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John Donne Holy Sonnet 14
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, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, 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.
Christopher Marlowe
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
COME live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.
There will we sit upon the rocks 5 That long preserved virginity,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
There will I make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies, 10
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair linèd slippers for the cold, 15
With buckles of the purest gold.
A belt of straw and ivy buds
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my Love. 20
Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing 25
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my Love.
Andrew Marvell To his Coy Mistress
HAD we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side 5
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews. 10
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast, 15
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate. 20
But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found, 25
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust: 30
The grave 's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires 35
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power. 40
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun 45
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
{GLOSS: slow-chapt] slow-jawed, slowly devouring}
 2
Andrew Marvell The Nymph Complaining for the
Death of her Fawn
The wanton troopers riding by
Have shot my fawn, and it will die.
Ungentle men! they cannot thrive
To kill thee. Thou ne’er didst alive
Them any harm, alas, nor could
Thy death yet do them any good.
I’m sure I never wish’d them ill,
Nor do I for all this, nor will;
But if my simple pray’rs may yet
Prevail with Heaven to forget
Thy murder, I will join my tears
Rather than fail. But oh, my fears!
It cannot die so. Heaven’s King
Keeps register of everything,
And nothing may we use in vain.
Ev’n beasts must be with justice slain,
Else men are made their deodands;
Though they should wash their guilty hands
In this warm life-blood, which doth part
From thine, and wound me to the heart,
Yet could they not be clean, their stain
Is dyed in such a purple grain.
There is not such another in
The world to offer for their sin.
Unconstant Sylvio, when yet
I had not found him counterfeit
One morning (I remember well)
Tied in this silver chain and bell,
Gave it to me; nay, and I know
What he said then; I’m sure I do.
Said he, “Look how your huntsman here
Hath taught a fawn to hunt his dear.”
But Sylvio soon had me beguil’d,
This waxed tame, while he grew wild;
And quite regardless of my smart,
Left me his fawn, but took his heart.
Thenceforth I set myself to play
My solitary time away,
With this, and very well content
Could so mine idle life have spent;
For it was full of sport, and light
Of foot and heart, and did invite
Me to its game; it seem’d to bless
Itself in me. How could I less
Than love it? Oh, I cannot be
Unkind t’ a beast that loveth me.
Had it liv’d long, I do not know
Whether it too might have done so
As Sylvio did; his gifts might be
Perhaps as false or more than he.
But I am sure, for aught that I
Could in so short a time espy,
Thy love was far more better then
The love of false and cruel men.
With sweetest milk and sugar first
I it at mine own fingers nurst;
And as it grew, so every day
It wax’d more white and sweet than they.
It had so sweet a breath! And oft
I blush’d to see its foot more soft
And white, shall I say than my hand?
Nay, any lady’s of the land.
It is a wond’rous thing how fleet
’Twas on those little silver feet;
With what a pretty skipping grace
It oft would challenge me the race;
And when ’t had left me far away,
’Twould stay, and run again, and stay,
For it was nimbler much than hinds,
And trod, as on the four winds.
I have a garden of my own,
But so with roses overgrown
And lilies, that you would it guess
To be a little wilderness;
And all the spring time of the year
It only loved to be there.
Among the beds of lilies I
Have sought it oft, where it should lie;
Yet could not, till itself would rise,
Find it, although before mine eyes;
For, in the flaxen lilies’ shade,
It like a bank of lilies laid.
Upon the roses it would feed
Until its lips ev’n seemed to bleed,
And then to me ’twould boldly trip
And print those roses on my lip.
But all its chief delight was still
On roses thus itself to fill,
And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold.
Had it liv’d long it would have been
Lilies without, roses within.
O help, O help! I see it faint,
And die as calmly as a saint.
See how it weeps! The tears do come,
Sad, slowly dropping like a gum.
So weeps the wounded balsam, so
The holy frankincense doth flow;
The brotherless Heliades
Melt in such amber tears as these.
I in a golden vial will
Keep these two crystal tears, and fill
It till it do o’erflow with mine,
Then place it in Diana’s shrine.
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Now my sweet fawn is vanish’d to
Whither the swans and turtles go,
In fair Elysium to endure
With milk-white lambs and ermines pure.
O do not run too fast, for I
Will but bespeak thy grave, and die.
First my unhappy statue shall
Be cut in marble, and withal
Let it be weeping too; but there
Th’ engraver sure his art may spare,
For I so truly thee bemoan
That I shall weep though I be stone;
Until my tears, still dropping, wear
My breast, themselves engraving there.
There at my feet shalt thou be laid,
Of purest alabaster made;
For I would have thine image be
White as I can, though not as thee.
John Milton
Sonnet XVI: To the Lord General Cromwell
On the proposals of certain ministers at the
Committee for Propagation of the Gospel
Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud
Not of war only, but detractions rude,
Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,
To peace and truth thy glorious way hast plough'd,
And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud
Hast rear'd God's trophies, and his work pursu'd,
While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbru'd,
And Dunbar field, resounds thy praises loud,
And Worcester's laureate wreath; yet much remains
To conquer still: peace hath her victories
No less renown'd than war. New foes arise
Threat'ning to bind our souls with secular chains:
Help us to save free Conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw.
Notes from:
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/225.html
First publication date: 1694 Composition date:
1652 Form: sonnet Rhyme: abbaabbacddcee
1] Though not printed till Phillips's Life of Milton
