Three challenging Poems by Donne about love and life and mysterious unions:

Air and Angels

By John Donne

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.

 

 

 

 

The Ecstasy

By John Donne

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 they'are 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.

 

Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God

By John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person'd 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 usurp'd town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,

But am betroth'd 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.