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John Donne (1572–1631). The Poems of John Donne. 1896.

Letters to Several Personages

To Mr. Christopher Brooke: The Storm

THOU which art I—’tis nothing to be so—

Thou which art still thyself, by these shalt know

Part of our passage; and a hand or eye

By Hilliard drawn is worth a history

By a worse painter made; and, without pride,

When by thy judgment they are dignified,

My lines are such. ’Tis the pre-eminence

Of friendship only to impute excellence.

England, to whom we owe what we be and have,

Sad that her sons did seek a foreign grave

—For Fate’s or Fortune’s drifts none can soothsay;

Honour and misery have one face, and way—

From out her pregnant entrails sigh’d a wind,

Which at th’ air’s middle marble room did find

Such strong resistance, that itself it threw

Downward again; and so when it did view

How in the port our fleet dear time did leese,

Withering like prisoners, which lie but for fees,

Mildly it kiss’d our sails, and fresh and sweet

—As to a stomach starved, whose insides meet,

Meat comes—it came; and swole our sails, when we

So joy’d, as Sarah her swelling joy’d to see.

But ’twas but so kind as our countrymen,

Which bring friends one day’s way, and leave them then.

Then like two mighty kings, which dwelling far

Asunder, meet against a third to war,

The south and west winds join’d, and, as they blew,

Waves like a rolling trench before them threw.

Sooner than you read this line, did the gale,

Like shot, not fear’d till felt, our sails assail;

And what at first was call’d a gust, the same

Hath now a storm’s, anon a tempest’s name.

Jonas, I pity thee, and curse those men

Who, when the storm raged most, did wake thee then.

Sleep is pain’s easiest salve, and doth fulfil

All offices of death, except to kill.

But when I waked, I saw that I saw not;

I, and the sun, which should teach me, had forgot

East, west, day, night; and I could only say,

If th’ world had lasted, now it had been day.

Thousands our noises were, yet we ’mongst all

Could none by his right name, but thunder, call.

Lightning was all our light, and it rain’d more

Than if the sun had drunk the sea before.

Some coffin’d in their cabins lie, equally

Grieved that they are not dead, and yet must die;

And as sin-burden’d souls from grave will creep

At the last day, some forth their cabins peep,

And trembling ask, “What news?” and do hear so

As jealous husbands, what they would not know.

Some sitting on the hatches would seem there

With hideous gazing to fear away fear.

Then note they the ship’s sicknesses, the mast

Shaked with an ague, and the hold and waist

With a salt dropsy clogg’d, and all our tacklings

Snapping, like too-too-high-stretch’d treble strings.

And from our tatter’d sails rags drop down so,

As from one hang’d in chains a year ago.

Even our ordnance, placed for our defence,

Strives to break loose, and ’scape away from thence.

Pumping hath tired our men, and what’s the gain?

Seas into seas thrown, we suck in again;

Hearing hath deaf’d our sailors, and if they

Knew how to hear, there’s none knows what to say.

Compared to these storms, death is but a qualm,

Hell somewhat lightsome, the Bermudas calm.

Darkness, light’s eldest brother, his birthright

Claims o’er the world, and to heaven hath chasèd light.

All things are one, and that one none can be,

Since all forms uniform deformity

Doth cover; so that we, except God say

Another Fiat, shall have no more day.

So violent, yet long, these furies be,

That though thine absence starve me, I wish not thee.