Metaphysical Poetry: An Anthology

by Paul Negri (Editor)

Overview

Metaphysical poetry, a term generally applied to the works of a group of English poets of the seventeenth century, is among the most read and studied verse in English literature, having proved enduringly popular and major influence on many twentieth-century poets. Dramatic and conversational in rhythm and tone, intriguing and complex in theme and idea, metaphysical poetry is also rich in striking and unusual imagery chosen from philosophy, theology, the arts, crafts, and sciences.
This modestly priced anthology contains the best work by major poets of the school: John Donne, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Richard Crashaw, Francis Quarles, and Thomas Traherne, all of whose works were originally considered a reaction against traditional Elizabethan verse of the late sixteenth century. Included are such masterpieces as Donne’s “The Good Morrow” and "Death, Be Not Proud"; Marvell's “The Garden” and "To His Coy Mistress"; Herbert’s “Easter Wings”; Vaughan’s “The World,” and many more.
Ideal for use in classrooms from high school through college, this outstanding anthology will appeal as well to lovers of fine English poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780486121451
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	02/08/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	781 KB
Age Range:	14 Years

Read an Excerpt

Metaphysical Poetry

An Anthology

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By Paul Negri

Dover Publications, Inc.

Copyright © 2002 Dover Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-12145-1

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CHAPTER 1

JOHN DONNE (1572–1631)

Considered the greatest of the metaphysical poets, John Donne wrote both sacred and secular verse with equal facility. His secular poems—collected as Songs and Sonnets—explore the sensual and psychological elements of human love with wit, sophistication, intelligence, and immense poetic skill. Nevertheless, Dryden complained that Donne "... affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love." Donne was far too much of a thinker to be content with appealing simply to the hearts of his readers; his poems engage the mind as well. Born a Roman Catholic, he attended both Oxford and Cambridge, but took no degrees, perhaps because of the oath of allegiance to the king required at graduation. In the 1590s Donne converted to Anglicanism, eventually becoming dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1621. His sermons, powerful and deeply moving, are considered among the most brilliant and eloquent of the age. In later years Donne turned this poetic genius to sacred verse, writing eloquent hymns and holy sonnets that conveyed the torment and hard-won grace of his spiritual struggles.

    The Good Morrow

    I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
    Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then?
    But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
    Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?
    'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
    If ever any beauty I did see,
    Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

    And now good morrow to our waking souls,
    Which watch not one another out of fear;
    For love, all love of other sights controls,
    And makes one little room, an everywhere.
    Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
    Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
    Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

    My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
    And true plain hearts do in the faces rest,
    Where can we find two better hemispheres
    Without sharp north, without declining west?
    Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
    If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
    Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.


    Song

    Go, and catch a falling star,
    Get with child a mandrake root,
    Tell me, where all past years are,
    Or who cleft the devil's foot,
    Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
    Or to keep off envy's stinging,
    And find
    What wind
    Serves to advance an honest mind.

    If thou beest born to strange sights,
    Things invisible to see,
    Ride ten thousand days and nights,
    Till age snow white hairs on thee,
    Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me
    All strange wonders that befell thee,
    And swear
    Nowhere
    Lives a woman true, and fair.

    If thou findst one, let me know,
    Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
    Yet do not, I would not go,
    Though at next door we might meet,
    Though she were true, when you met her,
    And last, till you write your letter,
    Yet she
    Will be
    False, ere I come, to two, or three.


    Woman's Constancy

    Now thou hast loved me one whole day,
    Tomorrow when thou leav'st, what wilt thou say?
    Wilt thou then antedate some new made vow?
    Or say that now
    We are not just those persons, which we were?
    Or, that oaths made in reverential fear
    Of love, and his wrath, any may forswear?
    Or, as true deaths, true marriages untie,
    So lovers' contracts, images of those,
    Bind but till sleep, death's image, them unloose?
    Or, your own end to justify,
    For having purposed change, and falsehood, you
    Can have no way but falsehood to be true?
    Vain lunatic, against these 'scapes I could
    Dispute, and conquer, if I would,
    Which I abstain to do,
    For by tomorrow, I may think so too.


    The Undertaking

    I have done one braver thing
    Than all the Worthies did,
    And yet a braver thence doth spring,
    Which is, to keep that hid.

    It were but madness now t'impart
    The skill of specular stone,
    When he which can have learned the art
    To cut it, and find none.

    So, if I now should utter this,
    Others (because no more
    Such stuff to work upon, there is,)
    Would love but as before.

    But he who loveliness within
    Hath found, all outward loathes,
    For he who color loves, and skin,
    Loves but their oldest clothes.

