DR. DONNE: HÌS HOLY SONNETS.

Seal then this bill of my divorce to all,

On whom those fainter beams of love did fall;
Marry those loves, which in youth scattered be
On face, wit, hopes, (false mistresses), to thee.
Churches are best for prayer that have least light:
To see God only, I go out of sight;

And, to 'scape stormy days, I choose

An everlasting night.

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To do justice to this poem, the reader must take some trouble to enter into the poet's mood.

It is in a measure distressing that, while I grant with all my heart the claim of his "Muse's white sincerity," the taste in—I do not say of-some of his best poems should be such that I will not present them.

Out of twenty-three Holy Sonnets, every one of which, I should almost say, possesses something remarkable, I choose three. Rhymed after the true Petrarchian fashion, their rhythm is often as bad as it can be to be called rhythm at all. Yet these are very fine.

Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind, and death before doth cast
Such terror; and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.
Only thou art above, and when towards thee

By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,

That not one hour myself I can sustain :
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art, i
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.

If faithful souls be alike glorified

As angels, then my father's soul doth see,
And adds this even to full felicity,

That valiantly I hell's wide mouth o'erstride :
But if our minds to these souls be descried

By circumstances and by signs that be
Apparent in us-not immediately1—

How shall my mind's white truth by them be tried?
They see idolatrous lovers weep and mourn,
And, style blasphemous, conjurors to call
On Jesu's name, and pharisaical

Dissemblers feign devotion. Then turn,
O pensive soul, to God; for he knows best
Thy grief, for he put it into my breast.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so ;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,

Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery!

Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well,

And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.

In a poem called The Cross, full of fantastic conceits, we find the following remarkable lines, embodying the profoundest truth.

As perchance carvers do not faces make,

But that away, which hid them there, do take:
Let crosses so take what hid Christ in thee,
And be his image, or not his, but he.

1 "If they know us not by intuition, but by judging from circumstances

RESURRECTION.

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One more, and we shall take our leave of Dr. Donne. It is called a fragment; but it seems to me complete. It will serve as a specimen of his best and at the same time of his most characteristic mode of presenting fine thoughts grotesquely attired.

RESURRECTION.

Sleep, sleep, old sun; thou canst not have re-past1
As yet the wound thou took'st on Friday last.
Sleep then, and rest: the world may bear thy stay;
A better sun rose before thee to-day;
Who, not content to enlighten all that dwell
On the earth's face as thou, enlightened hell,
And made the dark fires languish in that vale,
As at thy presence here our fires grow pale;
Whose body, having walked on earth and now
Hastening to heaven, would, that he might allow
Himself unto all stations and fill all,

For these three days become a mineral.

He was all gold when he lay down, but rose
All tincture; and doth not alone dispose
Leaden and iron wills to good, but is

Of power to make even sinful flesh like his.
Had one of those, whose credulous piety
Thought that a soul one might discern and see
Go from a body, at this sepulchre been,
And issuing from the sheet this body seen,
He would have justly thought this body a soul,
If not of any man, yet of the whole.

What a strange mode of saying that he is our head, the captain of our salvation, the perfect humanity in which our life is hid! Yet it has its dignity. When one has got over the oddity of these

1 A strange use of the word; but it evidently means recovered, and has some analogy with the French repasser.

last six lines, the figure contained in them shows itself almost grand.

As an individual specimen of the grotesque form holding a fine sense, regard for a moment the words,

He was all gold when he lay down, but rose
All tincture;

which means, that, entirely good when he died, he was something yet greater when he rose, for he had gained the power of making others good: the tincture intended here was a substance whose touch would turn the basest metal into gold.

Through his poems are scattered many fine passages; but not even his large influence on the better poets who followed is sufficient to justify our listening to him longer now.

CHAPTER VIII.

BISHOP HALL AND GEORGE SANDYS.

JOSEPH HALL, born in 1574, a year after Dr. Donne, bishop, first of Exeter, next of Norwich, is best known by his satires. It is not for such that I can mention him the most honest satire can claim no place amongst religious poems. It is doubtful if satire ever did any good. Its very language is that of the halfbrute from which it is well named.

Here are three poems, however, which the bishop wrote for his choir.

My sport sin too, my

What end of sin?

Hell's horror never ending:

My way, my trade, sport, stay, and place,
Help to make up my doleful case.