Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Letters to Several Personages

A Letter to the Lady Carey, and Mistress Essex Rich, from Amiens

MADAME—
Here, where by all all saints invoked are,

’Twere too much schism to be singular,

And ’gainst a practice general to war.

Yet turning to saints, should my humility

To other saints than you directed be,

That were to make my schism, heresy.

Nor would I be a convertite so cold,

As not to tell it; if this be too bold,

Pardons are in this market cheaply sold,

Where, because faith is in too low degree,

I thought it some apostleship in me

To speak things which by faith alone I see;

That is, of you, who are a firmament

Of virtues, where no one is grown, or spent;

They’re your materials, not your ornament.

Others, whom we call virtuous, are not so

In their whole substance, but their virtues grow

But in their humours, and at seasons show.

For when through tasteless flat humidity

In dough-baked men some harmlessness we see,

’Tis but his phlegm that’s virtuous, and not he.

So is the blood sometimes; whoever ran

To danger unimportuned, he was then

No better than a sanguine virtuous man.

So cloistral men, who, in pretence of fear,

All contributions to this life forbear,

Have virtue in melancholy, and only there.

Spiritual choleric critics, which in all

Religions find faults, and forgive no fall,

Have through their zeal virtue but in their gall.

We’re thus but parcel-gilt; to gold we’re grown

When virtue is our soul’s complexion;

Who knows his virtue’s name or place, hath none.

Virtue ’s but aguish, when ’tis several,

By occasion waked, and circumstantial;

True virtue ’s soul, always in all deeds all.

This virtue, thinking to give dignity

To your soul, found there no infirmity,

For your soul was as good virtue as she.

She therefore wrought upon that part of you

Which is scarce less than soul, as she could do;

And so hath made your beauty, virtue too.

Hence comes it that your beauty wounds not hearts,

As others, with profane and sensual darts;

But as an influence, virtuous thoughts imparts.

But if such friends by th’ honour of your sight

Grow capable of this so great a light,

As to partake your virtues and their might;

What must I think that influence must do,

Where it finds sympathy and matter too,

Virtue, and beauty of the same stuff, as you?

Which is, your noble worthy sister; she

Of whom, if what in this my ecstasy

And revelation of you both I see,

I should write here, as in short galleries

The master at the end large glasses ties,

So to present the room twice to our eyes,

So I should give this letter length, and say

That which I said of you; there is no way

From either, but by th’ other, not to stray.

May therefore this be enough to testify

My true devotion, free from flattery;

He that believes himself, doth never lie.