    If, as I have, you also do
    Virtue attired in woman see,
    And dare love that, and say so too,
    And forget the he and she;

    And if this love, though placed so,
    From profane men you hide,
    Which will no faith on this bestow,
    Or, if they do, deride:

    Then you have done a braver thing
    Than all the Worthies did;
    And a braver thence will spring,
    Which is, to keep that hid.


    The Sun Rising

    Busy old fool, unruly sun,
    Why dost thou thus,
    Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
    Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
    Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
    Late schoolboys, and sour prentices,
    Go tell court-huntsmen, that the King will ride,
    Call country ants to harvest offices;
    Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
    Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

    Thy beams, so reverend, and strong
    Why shouldst thou think?
    I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
    But that I would not lose her sight so long:
    If her eyes have not blinded thine,
    Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
    Whether both the Indias of spice and mine
    Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
    Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
    And thou shalt hear, all here in one bed lay.

    She is all states, and all princes, I,
    Nothing else is.
    Princes do but play us; compared to this,
    All honor's mimic; all wealth alchemy.
    Thou sun art half as happy as we,
    In that the world's contracted thus;
    Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
    To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
    Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
    This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.


    The Indifferent

    I can love both fair and brown,
    Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays,
    Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays,
    Her whom the country formed, and whom the town,
    Her who believes, and her who tries,
    Her who still weeps with spongy eyes,
    And her who is dry cork, and never cries;
    I can love her, and her, and you and you,
    I can love any, so she be not true.

    Will no other vice content you?
    Will it not serve your turn to do, as did your mothers?
    Or have you all old vices spent, and now would find out others?     Or doth a fear, that men are true, torment you?
    Oh we are not, be not you so,
    Let me, and do you, twenty know.
    Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go.
    Must I, who came to travel through you,
    Grow your fixed subject, because you are true?

    Venus heard me sigh this song,
    And by love's sweetest part, variety, she swore,
    She heard not this till now; and that it should be so no more.
    She went, examined, and returned ere long,
    And said, "Alas, some two or three
    Poor heretics in love there be,
    Which think to stablish dangerous constancy.
    But I have told them, 'Since you will be true,
    You shall be true to them, who are false to you.'"


    The Canonization

    For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
    Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
    My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout,
    With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
    Take you a course, get you a place,
    Observe his Honor, or his Grace,
    Or the King's real, or his stamped face
    Contemplate; what you will, approve,
    So you will let me love.

    Alas, alas, who's injured by my love?
    What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned?
    Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?
    When did my colds a forward spring remove?
    When did the heats which my veins fill
    Add one more to the plaguy bill?
    Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
    Litigious men, which quarrels move,
    Though she and I do love.

    Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
    Call her one, me another fly,
    We are tapers too, and at our own cost die,
    And we in us find the eagle and the dove.
    The phoenix riddle hath more wit
    By us; we two being one, are it.
    So to one neutral thing both sexes fit,
    We die and rise the same, and prove
    Mysterious by this love.

    We can die by it, if not live by love,
    And if unfit for tombs and hearse
    Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
    And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
    We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
    As well a well wrought urn becomes
    The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
    And by these hymns, all shall approve
    Us canonized for love.

    And thus invoke us: "You whom reverend love
    Made one another's hermitage;
    You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
    Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
    Into the glasses of your eyes
    (So made such mirrors, and such spies,
    That they did all to you epitomize)
    Countries, towns, courts: beg from above
    A pattern of your love!"


    The Triple Fool

    I am two fools, I know,
    For loving, and for saying so
    In whining poetry;
    But where's that wiseman, that would not be I,
    If she would not deny?
    Then as th'earth's inward narrow crooked lanes
    Do purge seawater's fretful salt away,
    I thought, if I could draw my pains
    Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay.
    Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
    For, he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

    But when I have done so,
    Some man, his art and voice to show,
    Doth set and sing my pain,
    And, by delighting many, frees again
    Grief, which verse did restrain.
    To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,
    But not of such as pleases when 'tis read,
    Both are increased by such songs:
    For both their triumphs so are published,
    And I, which was two fools, do so grow three;
    Who are a little wise, the best fools be.


    Song

    Sweetest love, I do not go,
    For weariness of thee,
    Nor in hope the world can show
    A fitter love for me;
    But since that I
    Must die at last, 'tis best,
    To use myself in jest
    Thus by feigned deaths to die.

    Yesternight the sun went hence,
    And yet is here today,
    He hath no desire nor sense.
    Nor half so short a way:
    Then fear not me,
    But believe that I shall make
    Speedier journeys, since I take
    More wings and spurs than he.