(1694), the sonnet was composed in May, 1652,
as the Cambridge MS. states, and on the
occasion of the proposals of certain ministers at
the Committee for Propagation of the Gospel (of
which Cromwell was a member). The Committee
was set up by the Rump Parliament to bring some
order into the Church by licensing preachers and
to examine methods of supporting a ministry
other than by tithes, which, however, were to be
maintained until the Committee reported. The
proposals referred to were offered by a group of
moderate Congregational ministers and
recommended state support for the Church.
Milton by this time was an advocate of the
complete separation of Church and State, and
relied on Cromwell's agreement, since he had
long supported religious toleration.
5-6] The allusion to the overthrow of the
monarchy and beheading of Charles I is obvious.
God's trophies are memorials of victories in God's
cause.
7] Darwen stream: referring to the battle of
Preston.
8] Dunbar field: The Scots had acknowledged
Charles II, on his father's execution. Cromwell
invaded their country and defeated them,
September 3, 1650.
9] Worcester: Cromwell's last great victory (1651);
his "crowning mercy'' he called it; hence laureate
wreath.
13-14] Milton had condemned the Roman
Catholic priesthood under the image of the wolf
(Lycidas 128-29) and the Episcopal clergy as
mere hirelings (ibid. 114-22), then the greed of
the Presbyterian ministers (New Forcers of
Conscience), and now he couples wolf and
hireling in a similar condemnation of the ministers
of the Committee.
John Milton
Sonnet XVIII: On the Late Massacre in Piemont
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold,
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones;
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubl'd to the hills, and they
To Heav'n. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O'er all th' Italian fields where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred-fold, who having learnt thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
Notes:
From http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/225.html
First publication date: 1673 Composition date:
1655 Form: sonnet Rhyme: abbaabbacdcdcd
The Waldensians or Vaudois were Protestants who
had long lived in the territories of the Roman
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Catholic rulers of Piedmont, and were thought of
by Protestants of Milton's day as having
preserved a simple scriptural faith from earlier
times. Confined by treaty to certain mountain
valleys, they had gradually intruded into the plain
of Piedmont. Ordered to retire, they had been
pursued into the mountains and there massacred
by the Piedmontese soldiery in April 1655. In
documents penned by Milton as Latin secretary,
Cromwell strongly protested against such
treachery and cruelty. Later in the year, possibly
after Morland returned with his report (see below,
7-8 note), Milton wrote his sonnet, first published
in Poems, 1673.
3-4] This suggests Milton's acceptance of the idea of
pure, unidolatrous worship preserved by the
Vaudois from primitive times (see above,
introductory note).
5] thy book refers to the books to be consulted at
the Judgment (Revelation 20:12).
7-8] The incident is narrated, with an accompanying
plate, in the History of the Evangelical Churches
in the Valleys of Piedmont (1658), by Sir Samuel
Morland, Cromwell's emissary, who may well
have given Milton the details on his return.
9] redoubled: re-echoed.
10-14] The reader is expected to remember
Tertullian's famous phrase, "The blood of the
martyrs is the seed of the Church" and the
parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3-9) where the
seed that fell on good ground brought forth as
much as a hundredfold. Such was to be the
blood of these martyrs sown where the Pope
(triple tyrant in his mitre with its three crowns) still
rules: It was to make converts who, having
learned God's truth, would renounce the idolatry
of Rome (figured, as Protestants believed, by the
Babylon of Revelation 16:19, etc.) and thus
escape the woe of God's punishment upon it.
John Milton
“Sonnet XIX: When I Consider How my Light is Spent”
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."
Notes:
From http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/225.html
Composition date: 1652 – 1655 First publication
date: 1673 Form: sonnet Rhyme: abbaabbacdecde
1] The date of composition is uncertain, Milton's
blindness, to which this is the first reference in his
poetry, became virtually complete in 1652, but if
the arrangement of his sonnets is (as it elsewhere
appears to be) chronological, the date must be,
like that of Sonnet XVIII, 1655. First printed in
Poems, 1673.
light: power of vision, to be taken in conjunction
with "this dark world." In a letter of 1654 Milton
refers to a very faint susceptibility to light still
remaining to him.
2] Ere half my days: we must not expect
mathematical accuracy. But if we remember
that Milton is speaking about his career in God's
service, take its beginning in the avowed
dedication to that service in Sonnet VII (1632),
and assume the scriptural life-span of three score
years and ten (which would mean life till 1678),
1652 falls before, and even 1655 does not extend
beyond, the half-way mark of Milton's expected
career of service.
3-6] The allusion is to the parable of the talents
(Matthew 25:14-30); death, like the outer
darkness into which the unprofitable servant was
cast, stands for the utmost in punishment; the
Talent was a measure of weight and hence of
value; there is here, of course, a play on the word
in its modern sense of mental gift or endowment,
in Milton's case his gift of poetry.
8] fondly: foolishly.
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John Donne “The Good-morrow”

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.

Notes:
From http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/225.html
First publication date: 1633 Rhyme: ababccc

4] the seven sleepers' den. According to a popular

legend, seven young Christians of Ephesus, in the
second century, took refuge from Roman
persecution in a cave, and miraculously slept for
some two hundred years when the entrance of
their cave was walled up by their pursuers.

13] other. Some MSS. read "others," but "other" is an

old plural form.

19-21] The scholastic doctrine is that what is simple

(that is, one, or though two, always alike, not a
compound) cannot be dissolved or die; ''equally"
means qualitatively the same.
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John Donne “XVII MEDITATION”

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 that 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 bells 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 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.

From: http://www.onlineliterature.com/donne/409/