Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

The Progress of the Soul

First Song

I SING the progress of a deathless soul,

Whom fate, which God made, but doth not control,

Placed in most shapes; all times, before the law

Yoked us, and when, and since, in this I sing.

And the great world to his agèd evening

From infant morn, through manly noon, I draw.

What the gold Chaldee, or silver Persian saw,

Greek brass, or Roman iron, is in this one;

A work to outwear Seth’s pillars, brick and stone,

And—Holy Writ’s excepted—made to yield to none.

Thee, eye of heaven, this great soul envies not.

By thy male force is all we have begot;

In the first east thou now begin’st to shine,

Suck’st early balm, and island spices there,

And wilt anon in thy loose-rein’d career

At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danow dine,

And see at night thy western land of mine;

Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she,

That before thee one day began to be,

And thy frail light being quench’d, shall long, long outlive thee.

Nor holy Janus, in whose sovereign boat

The church, and all the monarchies did float!

That swimming college, and free hospital

Of all mankind, that cage and vivary

Of fowls, and beasts, in whose womb, Destiny

Us and our latest nephews did install

—From thence are all derived, that fill this All—

Didst thou in that great stewardship embark

So divers shapes into that floating park,

As have been moved and inform’d by this heavenly spark.

Great Destiny, the commissary of God,

That hast mark’d out a path and period

For everything, who, where we off-spring took,

Our ways and ends seest at one instant. Thou

Knot of all causes, thou whose changeless brow

Ne’er smiles nor frowns, O vouchsafe thou to look

And show my story, in thy eternal book.

That—if my prayer be fit—I may understand

So much myself, as to know with what hand,

How scant or liberal this my life’s race is spann’d.

To my six lusters almost now outwore,

Except thy book owe me so many more,

Except my legend be free from the lets

Of steep ambition, sleepy poverty,

Spirit-quenching sickness, dull captivity,

Distracting business, and from beauty’s nets,

And all that calls from this, and to others whets,

O let me not launch out, but let me save

Th’ expense of brain and spirit, that my grave

His right and due, a whole unwasted man may have.

But if my days be long, and good enough,

In vain this sea shall enlarge or enrough

Itself; for I will through the wave and foam.

And shall in sad lone ways, a lively sprite,

Make my dark heavy poem light, and light.

For though through many straits and lands I roam,

I launch at Paradise, and I sail towards home;

The course I there began shall here be stay’d,

Sails hoiséd there, struck here, and anchors laid

In Thames, which were at Tigris and Euphrates weigh’d.

For the great soul which here amongst us now

Doth dwell, and moves that hand, and tongue, and brow,

Which, as the moon the sea, moves us; to hear

Whose story with long patience you will long

—For ’tis the crown and last strain of my song—

This soul, to whom Luther and Mahomet were

Prisons of flesh; this soul, which oft did tear

And mend the wracks of th’ empire, and late Rome,

And lived when every great change did come,

Had first in Paradise a low, but fatal room.

Yet nor low room, nor than the greatest, less,

If—as devout and sharp men fitly guess—

That Cross, our joy, and grief—where nails did tie

That All, which always was all, everywhere;

Which could not sin, and yet all sins did bear;

Which could not die, yet could not choose but die—

Stood in the self-same room in Calvary,

Where first grew the forbidden learned tree,

For on that tree hung in security

This soul made by the Maker’s will from pulling free.

Prince of the orchard, fair as dawning morn,

Fenced with the law, and ripe as soon as born,

That apple grew, which this soul did enlive

Till the then climbing serpent, that now creeps

For that offence, for which all mankind weeps,

Took it, and to her whom the first man did wive

—Whom and her race only forbiddings drive—

He gave it, she to her husband; both did eat;

So perished the eaters, and the meat;

And we—for treason taints the blood—thence die and sweat.

Man all at once was there by woman slain,

And one by one we’re here slain o’er again

By them. The mother poison’d the well-head,

The daughters here corrupt us, rivulets;

No smallness ’scapes, no greatness breaks their nets;

She thrust us out, and by them we are led

Astray, from turning to whence we are fled.

Were prisoners judges, ’twould seem rigorous;

She sinned, we bear; part of our pain is, thus

To love them whose fault to this painful love yoked us.

So fast in us doth this corruption grow,

That now we dare ask why we should be so.

Would God—disputes the curious rebel—make

A law, and would not have it kept? Or can

His creatures’ will cross His? Of every man

For one, will God (and be just) vengeance take?

