John Donne: Goodfriday,1613. Riding Westward.

Times Literary Supplement skriver idag:

"Friday, March 29, 2013, marks 400 years since the composition of one of John Donne’s most important and enduringly popular poems, “Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westwards” (among the many variant titles existing in manuscript, this is the one printed in the first edition of Donne’s poetry, 1633). The poem, one of a small number by Donne which can be dated, records an intense religious meditation at a crucial turning point in the author’s life – and, by extension, in the intellectual history of early modern England. Born into a dangerously devout Catholic family in a time of heightened religious sensitivity, Donne eventually joined the Church of England and became one of the most celebrated preachers of his day. A daringly controversial erotic poet whose scandalous marriage cost him a promising secular career, he ended his life as Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, a moral compass for the nation."

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Goodfriday,1613. Riding Westward.

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,

The intelligence that moves, devotion is,

And as the other Spheares, by being growne

Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,

And being by others hurried every day,

Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:

Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit

For their first mover, and are whirld by it.

Hence is't, that I am carryed towards the West

This day, whẽ my Soules forme bends toward the East.

There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,

And by that setting endlesse day beget;

But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,

Sinne had eternally benighted all.

Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see

That spectacle of too much weight for mee.

Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;

What a death were it then to see God dye?

It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,

It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.

Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,

And tune all spheares at once peirc'd with those holes?

Could I behold that endlesse height which is

Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,

Humbled below us? or that blood which is

The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,

[CW: Made]