No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

 

The John Donne Memorial is a bronze bust of John Donne by Nigel Boonham, installed in the garden to the south of St Paul's Cathedral in London, United Kingdom.

Image below:  John Donne by Isaac Oliver (ca. 1622), National Portrait Gallery 

Meditation XVII

Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris (Now this bell, tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.)

Perchance, he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.

There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is.

The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that this occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. 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. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

Holy Sonnet XIV 

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for, you 

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; 

That I may rise, and stand, o‘erthrow me, and bend 

Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new. 

I, like an usurp’d town, t’another due, 

Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end, 

Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend, 

But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue. 

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, 

But am betroth’d unto your enemy: 

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again, 

Take me to you, imprison me, for I

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, 

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

“God made sun and moon to distinguish seasons, and day and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons; but God hath made no decree to distinguish the seasons of His mercies; in Paradise, the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in Heaven it is always autumn, His mercies are ever in their maturity. We ask our daily bread, and God never says you should have come yesterday. He never says you must again to-morrow, but to-day if ye will hear His voice, to-day He will hear you. If some king of the earth have so large an extent of dominion in north and south, as that he hath winter and summer together in his dominions, so large an extent east and west as that he hath day and night together in his dominions, much more hath God mercy and judgment together; He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; He can bring thy summer out of winter, though thou have no spring; though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintred and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupified till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon, to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons."

John Donne

John Donne as a young man

Love’s mysteries in souls do grow

And yet the body is His book.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning  

BY John Donne (1572-1631)

As virtuous men pass mildly away, 

   And whisper to their souls to go, 

Whilst some of their sad friends do say 

   The breath goes now, and some say, No: 

So let us melt, and make no noise, 

   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 

'Twere profanation of our joys 

   To tell the laity our love. 

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears, 

   Men reckon what it did, and meant; 

But trepidation of the spheres, 

   Though greater far, is innocent. 

Dull sublunary lovers' love 

   (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit 

Absence, because it doth remove 

   Those things which elemented it. 

But we by a love so much refined, 

   That our selves know not what it is, 

Inter-assured of the mind, 

   Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. 

Our two souls therefore, which are one, 

   Though I must go, endure not yet 

A breach, but an expansion, 

   Like gold to airy thinness beat. 

If they be two, they are two so 

   As stiff twin compasses are two; 

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show 

   To move, but doth, if the other do. 

And though it in the center sit, 

   Yet when the other far doth roam, 

It leans and hearkens after it, 

   And grows erect, as that comes home. 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must, 

   Like th' other foot, obliquely run; 

Thy firmness makes my circle 

   And makes me end where I begun.

The Good Morrow

By John Donne (1572-1631)

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I 

Did, till we lov’d? were we not wean’d till then? 

But suck’d 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 desir’d, 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 mix’d equally; 

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I 

Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.