John Donne
John Donne
John Donnewas an English poet and a cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations...
cause constant exercise god hath seem therefore
There is nothing which God hath established in a constant cause of nature, and which therefore is done everyday, but would seem a miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once.
exercise air long
We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats and drink and air and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and regular work. But in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity, nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant.
exercise miracle done
There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once.
death exercise swimming
I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwreck, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotency might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.
eyes pictures
Pictures in our eyes to get / Was all our propagation.
atheist felt love rebel though worst
Rebel and Atheist too, why murmur I, / As though I felt the worst that love could do?
goes propose sea sick true whoever
Whoever loves, if he do not propose the right true end of love, he's one that goes to sea for nothing but to make him sick
crowns harm nor question shroud subtle
Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harm / Nor question much / That subtle wreath of hair, which crowns my arm.
heart love rags
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, but after one such love can love no more.
call ghosts life
Yet call not this long life; but think that IAm, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die?
call ghosts
Yet call not this long life; but think that I Am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die?
current except money nature nearer treasure
Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it.
declining sharp
Where can we find two better hemispheres/ Without sharp North, without declining West?
shall thou thy work
Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?