dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Poems of John Donne  »  Satire I. “Away, thou changeling motley humourist”

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

Satires

Satire I. “Away, thou changeling motley humourist”

AWAY, thou changeling motley humourist,

Leave me, and in this standing wooden chest,

Consorted with these few books, let me lie

In prison, and here be coffin’d when I die.

Here are God’s conduits, grave divines, and here

Nature’s secretary, the philosopher,

And wily statesmen, which teach how to tie

The sinews of a city’s mystic body;

Here gathering chroniclers, and by them stand

Giddy fantastic poets of each land.

Shall I leave all this constant company,

And follow headlong, wild, uncertain thee?

First, swear by thy best love, here, in earnest

—If thou, which lovest all, canst love any best—

Thou wilt not leave me in the middle street,

Though some more spruce companion thou dost meet;

Not though a captain do come in thy way

Bright parcel-gilt, with forty dead men’s pay;

Not though a brisk perfumèd pert courtier

Deign with a nod thy courtesy to answer;

Nor come a velvet justice with a long

Great train of blue coats, twelve or fourteen strong,

Wilt thou grin, or fawn on him, or prepare

A speech to court his beauteous son and heir?

For better or worse take me, or leave me;

To take and leave me is adultery.

O monstrous, superstitious puritan,

Of refined manners, yet ceremonial man,

That when thou meet’st one, with enquiring eyes

Doth search, and like a needy broker prize

The silk and gold he wears, and to that rate,

So high or low, dost raise thy formal hat;

That will consort none, until thou have known

What lands he hath in hope, or of his own,

As though all thy companions should make thee

Jointures, and marry thy dear company.

Why shouldst thou, that dost not only approve,

But in rank itchy lust desire and love

The nakedness and bareness to enjoy

Of thy plump muddy whore, or prostitute boy,

Hate virtue, though she be naked and bare?

At birth, and death, our bodies naked are;

And, till our souls be unapparelled

Of bodies, they from bliss are banished.

Man’s first blest state was naked; when by sin

He lost that, he was clothed but in beasts’ skin;

And in this coarse attire, which I now wear,

With God and with the Muses I confer.

But since thou, like a contrite penitent,

Charitably warn’d of thy sins, dost repent

These vanities and giddinesses, lo!

I shut my chamber door; and come, let’s go.

But sooner may a cheap whore, who hath been

Worn by as many several men in sin,

As are black feathers, or musk-coloured hose,

Name her child’s right true father ’mongst all those;

Sooner may one guess who shall bear away

Th’ infant of London, heir to an India;

And sooner may a gulling weather-spy,

By drawing forth heaven’s scheme, tell certainly

What fashion’d hats, or ruffs, or suits next year

Our subtle-witted antic youths will wear,

Than thou, when thou depart’st from me, can show

Whither, why, when, or with whom thou wouldst go.

But how shall I be pardon’d my offence

That thus have sinn’d against my conscience?

Now we are in the street; he first of all,

Improvidently proud, creeps to the wall;

And so imprison’d, and hemm’d in by me,

Sells for a little state high liberty.

Yet though he cannot skip forth now to greet

Every fine, silken, painted fool we meet,

He them to him with amorous smiles allures,

And grins, smacks, shrugs, and such an itch endures,

As ’prentices or school-boys, which do know

Of some gay sport abroad, yet dare not go.

And as fiddlers stop lowest, at highest sound,

So to the most brave, stoops he nighest the ground.

But to a grave man he doth move no more

Than the wise politic horse would heretofore,

Or thou, O elephant, or ape, wilt do,

When any names the King of Spain to you.

Now leaps he upright, jogs me, and cries, ‘Do you see

Yonder well-favoured youth?’ ‘Which?’ ‘O, ’tis he

That dances so divinely.’ ‘O,’ said I,

‘Stand still, must you dance here for company?’

He droop’d, we went, till one—which did excel

Th’ Indians in drinking his tobacco well—

Met us; they talk’d; I whisper’d, ‘Let us go,

’T may be you smell him not; truly I do.’

He hears not me, but, on the other side

A many-colour’d peacock having spied,

Leaves him and me; I for my lost sheep stay;

He follows, overtakes, goes on the way,

Saying, ‘Him whom I last left, all repute

For his device in handsoming a suit,

To judge of lace, pink, panes, print, cut, and pleat,

Of all the court to have the best conceit.’

‘Our dull comedians want him, let him go;

But O, God strengthen thee, why stopp’st thou so?’

‘Why!’ ‘Hath he travell’d long?’ ‘No.’ ‘But to me,

Which understand none, he doth seem to be

Perfect French and Italian,’ I replied,

‘So is the pox.’ He answer’d not, but spied

More men of sort, of parts and qualities.

At last his love he in a window spies,

And like light dew exhaled, he flings from me

Violently ravish’d to his lechery.

Many were there; he could command no more;

He quarrell’d, fought, bled; and turn’d out of door

Directly came to me, hanging the head,

And constantly a while must keep his bed.