John Donne (1572-1631)
Hymn to God, My God, in my Sickness
1Since I am coming to that holy room,
2 Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
3I shall be made thy music; as I come
4 I tune the instrument here at the door,
5 And what I must do then, think here before.
6Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
7 Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
8Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
9 That this is my south-west discovery,
10 Per fretum febris, by these straits to die,
11I joy, that in these straits I see my west;
12 For, though their currents yield return to none,
13What shall my west hurt me? As west and east
14 In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,
15 So death doth touch the resurrection.
16Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are
17 The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
18Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar,
19 All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them,
20 Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.
21We think that Paradise and Calvary,
22 Christ's cross, and Adam's tree, stood in one place;
23Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
24 As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,
25 May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.
26So, in his purple wrapp'd, receive me, Lord;
27 By these his thorns, give me his other crown;
28And as to others' souls I preach'd thy word,
29 Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:
30"Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down."
Notes
1] Walton says this poem was written in March 1631, a few days before Donne's death, but this has been questioned in favour of 1623.
3] thy music: part of God's orchestra or company of musicians.
10] Per fretum febris: through the straits of fever, with a pun on straits.
13-15] In one of his sermons Donne writes: "In a flat Map there goes no more to make West East, though they be distant in an extremity but to paste that flat map upon a round body, and then West and East are all one ... conforme thee to him [Christ] and thy West is East ... the name of Christ is Oriens, the East....''
18] Anyan: Bering Straits.
21-22] There is no authority for any precise identity, but appropriate correspondences of this kind are common in early biblical commentaries; place may mean `region.'
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: John Donne, Poems, 2nd edition (M. F. for J. Marriot, 1635). STC 7046. stc Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto).
First publication date:
1635
RPO poem editor: N. J. Endicott
RP edition: 3RP 1.194.
Recent editing: 4:2002/2/5
Composition date:
1593
-
1597
Rhyme: ababb
Other poems by John Donne
