John Donne

John Donne was one of the most passionate of the English metaphysical poets. He was a churchman famous for his spellbinding sermons.

Donne was born in London to a prominent Roman Catholic family in 1572. He converted to Anglicanism in 1590. At 11, he entered the University of Oxford. He spent the next three years at the University of Cambridge but never earned a degree. He studied law at Lincoln's Inn, London, and seemed destined for a diplomatic career. Donne was the private secretary of Sir Thomas Egerton, Keeper of the Great Seal, but his
secret marriage to Egerton's niece, Anne More, resulted in his dismissal. The next few years he earned money as a lawyer.

Donne's principal literary accomplishments during this period were "Divine Poems" (1607) and
the prose work "Biathanatos"
(c. 1608, posthumously published 1644), a half-serious extenuation of suicides,
in which he argued that suicide
is not intrinsically sinful. Donne's poetry embraces a wide range of secular and religious subjects. He wrote cynical verse about inconstancy, poems about true love, Neoplatonic lyrics on the mystical union of lovers' souls and bodies and brilliant satires and hymns depicting his own spiritual struggles.

His poems reveal the same characteristics that typified the work>br> of other metaphysical poets; dazzling wordplay, often very sexual, surprising contrasts, intricate psychological analysis and bold imagery from non-traditional areas. Donne's prose ranks as high as his poetry.

The Sermons, some 160 in all, are especially memorable for their imaginative explications of biblical passages and for their intense explorations of the themes of divine love and of the decay and resurrection of the body. "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" (1624) is a powerful series of meditations, expostulations and prayers in which Donne's serious sickness at the time becomes a microcosm wherein can be observed the world's spiritual disease.

Obsessed with death, Donne
preached what was called his own funeral sermon, "Death's Duel" just a few weeks before he died in London on March 31, 1631.

Death Be Not Proud

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for though art not so, For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow, Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee, And soonest our best men with thee doe goe Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie. Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings and desperate men, And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell, And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well, And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then; One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

The Good Morrow

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 faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die

I observe the physician
with the same diligence
as the disease.