quote it all the time, but it's one of my very favorite poems, and it fit the theme.

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

The Early Moderns were sexy bastards. QED.

batter my heart

For April 3rd:

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

~John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV, affectionately known as the "John Donne is Gay for God" poem.

For April 4th:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

~William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVI, which will probably always be my favorite no matter how much I wish my favorite was one of the more obscure ones.

like gold to airy thinness beat

It's my birthday today! And, in honor of my birthday, I thought I would post my favorite poem.

I don't generally like to pick favorites, because there are just too many things - particularly literary things - that I love. But every once in awhile there's something that just resonates with me in a unique, different, surprising, exceptional way, and that makes it my favorite.

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls, to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"The breath goes now," and some say, "No:"

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refin'd,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begun.

~John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, first published 1633

So far, I am having a really excellent birthday.