The Complete English Poems

by Donne, John (Author); Smith, A. J. (Editor/introduction)

• ISBN13: 9780140422092
• ISBN10: 0140422099
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1977-08-01
• Publisher: PENGUIN BOOKS

Summary

No poet has been more wilfully contradictory than John Donne, whose works forge unforgettable connections between extremes of passion and mental energy. From satire to tender elegy, from sacred devotion to lust, he conveys an astonishing range of emotions and poetic moods. Constant in his work, however, is an intensity of feeling and expression and complexity of argument that is as evident in religious meditations such as 'Good Friday 1613. Riding Westward' as it is in secular love poems such as 'The Sun Rising' or 'The Flea'. 'The intricacy and subtlety of his imagination are the length and depth of the furrow made by his passion,' wrote Yeats, pinpointing the unique genius of a poet who combined ardour and intellect in equal measure.

Table of Contents

Preface	13	(4)
Table of Dates	17	(9)
Further Reading	26	(7)
A Note on the Metre	33	(8)
Songs and Sonnets
Air and Angels	41	(1)
The Anniversary	41	(1)
The Apparition	42	(1)
The Bait	43	(1)
The Blossom	44	(1)
Break of Day	45	(1)
The Broken Heart	46	(1)
The Canonization	47	(1)
Community	48	(1)
The Computation	49	(1)
Confined Love	49	(1)
The Curse	50	(1)
The Damp	51	(1)
The Dissolution	52	(1)
The Dream	52	(1)
The Ecstasy	53	(3)
The Expiration	56	(1)
Farewell to Love	56	(1)
A Fever	57	(1)
The Flea	58	(1)
The Funeral	59	(1)
The Good Morrow	60	(1)
The Indifferent	61	(1)
A Jet Ring Sent	61	(1)
A Lecture upon the Shadow	62	(1)
The Legacy	63	(1)
Lovers' Infiniteness	64	(1)
Love's Alchemy	65	(1)
Love's Deity	65	(1)
Love's Diet	66	(1)
Love's Exchange	67	(2)
Love's Growth	69	(1)
Love's Usury	69	(1)
The Message	70	(1)
Negative Love	71	(1)
A Nocturnal upon S. Lucy's Day	72	(1)
The Paradox	73	(1)
The Primrose	74	(1)
The Prohibition	75	(1)
The Relic	75	(1)
Self Love	76	(1)
Song (Go, and catch a falling star)	77	(1)
Song (Sweetest love, I do not go)	78	(1)
Sonnet. The Token	79	(1)
The Sun Rising	80	(1)
The Triple Fool	81	(1)
Twicknam Garden	82	(1)
The Undertaking	83	(1)
A Valediction: forbidding Mourning	84	(1)
A Valediction: of the Book	85	(2)
A Valediction: of my Name in the Window	87	(2)
A Valediction: of Weeping	89	(1)
The Will	90	(1)
Witchcraft by a Picture	91	(1)
Woman's Constancy	92	(3)
Elegies
Jealousy	95	(1)
The Anagram	96	(1)
Change	97	(1)
The Perfume	98	(2)
His Picture	100	(1)
Oh, let me not serve so	101	(1)
Nature's lay idiot	102	(1)
The Comparison	103	(2)
The Autumnal	105	(1)
The Dream	106	(1)
The Bracelet	107	(3)
His Parting from Her	110	(3)
Julia	113	(1)
A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife	114	(2)
The Expostulation	116	(2)
On his Mistress	118	(1)
Variety	119	(3)
Love's Progress	122	(2)
To his Mistress Going to Bed	124	(2)
Love's War	126	(7)
Sappho to Philaenis	127	(6)
Epithalamions or Marriage Songs
Epithalamion Made at Lincoln's Inn	133	(2)
An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine being Married on St Valentine's Day	135	(4)
Eclogue 1613. December 26	139	(3)
Epithalamion	142	(7)
Epigrams
Hero and Leander	149	(1)
Pyramus and Thisbe	149	(1)
Niobe	149	(1)
A Burnt Ship	149	(1)
Fall of a Wall	149	(1)
A Lame Beggar	150	(1)
Cales and Guiana	150	(1)
Sir John Wingfield	150	(1)
A Self Accuser	150	(1)
A Licentious Person	150	(1)
Antiquary	151	(1)
Disinherited	151	(1)
Phryne	151	(1)
An Obscure Writer	151	(1)
Klockius	151	(1)
Raderus	151	(1)
Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus	152	(1)
Ralphius	152	(1)
The Liar	152	(1)
Manliness	152	(3)
Satires
Away thou fondling motley humourist	155	(3)
Sir; though (I thank God for it) I do hate	158	(3)
Kind pity chokes my spleen	161	(3)
Well; I may now receive, and die	164	(6)
Thou shalt not laugh in this leaf, Muse	170	(6)
Upon Mr Thomas Coryat's Crudities	173	(3)
The Progress of the Soul (Metempsychosis)	176	(175)