    O how feeble is man's power,
    That if good fortune fall,
    Cannot add another hour,
    Nor a lost hour recall!
    But come bad chance,
    And we join to it our strength,
    And we teach it art and length,
    Itself o'er us to advance.

    When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind,
    But sigh'st my soul away,
    When thou weep'st, unkindly kind,
    My life's blood doth decay.
    It cannot be
    That thou lov'st me, as thou say'st,
    If in thine my life thou waste,
    That art the best of me.

    Let not thy divining heart
    Forethink me any ill,
    Destiny may take thy part,
    And may thy fears fulfill;
    But think that we
    Are but turned aside to sleep;
    They who one another keep
    Alive, ne'er parted be.


    The Legacy

    When I died last, and, dear, I die
    As often as from thee I go,
    Though it be but an hour ago,
    And lovers' hours be full eternity,
    I can remember yet, that I
    Something did say, and something did bestow;
    Though I be dead, which sent me, I should be
    Mine own executor and legacy.

    I heard me say, Tell her anon,
    That myself (that is you, not I)
    Did kill me, and when I felt me die,
    I bid me send my heart, when I was gone,
    But I alas could there find none,
    When I had ripped me, and searched where hearts did lie;
    It killed me again, that I who still was true,
    In life, in my last will should cozen you.

    Yet I found something like a heart,
    But colors it, and corners had,
    It was not good, it was not bad,
    It was entire to none, and few had part.
    As good as could be made by art
    It seemed; and therefore for our losses sad,
    I meant to send this heart instead of mine,
    But oh, no man could hold it, for 'twas thine.


    A Fever

    Oh do not die, for I shall hate
    All women so, when thou art gone,
    That thee I shall not celebrate,
    When I remember, thou wast one.

    But yet thou canst not die, I know;
    To leave this world behind, is death,
    But when thou from this world wilt go,
    The whole world vapors with thy breath.

    Or if, when thou, the world's soul, goest,
    It stay, 'tis but thy carcass then,
    The fairest woman, but thy ghost,
    But corrupt worms, the worthiest men.

    O wrangling schools, that search what fire
    Shall burn this world, had none the wit
    Unto this knowledge to aspire,
    That this her fever might be it?

    And yet she cannot waste by this,
    Nor long bear this torturing wrong,
    For such corruption needful is
    To fuel such a fever long.

    These burning fits but meteors be,
    Whose matter in thee is soon spent.
    Thy beauty, and all parts, which are thee,
    Are unchangeable firmament.

    Yet 'twas of my mind, seizing thee,
    Though it in thee cannot persever.
    For I had rather owner be
    Of thee one hour, than all else ever.


    Air and Angels

    Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
    Before I knew thy face or name;
    So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
    Angels affect us oft, and worshiped be;
    Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
    Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
    But since my soul, whose child love is,
    Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
    More subtle than the parent is,
    Love must not be, but take a body too,
    And therefore what thou wert, and who,
    I bid love ask, and now
    That it assume thy body, I allow,
    And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

    Whilst thus to ballast love, I thought,
    And so more steadily to have gone,
    With wares which would sink admiration,
    I saw, I had love's pinnace overfraught,
    Every thy hair for love to work upon
    Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
    For, nor in nothing, nor in things
    Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;
    Then as an angel, face and wings
    Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
    So thy love may be my love's sphere;
    Just such disparity
    As is 'twixt air and angels' purity,
    'Twixt women's love, and men's will ever be.


    Break of Day

    'Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
    O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
    Why should we rise, because 'tis light?
    Did we lie down, because 'twas night?
    Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
    Should in despite of light keep us together.

    Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
    If it could speak as well as spy,
    This were the worst, that it could say,
    That being well, I fain would stay,
    And that I loved my heart and honor so,
    That I would not from him, that had them, go.

    Must business thee from hence remove?
    Oh, that's the worst disease of love,
    The poor, the foul, the false, love can
    Admit, but not the busied man.
    He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
    Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.


    The Anniversary

    All kings, and all their favorites,
    All glory of honors, beauties, wits,
    The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass,
    Is elder by a year, now, than it was
    When thou and I first one another saw:
    All other things, to their destruction draw,
    Only our love hath no decay;
    This, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,
    Running it never runs from us away,
    But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

    Two graves must hide thine and my corse,
    If one might, death were no divorce.
    Alas, as well as other princes, we
    (Who prince enough in one another be)
    Must leave at last in death, these eyes, and ears,
    Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears;
    But souls where nothing dwells but love
    (All other thoughts being inmates) then shall prove
    This, or a love increased there above,
    When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove.