Who sinn’d? ’twas not forbidden to the snake

Nor her, who was not then made; nor is ’t writ

That Adam cropp’d, or knew the apple; yet

The worm and she, and he, and we endure for it.

But snatch me, heavenly spirit, from this vain

Reckoning their vanities; less is their gain

Than hazard still, to meditate on ill,

Though with good mind; their reason’s like those toys

Of glassy bubbles, which the gamesome boys

Stretch to so nice a thinness through a quill

That they themselves break, and do themselves spill.

Arguing is heretics’ game, and exercise

As wrestlers perfects them. Not liberties

Of speech, but silence; hands, not tongues, end heresies.

Just in that instant when the serpent’s gripe

Broke the slight veins, and tender conduit pipe,

Through which this soul from the tree’s root did draw

Life and growth to this apple, fled away

This loose soul, old, one and another day.

As lightning, which one scarce dares say he saw,

’Tis so soon gone—and better proof the law

Of sense than faith requires—swiftly she flew

To a dark and foggy plot; her, her fates threw

There through th’ earth-pores, and in a plant housed her anew.

The plant thus abled to itself did force

A place, where no place was; by nature’s course,

As air from water, water fleets away

From thicker bodies, by this root throng’d so

His spongy confines gave him place to grow;

Just as in our streets, when the people stay

To see the Prince, and so fill up the way

That weasels scarce could pass, when she comes near

They throng and cleave up, and a passage clear,

As if for that time their round bodies flatten’d were.

His right arm he thrust out towards the east,

Westward his left; th’ ends did themselves digest

Into ten lesser strings; these fingers were;

And as a slumberer stretching on his bed,

This way he this, and that way scattered

His other leg, which feet with toes upbear.

Grew on his middle part, the first day, hair,

To show that in love’s business he should still

A dealer be, and be used well, or ill.

His apples kindle; his leaves force of conception kill.

A mouth, but dumb, he hath; blind eyes, deaf ears;

And to his shoulders dangle subtle hairs;

A young Colossus, there he stands upright;

And as that ground by him were conquered,

A leafy garland wears he on his head

Enchased with little fruits, so red and bright,

That for them you would call your love’s lips white,

So, of a lone unhaunted place possess’d,

Did this soul’s second inn, built by the guest,

This living buried man, this quiet mandrake, rest.

No lustful woman came this plant to grieve,

But ’twas because there was none yet but Eve;

And she—with other purpose—kill’d it quite.

Her sin had now brought in infirmities,

And so her cradled child the moist-red eyes

Had never shut, nor slept since it saw light.

Poppy she knew, she knew the mandrake’s might;

And tore up both, and so cool’d her child’s blood.

Unvirtuous weeds might long unvex’d have stood;

But he’s short-lived that with his death can do most good.

To an unfetter’d soul’s quick nimble haste

Are falling stars and hearts’ thoughts but slow-paced.

Thinner than burnt air flies this soul, and she

Whom four new coming and four parting suns

Had found, and left the mandrake’s tenant, runs

Thoughtless of change, when her firm destiny

Confined and enjail’d her, that seemed so free,

Into a small blue shell, the which a poor

Warm bird o’erspread, and sat still evermore,

Till her enclosed child kick’d, and pick’d itself a door.

Out crept a sparrow, this soul’s moving inn,

On whose raw arms stiff feathers now begin,

As children’s teeth through gums, to break with pain;

His flesh is jelly yet, and his bones threads;

All a new downy mantle overspreads;

A mouth he opes, which would as much contain

As his late house, and the first hour speaks plain,

And chirps aloud for meat. Meat fit for men

His father steals for him, and so feeds then

One that, within a month, will beat him from his hen.

In this world’s youth wise Nature did make haste,

Things ripen’d sooner, and did longer last.

Already this hot cock in bush and tree

In field and tent o’erflutters his next hen;

He asks her not, who did so taste, nor when,

Nor if his sister or his niece she be;

Nor doth she pule for his inconstancy

If in her sight he change, nor doth refuse

The next that calls; both liberty do use.

Where store is of both kinds, both kinds may freely choose.

Men, till they took laws which made freedom less,

Their daughters and their sisters did ingress

Till now, unlawful, therefore ill ’twas not.

