Poetry

[truepenny]

Meme from everywhere.

When you see this, post a bit of poetry in your own journal.

I am moved to post John Donne, who is one of the two men responsible (the other being Gerard Manley Hopkins) for convincing me I wanted to be an English major. And this particular poem because it's been wandering around my head recently and because it has the most beautiful metaphysical conceit of my acquaintance.

Hymn to God my God, in my Sickness

Since I am coming to that holy room,
    Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come
    I tune the instrument here at the door,
    And what I must do then, think here before.

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
    Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
    That this is my south-west discovery,
    Per fretum febris, by these straits to die,

I joy, that in these straits, I see my west;
    For, though their currents yield return to none,
What shall my west hurt me? As west and east
    In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,
    So death doth touch the resurrection.

Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are
    The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar,
    All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them,
    Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.

We think that Paradise and Calvary,
    Christ's Cross, and Adam's tree, stood in one place;
Look Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
    As that first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,
    May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.

So, in his purple wrapped receive me Lord,
    By these his thorns give me his other crown;
And as to others' souls I preached they word,
    Be this my text, my sermon to mine own,
    Therefore that he may raise the Lord throws down.

--John Donne, ?1623

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I hadn't revisited Donne since college until a little over a year ago, when I was involved with a production of Margaret Edson's play, "Wit," whose main character is a Donne scholar. That led me back to reading him, and pondering his metaphysical vision of the world.

Read at 54, he strikes much closer to the heart and soul than he did at 24.

[fuchsoid.livejournal.com]

I'd not come across this one before, but now I've saved it. I definitely agree about the difference in perspective between reading Donne when in your 20s and in your 50s.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It does depend a little bit on which Donne you're reading. Early, raunchy Donne (I would argue) is good at any age. But I agree that the later poetry & especially the Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions repays the mature and thoughtful reader much more lavishly.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

That's "mature" in its actual meaning, not (as it seems to be used these days) as code for of a certain age.

[fuchsoid.livejournal.com]

In the way that "adult" now means "likely to appeal to 14-year-old boys"?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

YES.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Oooh, Donne! I thought about putting some Donne in my lj for this, but just couldn't pick out any single poem. (Not being, for a change, in a 'Kind pity chokes my spleen, brave scorn forbids' state of mind.)