John Donne, two favourite sonnets
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 left'st 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 Triple Fool
I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry.
(But where's that wise man, that would not be I,
If she would not deny?)
Then as the earth's inward, narrow, crooked lanes
Do purge sea water'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 increasèd by such song,
For both their triumphs so are publishèd,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.
I like John Donne's sonnets because they're musical, strongly rhythmic, vibrant and imaginative: a young man's poetry. I like how fierce and bold he is intellectually with his word-play and metaphors, and how there's usually humour peeking around the corners of his lines. I like how his sonnets are passionate, playful, angry and grave by turn, full of contradictions.
His sonnets were something of a revelation to me, as a younger reader. The poetry I knew of was the 19th century stuff, mostly British and a little American, and the talk of flowers and love with a Romantic sensibility did not appeal to me at all. The Elizabethans, though... yes! Donne especially, with his willingness to be over-the-top or even outright crass for the shock value. (And this is where I picture the young John Donne as the crazy avant-garde artiste of his time...) Take a poem like 'The Canonization,' which starts, For God's sake hold your tongue and let me love! Misogyny aside (and yes, it's off the charts), I was shocked to find out you were allowed to say things like this in poetry, which was supposed to be pretty in sentiment and expression (I thought). Or a poem like 'The Flea,' a love sonnet which is outright gross.
Even the misogyny, which returns in several of the sonnets (although many are not misogynistic: contradictions!), makes me wonder about 'The Poet' as a construct, and about Young John making his way in society as an intellectual/artist dependent on the notice and favour of patrons, hence the shock value. How much of the 'I' in the sonnets is a made up persona, a mask, an exaggeration, built out of the expectations of the sonnet as a poetic form: a poem where love is the subject, the poet is present as supplicant, and there is a woman as the object of his affections, to either love the poet or reject him? Probably a lot, I think, although no doubt many of Donne's feelings and experiences made their way into his writing.
Shakespeare was Donne's contemporary, and many people would disagree with me, but I've always liked Donne's sonnets more than those by Shakespeare. Shakespeare is without a doubt a master craftsman of words. Yet I find it easier to empathize with Donne's flailings and railings about love (and later religion-- Young John went on to become an Anglican clergyman whose relationship with God was as contradictory as the one he'd had with Love) than with Shakespeare's beautifully polished, civilized sonnets that are wise, mature and deep. I've never particularly felt like I was any of those things, and the first thing I look for in poetry is recognition: something that speaks to me, Imogen.
I'll end with a quote from the introduction of my slim copy of 'Selected Poems: Donne' (Ed. Matthias A. Shaaber). It strikes me as very true about Donne's sonnets and, probably, why I like them:
There is a curious detachment about the speaker of these poems for all the strength of his anger and his pride: he tells us not how he feels, being in love, but what he thinks about the experience, how he puzzles his head over it, how he tries to explain it to himself. Almost every poem is a quizzical examination of some aspect of love or some kind of relationship between man and woman. Broadly speaking, the question is "what is love?"-- especially, is it of the flesh or of the spirit? Thus the poems strive for an intellectual rather than an emotional apprehension of love, often enough in a perfect fury of disdain or bafflement or in a burst of pride. No real conclusion is reached: Donne, or at any rate the speaker of the poems, remains of at least two minds about women, honor, love, himself.
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 left'st 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 Triple Fool
I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry.
(But where's that wise man, that would not be I,
If she would not deny?)
Then as the earth's inward, narrow, crooked lanes
Do purge sea water'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 increasèd by such song,
For both their triumphs so are publishèd,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.
I like John Donne's sonnets because they're musical, strongly rhythmic, vibrant and imaginative: a young man's poetry. I like how fierce and bold he is intellectually with his word-play and metaphors, and how there's usually humour peeking around the corners of his lines. I like how his sonnets are passionate, playful, angry and grave by turn, full of contradictions.
His sonnets were something of a revelation to me, as a younger reader. The poetry I knew of was the 19th century stuff, mostly British and a little American, and the talk of flowers and love with a Romantic sensibility did not appeal to me at all. The Elizabethans, though... yes! Donne especially, with his willingness to be over-the-top or even outright crass for the shock value. (And this is where I picture the young John Donne as the crazy avant-garde artiste of his time...) Take a poem like 'The Canonization,' which starts, For God's sake hold your tongue and let me love! Misogyny aside (and yes, it's off the charts), I was shocked to find out you were allowed to say things like this in poetry, which was supposed to be pretty in sentiment and expression (I thought). Or a poem like 'The Flea,' a love sonnet which is outright gross.
Even the misogyny, which returns in several of the sonnets (although many are not misogynistic: contradictions!), makes me wonder about 'The Poet' as a construct, and about Young John making his way in society as an intellectual/artist dependent on the notice and favour of patrons, hence the shock value. How much of the 'I' in the sonnets is a made up persona, a mask, an exaggeration, built out of the expectations of the sonnet as a poetic form: a poem where love is the subject, the poet is present as supplicant, and there is a woman as the object of his affections, to either love the poet or reject him? Probably a lot, I think, although no doubt many of Donne's feelings and experiences made their way into his writing.
Shakespeare was Donne's contemporary, and many people would disagree with me, but I've always liked Donne's sonnets more than those by Shakespeare. Shakespeare is without a doubt a master craftsman of words. Yet I find it easier to empathize with Donne's flailings and railings about love (and later religion-- Young John went on to become an Anglican clergyman whose relationship with God was as contradictory as the one he'd had with Love) than with Shakespeare's beautifully polished, civilized sonnets that are wise, mature and deep. I've never particularly felt like I was any of those things, and the first thing I look for in poetry is recognition: something that speaks to me, Imogen.
I'll end with a quote from the introduction of my slim copy of 'Selected Poems: Donne' (Ed. Matthias A. Shaaber). It strikes me as very true about Donne's sonnets and, probably, why I like them:
There is a curious detachment about the speaker of these poems for all the strength of his anger and his pride: he tells us not how he feels, being in love, but what he thinks about the experience, how he puzzles his head over it, how he tries to explain it to himself. Almost every poem is a quizzical examination of some aspect of love or some kind of relationship between man and woman. Broadly speaking, the question is "what is love?"-- especially, is it of the flesh or of the spirit? Thus the poems strive for an intellectual rather than an emotional apprehension of love, often enough in a perfect fury of disdain or bafflement or in a burst of pride. No real conclusion is reached: Donne, or at any rate the speaker of the poems, remains of at least two minds about women, honor, love, himself.