So jolly, that it can move this soul, is

The body, so free of his kindnesses,

That self-preserving it hath now forgot,

And slackeneth so the soul’s and body’s knot,

Which temperance straightens; freely on his she friends,

He blood, and spirit, pith, and marrow spends;

Ill steward of himself, himself in three years ends.

Else might he long have lived; man did not know

Of gummy blood, which doth in holly grow,

How to make bird-lime, nor how to deceive

With feign’d calls, his nets, or enwrapping snare,

The free inhabitants of the pliant air.

Man to beget, and woman to conceive,

Ask’d not of roots, nor of cock-sparrows, leave.

Yet chooseth he, though none of these he fears,

Pleasantly three, than straiten’d twenty years,

To live, and to increase his race himself outwears.

This coal with overblowing quench’d and dead,

The soul from her too active organs fled

To a brook; a female fish’s sandy roe

With the male’s jelly newly leaven’d was,

For they had intertouch’d as they did pass;

And one of those small bodies, fitted so,

This soul inform’d, and abled it to row

Itself with finny oars, which she did fit.

Her scales seem’d yet of parchment, and as yet

Perchance a fish, but by no name you could call it.

When goodly, like a ship in her full trim,

A swan, so white that you may unto him

Compare all whiteness, but himself to none,

Glided along, and as he glided watch’d,

And with his arched neck this poor fish catch’d.

It moved with state, as if to look upon

Low things it scorn’d, and yet before that one

Could think he sought it, he had swallow’d clear

This, and much such, and unblamed devour’d there

All, but who too swift, too great, or well armed were.

Now swam a prison in a prison put,

And now this soul in double walls was shut,

Till melted with the swan’s digestive fire,

She left her house, the fish, and vapour’d forth.

Fate not affording bodies of more worth

For her as yet, bids her again retire

To another fish, to any new desire

Made a new prey; for he that can to none

Resistance make, nor complaint, sure is gone.

Weakness invites, but silence feasts oppression.

Pace with the native stream this fish doth keep,

And journeys with her towards the glassy deep,

But oft retarded, once with a hidden net

Though with great windows—for when need first taught

These tricks to catch food, then they were not wrought

As now, with curious greediness to let

None ’scape, but few and fit for use to get—

As in this trap a ravenous pike was ta’en,

Who, though himself distress’d, would fain have slain

This wretch; so hardly are ill habits left again.

Here by her smallness she two deaths o’erpass’d;

Once innocence ’scaped, and left the oppressor fast.

The net through-swum, she keeps the liquid path,

And whether she leap up sometimes to breathe

And suck in air, or find it underneath,

Or working parts like mills or limbecs hath

To make the water thin, and air like faith,

Cares not, but safe the place she’s come unto

Where fresh with salt waves meet, and what to do

She knows not, but between both makes a board or two.

So far from hiding her guests, water is,

That she shows them in bigger quantities

Than they are. Thus her, doubtful of her way,

For game and not for hunger, a sea-pie

Spied through this traitorous spectacle, from high,

The silly fish where it disputing lay,

And to end her doubts and her, bears her away.

Exalted she is, but to th’ exalter’s good;

As are by great ones, men which lowly stood,

It’s raised, to be the raiser’s instrument and food.

Is any kind subject to rape like fish?

Ill unto man they neither do nor wish;

Fishers they kill not, nor with noise awake;

They do not hunt, nor strive to make a prey

Of beasts, nor their young sons to bear away;

Fowls they pursue not, nor do undertake

To spoil the nests industrious birds do make;

Yet them all these unkind kinds feed upon;

To kill them is an occupation,

And laws make fasts and Lents for their destruction.

A sudden stiff land-wind in that self hour

To seaward forced this bird, that did devour

The fish; he cares not, for with ease he flies,

Fat gluttony’s best orator; at last,

So long he hath flown, and hath flown so fast,

That, leagues o’erpast at sea, now tired he lies,

And with his prey, that till then languish’d, dies.

The souls, no longer foes, two ways did err,

The fish I follow, and keep no calendar

Of th’ other; he lives yet in some great officer.

Into an embryon fish our soul is thrown,

And in due time thrown out again, and grown

To such vastness, as if unmanacled

From Greece Morea were, and that, by some

Earthquake unrooted, loose Morea swum;

Or seas from Afric’s body had severed

And torn the hopeful promontory’s head.

This fish would seem these, and, when all hopes fail,

A great ship overset, or, without sail

Hulling might—when this was a whelp—be like this whale.

