John Donne - Delphi Poets Series by John Donne

three.
Increase their number, Lady, and their fame;
    To their devotion add your innocence;
Take so much of th’ example as of the name,
    The latter half; and in some recompense,
That they did harbour Christ Himself, a guest,
    Harbour these hymns, to His dear Name address’d.

HOLY SONNETS

    This collection is a series of devotional poems, composed in 1609 and 1610, in a period of great personal distress for Donne.  He was facing physical and financial hardship, as well as religious turmoil, as he considered converting to Anglicanism... The Holy Sonnets reflect these various anxieties. Many of the poems were circulated in manuscript form during Donne’s life, though their personal nature evidently reveals Donne’s reluctance to have them published officially.
    The increasing gloominess of Donne’s tone may also be observed in the religious works that he began writing during the same period. His early belief in the value of scepticism now gave way to a firm faith in the traditional teachings of the Bible. Having converted to the Anglican Church, Donne focused his literary career on religious literature. He quickly became noted for his sermons and religious poems. The lines of these sermons would come to influence future works of English literature, such as Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, which took its title from a passage in Meditation XVII of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, which took its title from the same source.
    Towards the end of his life Donne wrote works that challenged death, and the fear that it inspired in many men, on the grounds of his belief that those who die are sent to Heaven to live eternally. One example of this challenge is his Holy Sonnet X, Death Be Not Proud , from which come the famous lines “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.” Even as he lay dying during Lent in 1631, he rose from his sickbed and delivered the Death’s Duel sermon, which was later described as his own funeral sermon. Death’s Duel portrays life as a steady descent to suffering and death, yet sees hope in salvation and immortality through an embrace of God, Christ and the Resurrection.

Donne commissioned this portrait of himself only a few months before his death.  It depicts how he expected to appear when he arose from the grave at the Apocalypse. Once completed, the poet hung the portrait on his wall as a reminder of the ‘transience of life’.

I.
    THOU HAST MADE ME, AND SHALL THY WORK DECAY?
    THOU hast made me, and shall Thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and Death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
I dare not move my dim eyes any way;
Despair behind, and Death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.
Only Thou art above, and when towards Thee
By Thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour myself I can sustain.
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.

II.
    AS DUE BY MANY TITLES I RESIGN
    AS due by many titles I resign
Myself to thee, O God.   First I was made
By Thee; and for Thee, and when I was decay’d
Thy blood bought that, the which before was Thine.
I am Thy son, made with Thyself to shine,
Thy servant, whose pains Thou hast still repaid,
Thy sheep, Thine image, and — till I betray’d
Myself — a temple of Thy Spirit divine.
Why doth the devil then usurp on me?
Why doth he steal, nay ravish, that’s Thy right?
Except Thou rise and for Thine own work fight,
O!  I shall soon despair, when I shall see
That Thou lovest mankind well, yet wilt not choose me,
And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.

III.
    O!  MIGHT THOSE SIGHS AND TEARS RETURN AGAIN
    O!  might those sighs and tears return again
Into my breast and eyes, which I have spent,
That