Verse Letters
The Storm	197	(2)
The Calm	199	(1)
To Mr B. B.	200	(1)
To Mr C. B.	201	(1)
To Mr S. B.	202	(1)
To Mr E. G.	202	(1)
To Mr I. L. (Blessed are your north parts)	203	(1)
To Mr I. L. (Of that short roll of friends)	203	(1)
To Mr R. W. (If, as mine is, thy life a slumber be)	204	(1)
To Mr R. W. (Kindly I envy thy song's perfection)	205	(1)
To Mr R. W (Muse not that by thy mind thy body is led)	205	(1)
To Mr R. W. (Zealously my Muse doth salute all thee)	206	(1)
To Mr Rowland Woodward	206	(1)
To Mr T. W. (All hail, sweet poet)	207	(1)
To Mr T. W. (At once, from hence)	208	(1)
To Mr T. W. (Haste thee harsh verse)	209	(1)
To Mr T. W. (Pregnant again with th' old twins)	209	(1)
To Sir Henry Goodyer	210	(2)
A Letter Written by Sir H. G. and J. D. alternis vicibus	212	(1)
To Sir Henry Wotton (Here's no more news)	213	(1)
To Sir Henry Wotton (Sir, more than kisses)	214	(2)
To Sir Henry Wotton, at his going Ambassador to Venice	216	(1)
H. W. in Hibernia Belligeranti	217	(1)
To Sir Edward Herbert, at Juliers	218	(1)
To Mrs M. H.	219	(2)
To the Countess of Bedford at New Year's Tide	221	(2)
To the Countess of Bedford (Honour is so sublime perfection)	223	(2)
To the Countess of Bedford (Reason is our soul's left hand)	225	(1)
To the Countess of Bedford (Though I be dead)	226	(1)
To the Countess of Bedford (To have written then)	227	(2)
To the Countess of Bedford (You have refined me)	229	(2)
To the Lady Bedford	231	(2)
Epitaph on Himself	233	(1)
A Letter to the Lady Carey, and Mistress Essex Rich, from Amiens	234	(2)
To the Countess of Huntingdon (Man to God's image)	236	(2)
To the Countess of Huntingdon (That unripe side of earth)	238	(4)
To the Countess of Salisbury	242	(5)
Epicedes and Obsequies
Elegy on the L. C.	247	(1)
Elegy on the Lady Markham	247	(2)
Elegy on Mistress Boulstred	249	(2)
An Elegy upon the Death of Mistress Boulstred	251	(2)
Elegy upon the Untimely Death of the Incomparable Prince Henry	253	(3)
Obsequies to the Lord Harrington, Brother to the Lady Lucy, Countess of Bedford	256	(7)
An Hymn to the Saints, and to Marquis Hamilton	263	(6)
The Anniversaries
An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary	269	(1)
To the Praise of the Dead, and the Anatomy	269	(1)
An Anatomy of the World	270	(13)
A Funeral Elegy	283	(3)
Of the Progress of the Soul: The Second Anniversary	286	(1)
The Harbinger to the Progress	286	(1)
Of the Progress of the Soul	287	(22)
Divine Poems
To E. of D. with Six Holy Sonnets	305	(1)
To Mrs Magdalen Herbert: of St Mary Magdalen	305	(1)
Holy Sonnets	306	(1)
La Corona	306	(3)
Divine Meditations	309	(1)
Thou hast made me	309	(1)
As due by many titles	309	(1)
O might those sighs and tears	310	(1)
Oh my black soul!	310	(1)
I am a little world	310	(1)
This is my play's last scene	311	(1)
At the round earth's imagined corners	311	(1)
If faithful souls be alike glorified	312	(1)
If poisonous minerals	312	(1)
Death be not proud	313	(1)
Spit in my face ye Jews	313	(1)
Why are we by all creatures waited on?	313	(1)
What if this present were the world's last night?	314	(1)
Batter my heart, three-personed God	314	(1)
Wilt thou love God, as he thee?	315	(1)
Father, part of his double interest	315	(1)
Since she whom I loved	316	(1)
Show me dear Christ	316	(1)
Oh, to vex me	316	(35)
A Litany	317	(9)
The Cross	326	(1)
Resurrection, imperfect	327	(1)
Upon the Annunciation and Passion falling upon one day. 1608	328	(1)
Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward	329	(2)
To Mr Tilman after he had taken orders	331	(1)
Upon the Translation of the Psalms by Sir Philip Sidney, and the Countess of Pembroke his Sister	332	(2)
The Lamentations of Jeremy, for the most part according to Tremellius	334	(12)
A Hymn to Christ, at the Author's last going into Germany	346	(1)
Hymn to God my God, in my Sickness	347	(1)
A Hymn to God the Father	348	(3)
Notes	351	(318)
Index of Titles	669	(6)
Index of First Lines	675