    And then we shall be thoroughly blessed,
    But we no more, than all the rest;
    Here upon earth, we are kings, and none but we
    Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
    Who is so safe as we? where none can do
    Treason to us, except one of us two.
    True and false fears let us refrain,
    Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
    Years and years unto years, till we attain
    To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Metaphysical Poetry by Paul Negri. Copyright © 2002 Dover Publications, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

John Donne
The Good Morrow
Song
Woman's Constancy
The Undertaking
The Sun Rising
The Indifferent
The Canonization
The Triple Fool
Song
The Legacy
A Fever
Air and Angels
Break of Day
The Anniversary
"A Valediction: of My Name, in the Window"
Twickenham Garden
A Valedicition: of Weeping
The Flea
The Curse
"A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day"
Witchcraft by a Picture
The Bait
The Apparition
The Broken Heart
The Valedicition: Forbidding Mourning
The Ecstasy
Love's Deity
The Funeral
The Blossom
The Relic
A Lecture upon the Shadow
A Burnt Ship
Fall of a Wall
Elegy I: Jealousy
Elegy II: The Anagram
Elegy V: His Picture
Elegy IX: The Autumnal
Elegy XVI: On His Mistress
Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed
Satire I
Satire III
To Mr. Rowland Woodward
To the Countess of Bedford on New Year's Day
Elegy on the Lady Markham
La Corona
1
2 Annunciation
3 Nativity
4 Temple
5 Crucifying
6 Resurrection
7 Ascension
Holy Sonnets
I "Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?"
II As due by many titles I resign
III O might those sighs and tears return again
IV O my black soul! now thou art summoned
V I am a little world made cunningly
VI "This is my play's last scene, here heavens appoint"
VII "At the round earth's imagined corners, blow"
VIII If faithful souls be alike glorified
IX "If poisonous minerals, and if that tree,"
X "Death be not proud, though some have called thee"
XI "Spit in my face you Jews, and pierce my side,"
XII Why are we by all creatures waited on?
XIII What if this present were the world's last night?
XIV "Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, you"
XV "Wilt thou love God, as he thee? then digest,"
XVI "Father, part of his double interest"
XVII Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt
XVIII "Show me dear Christ, thy spouse, so bright and clear"
XIX "Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one: Good Friday, Riding Westward A Hymn to Christ, at the Author's Last Going into Germany"
"Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness"
A Hymn to God the Father
Andrew Marvell
To His Coy Mistress
The Definition of Love
The Mower to the Glowworms
The Mower Against Gardens
Damon the Mower
The Mower's Song
The Unfortunate Lover
The Gallery
The Fair Singer
Mourning
Ametas and Thestylis Making Hay-Ropes
The Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Faun
Daphnis and Chloe
The Match
Young Love
The Picture of Little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers
The Garden
Bermudas
A Dialogue Between the Resolvèd Soul and Created Pleasure
A Dialogue Between The Soul and Body
On a Drop of Dew
Eyes and Tears
The Coronet
An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland
Upon Appleton House
George Herbert
Jordan (1)
Jordan (2)
The British Church
The Son
The Altar
The Church Floor
Easter Wings
Lent
Sunday
Church Music
To All Angels and Saints
Man
Afflicition
Frailty
Nature
The Pearl
The Pulley
Peace
Conscience
Discipline
Redemption
Love
The Priesthood
Aaron
The Windows
The Call
The Odor
The True Hymn
Dullness
The Collar
The Flower
Virtue
Richard Crashaw
"On Mr. G. Herbert's Book, Entitled The Temple of Sacred Poems, Sent to a Gentlewoman"
A Hymn to the Name and Honor of the Admirable Saint Teresa
"Saint Mary Magdalene, or the Weeper"
On the Baptized Ethiopian
Give to Caesar...and to God...Mark XII
But Men Loved Darkness Rather than Light...John III
To Pontius Washing His Hands
Samson to His Delilah
"To our Lord, upon the Water Made Wine"
Upon the Infant Martyrs
On the Miracle of Loaves
Upon Lazarus His Tears
"From Carmen Deo Nostro,"
A Song
Wishes to His Supposed Mistress
Music's Duel
Henry Vaughan
Idle Verse
Mount of Olives (1)
Mount of Olives (2)
The Garland
The Seed Growing Secretly
Quickness
The Bird
The Waterfall
Man
The Night
The Search
Regeneration
The Dwelling-Place
The Retreat
Childhood
The Dawning
The Mourning Watch
The World
Ascension Hymn
They Are All Gone Into the World of Light
Unprofitableness
Peace
Thomas Traherne
Wonder
Eden
News
The Apostasy
Poverty
Right Apprehension
The Rapture
Felicity
Dreams
Insatiableness
The Review
Index of Titles
Index of First Lines