At every stroke his brazen fins do take,

More circles in the broken sea they make

Than cannons’ voices, when the air they tear.

His ribs are pillars, and his high arch’d roof

Of bark, that blunts best steel, is thunder-proof.

Swim in him swallow’d dolphins without fear,

And feel no sides, as if his vast womb were

Some inland sea; and ever as he went

He spouted rivers up, as if he meant

To join our seas with seas above the firmament.

He hunts not fish, but, as an officer

Stays in his court, at his own net, and there

All suitors of all sorts themselves enthrall,

So on his back lies this whale wantoning,

And in his gulf-like throat sucks everything

That passeth near; fish chaseth fish, and all,

Flyer and follower, in this whirlpool fall.

Oh, might not states of more equality

Consist? and is it of necessity

That thousand guiltless smalls, to make one great, must die?

Now drinks he up seas, and he eats up flocks,

He jostles islands, and he shakes firm rocks.

Now in a roomful house this soul doth float,

And like a prince she sends her faculties

To all her limbs, distant as provinces.

The sun hath twenty times both crab and goat

Parched, since first launch’d forth this living boat.

’Tis greatest now, and to destruction

Nearest; there’s no pause at perfection;

Greatness a period hath, but hath no station.

Two little fishes, whom he never harm’d,

Nor fed on their kind, two not throughly arm’d

With hope that they could kill him, nor could do

Good to themselves by his death—they did not eat

His flesh, nor suck those oils, which thence outstreat—

Conspired against him; and it might undo

The plot of all, that the plotters were two,

But that they fishes were, and could not speak.

How shall a tyrant wise strong projects break,

If wretches can on them the common anger wreak?

The flail-finn’d thresher, and steel-beak’d sword-fish

Only attempt to do what all do wish.

The thresher backs him, and to beat begins;

The sluggard whale yields to oppression,

And to hide himself from shame and danger, down

Begins to sink; the sword-fish upward spins,

And gores him with his beak; his staff-like fins

So well the one, his sword the other plies,

That now a scoff, and prey, this tyrant dies,

And—his own dole—feeds with himself all companies.

Who will revenge his death? or who will call

Those to account, that thought and wrought his fall?

The heirs of slain kings, we see, are often so

Transported with the joy of what they get,

That they revenge and obsequies forget;

Nor will against such men the people go,

Because he’s now dead to whom they should show

Love in that act; some kings by vice being grown

So needy of subjects’ love, that of their own

They think they lose, if love be to the dead prince shown.

This soul, now free from prison and passion,

Hath yet a little indignation

That so small hammers should so soon down beat

So great a castle. And having for her house

Got the strait cloister of a wretched mouse

—As basest men, that have not what to eat,

Nor enjoy aught, do far more hate the great

Than they who good reposed estates possess—

This soul, late taught that great things might by less

Be slain, to gallant mischief doth herself address.

Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant,

The only harmless great thing, the giant

Of beasts, who thought none had, to make him wise,

But to be just and thankful, loth to offend

—Yet nature hath given him no knees to bend

Himself he up-props, on himself relies,

And foe to none, suspects no enemies—

Still sleeping stood; vex’d not his fantasy

Black dreams; like an unbent bow carelessly

His sinewy proboscis did remissly lie.

In which, as in a gallery, this mouse

Walk’d, and survey’d the rooms of this vast house,

And to the brain, the soul’s bed-chamber, went,

And gnaw’d the life-cords there. Like a whole town

Clean undermined, the slain beast tumbled down.

With him the murderer dies, whom envy sent

To kill, not ’scape; for only he that meant

To die, did ever kill a man of better room;

And thus he made his foe his prey and tomb.

Who cares not to turn back, may any whither come.

Next, housed this soul a wolf’s yet unborn whelp,

Till the best midwife, nature, gave it help

To issue. It could kill, as soon as go.

Abel, as white and mild as his sheep were

—Who, in that trade of church and kingdoms there

Was the first type—was still infested so

With this wolf, that it bred his loss and woe;

And yet his bitch, his sentinel, attends

The flock so near, so well warns and defends,

That the wolf—hopeless else—to corrupt her intends.

He took a course, which since, successfully,

Great men have often taken, to espy

The counsels, or to break the plots of foes.

