From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest[79] our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery!
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st[80] thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.
In a poem called _The Cross_, full of fantastic conceits, we find the
following remarkable lines, embodying the profoundest truth.
As perchance carvers do not faces make,
But that away, which hid them there, do take:
Let crosses so take what hid Christ in thee,
And be his image, or not his, but he.
One more, and we shall take our leave of Dr. Donne. It is called a
fragment; but it seems to me complete. It will serve as a specimen of his
best and at the same time of his most characteristic mode of presenting
fine thoughts grotesquely attired.
RESURRECTION.
Sleep, sleep, old sun; thou canst not have re-past[81]
As yet the wound thou took'st on Friday last.
Sleep then, and rest: the world may bear thy stay;
A better sun rose before thee to-day;
Who, not content to enlighten all that dwell
On the earth's face as thou, enlightened hell,
And made the dark fires languish in that vale,
As at thy presence here our fires grow pale;
Whose body, having walked on earth and now
Hastening to heaven, would, that he might allow
Himself unto all stations and fill all,
For these three days become a mineral.
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