To Abel’s tent he stealeth in the dark,

On whose skirts the bitch slept; ere she could bark,

Attach’d her with straight grips; yet he call’d those

Embracements of love; to love’s work he goes,

Where deeds move more than words; nor doth she show

Nor much resist, nor needs he straiten so

His prey, for, were she loose, she would nor bark nor go.

He hath engaged her; his, she wholly bides;

Who not her own, none others’ secrets hides.

If to the flock he come, and Abel there,

She feigns hoarse barkings, but she biteth not;

Her faith is quite, but not her love forgot.

At last a trap, of which some everywhere

Abel had placed, ends all his loss and fear,

By the wolf’s death; and now just time it was

That a quick soul should give life to that mass

Of blood in Abel’s bitch, and thither this did pass.

Some have their wives, their sisters some begot,

But in the lives of emperors you shall not

Read of a lust, the which may equal this.

This wolf begot himself, and finished

What he began alive, when he was dead;

Son to himself, and father too, he is

A riddling lust, for which schoolmen would miss

A proper name. The whelp of both these lay

In Abel’s tent, and with soft Moaba,

His sister, being young, it used to sport and play.

He soon for her too harsh and churlish grew,

And Abel—the dam dead—would use this new

For the field; being of two kinds thus made,

He, as his dam, from sheep drove wolves away,

And, as his sire, he made them his own prey.

Five years he lived, and cozen’d with his trade;

Then hopeless that his faults were hid, betray’d

Himself by flight, and by all followed,

From dogs, a wolf; from wolves, a dog he fled.

And, like a spy to both sides false, he perished.

It quicken’d next a toyful ape, and so

Gamesome it was, that it might freely go

From tent to tent, and with the children play.

His organs now so like theirs he doth find,

That why he cannot laugh and speak his mind,

He wonders. Much with all, most he doth stay

With Adam’s fifth daughter, Siphatecia;

Doth gaze on her, and, where she passeth, pass,

Gathers her fruits, and tumbles on the grass;

And wisest of that kind, the first true lover was.

He was the first that more desired to have

One than another; first that e’er did crave

Love by mute signs, and had no power to speak;

First that could make love faces, or could do

The vaulter’s somersaults, or used to woo

With hoiting gambols, his own bones to break,

To make his mistress merry, or to wreak

Her anger on himself. Sins against kind

They easily do, that can let feed their mind

With outward beauty; beauty they in boys and beasts do find.

By this misled, too low things men have proved,

And too high; beasts and angels have been loved.

This ape, though else through-vain, in this was wise,

He reached at things too high, but open way

There was, and he knew not she would say nay.

His toys prevail not, likelier means he tries.

He gazeth on her face with tear-shot eyes,

And uplifts subtly with his russet paw

Her kidskin apron without fear or awe

Of nature; nature hath no gaol, though she hath law.

First she was silly and knew not what he meant.

That virtue, by his touches chafed and spent,

Succeeds an itchy warmth, that melts her quite;

She knew not first, nor cares not what he doth,

And willing half, and more, more than half wroth,

She neither pulls nor pushes, but out-right

Now cries and now repents; when Thelemite,

Her brother, entered, and a great stone threw

After the ape, who, thus prevented, flew.

This house, thus batter’d down, the soul possess’d a new.

And whether by this change she lose or win,

She comes out next where th’ ape would have gone in.

Adam and Eve had mingled bloods, and now,

Like chemic’s equal fires, her temperate womb

Had stew’d and form’d it; and part did become

A spongy liver, that did richly allow,

Like a free conduit on a high hill’s brow,

Life-keeping moisture unto every part;

Part hardened itself to a thicker heart,

Whose busy furnaces life’s spirits do impart.

Another part became the well of sense,

The tender well-arm’d feeling brain, from whence

Those sinewy strings, which do our bodies tie,

Are ravell’d out, and fast there by one end,

Did this soul limbs, these limbs a soul attend.

And now they join’d, keeping some quality

Of every past shape; she knew treachery,

Rapine, deceit, and lust, and ills enow

To be a woman. Themech she is now,

Sister and wife to Cain, Cain that first did plough.

Whoe’er thou beest that read’st this sullen writ,

Which just so much courts thee, as thou dost it,

Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me,

Why ploughing, building, ruling, and the rest,

Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest,

By cursèd Caïn’s race invented be,

And blest Seth vex’d us with astronomy.

There’s nothing simply good, nor ill alone;

Of every quality Comparison

The only measure is, and judge, Opinion.