First Song, The Progress of the Soul, by John Donne

1
I sing the progress of a deathless soul,
Whom Fate, which God made, but doth not control,
Placed in most shapes; all times before the law
Yoked us, and when, and since, in this I sing.
And the great world to his aged evening,
From infant morn, through manly noon I draw.
What the gold Chaldee, or silver Persian saw,
Greek brass, or Roman iron, is in this one;
A work to outwear Seth’s pillars, brick and stone,
And (holy writ excepted) made to yield to none.
2
Thee, eye of heaven, this great soul envies not,
By thy male force, is all we have, begot.
In the first east, thou now begin’st to shine,
Suck’st early balm, and island spices there,
And wilt anon in thy loose-reined career
At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danow dine,
And see at night thy western land of mine,
Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she,
That before thee, one day began to be,
And thy frail light being quenched, shall long, long outlive thee.
3
Nor, holy Janus, in whose sovereign boat
The Church, and all the monarchies did float;
That swimming college, and free hospital
Of all mankind, that cage and vivary
Of fowls, and beasts, in whose womb, Destiny
Us, and our latest nephews did instal
(From thence are all derived, that fill this all),
Didst thou in that great stewardship embark
So diverse shapes into that floating park,
As have been moved, and informed by this heavenly spark.
4
Great Destiny the commissary of God,
That hast marked out a path and period
For every thing; who, where we offspring took,
Our ways and ends seest at one instant; thou
Knot of all causes, thou whose changeless brow
Ne’er smiles nor frowns, O vouch thou safe to look
And show my story, in thy eternal book;
That (if my prayer be fit) I may understand
So much myself, as to know with what hand,
How scant, or liberal this my life’s race is spanned.
5
To my six lustres almost now outwore,
Except thy book owe me so many more,
Except my legend be free from the lets
Of steep ambition, sleepy poverty,
Spirit-quenching sickness, dull captivity,
Distracting business, and from beauty’s nets,
And all that calls from this, and t’other whets,
O let me not launch out, but let me save
Th’ expense of brain and spirit; that my grave
His right and due, a whole unwasted man may have.
6
But if my days be long, and good enough,
In vain this sea shall enlarge, or enrough
Itself; for I will through the wave, and foam,
And shall in sad lone ways, a lively sprite
Make my dark heavy poem light, and light.
For though through many straits, and lands I roam,
I launch at paradise, and I sail towards home;
The course I there began, shall here be stayed,
Sails hoisted there, struck here, and anchors laid
In Thames, which were at Tigris, and Euphrates weighed.
7
For the great soul which here amongst us now
Doth dwell, and moves that hand, and tongue, and brow,
Which as the moon the sea, moves us, to hear
Whose story, with long patience you will long;
(For ’tis the crown, and last strain of my song)
This soul to whom Luther and Mahomet were
Prisons of flesh; this soul which oft did tear,
And mend the wracks of th’ Empire, and late Rome,
And lived when every great change did come,
Had first in paradise, a low, but fatal room.
8
Yet no low room, nor than the greatest, less,
If (as devout and sharp men fitly guess)
That Cross, our joy, and grief, where nails did tie
That all, which always was all, everywhere,
Which could not sin, and yet all sins did bear;
Which could not die, yet could not choose but die;
Stood in the self same room in Calvary,
Where first grew the forbidden learned tree,
For on that tree hung in security
This soul, made by the Maker’s will from pulling free.
9
Prince of the orchard, fair as dawning morn,
Fenced with the law, and ripe as soon as born
That apple grew, which this soul did enlive,
Till the then climbing serpent, that now creeps
For that offence, for which all mankind weeps,
Took it, and to her whom the first man did wive
(Whom and her race, only forbiddings drive)
He gave it, she to her husband, both did eat;
So perished the eaters, and the meat:
And we (for treason taints the blood) thence die and sweat.
10
Man all at once was there by woman slain,
And one by one we ‘re here slain o’er again
By them. The mother poisoned the well-head,
The daughters here corrupt us, rivulets,
No smallness ‘scapes, no greatness breaks their nets,
She thrust us out, and by them we are led
Astray, from turning to whence we are fled.
Were prisoners judges, ‘twould seem rigorous,
She sinned, we bear; part of our pain is, thus
To love them, whose fault to this painful love yoked us.
11
So fast in us doth this corruption grow,
That now we dare ask why we should be so.
Would God (disputes the curious rebel) make
A law, and would not have it kept? Or can
His creatures’ will, cross his? Of every man
For one, will God (and be just) vengeance take?
Who sinned? ’twas not forbidden to the snake
Nor her, who was not then made; nor is ‘t writ
That Adam cropped, or knew the apple; yet
The worm and she, and he, and we endure for it.
12
But snatch me, heavenly Spirit, from this vain
Reckoning their vanities, less is the gain
Than hazard still, to meditate on ill,
Though with good mind; their reasons, like those toys
Of glassy bubbles, which the gamesome boys
Stretch to so nice a thinness through a quill
That they themselves break, do themselves spill:
Arguing is heretics’ game, and exercise
As wrestlers, perfects them; not liberties
Of speech, but silence; hands, not tongues, end heresies.
13
Just in that instant when the serpent’s gripe,
Broke the slight veins, and tender conduit-pipe,
Through which this soul from the tree’s root did draw
Life, and growth to this apple, fled away
This loose soul, old, one and another day.
As lightning, which one scarce dares say, he saw,
‘Tis so soon gone, (and better proof the law
Of sense, than faith requires) swiftly she flew
To a dark and foggy plot; her, her fate threw
There through th’ earth’s pores, and in a plant housed her anew.
14
The plant thus abled, to itself did force
A place, where no place was; by nature’s course
As air from water, water fleets away
From thicker bodies, by this root thronged so
His spongy confines gave him place to grow,
Just as in our streets, when the people stay
To see the Prince, and have so filled the way
That weasels scarce could pass, when she comes near
They throng and cleave up, and a passage clear,
As if, for that time, their round bodies flattened were.
15
His right arm he thrust out towards the east,
Westward his left; th’ ends did themselves digest
Into ten lesser strings, these fingers were:
And as a slumberer stretching on his bed,
This way he this, and that way scattered
His other leg, which feet with toes upbear;
Grew on his middle parts, the first day, hair,
To show, that in love’s business he should still
A dealer be, and be used well, or ill:
His apples kindle, his leaves, force of conception kill.
16
A mouth, but dumb, he hath; blind eyes, deaf ears,
And to his shoulders dangle subtle hairs;
A young Colossus there he stands upright,
And as that ground by him were conquered
A leafy garland wears he on his head
Enchased with little fruits, so red and bright
That for them you would call your love’s lips white;
So, of a lone unhaunted place possessed,
Did this soul’s second inn, built by the guest,
This living buried man, this quiet mandrake, rest.
17
No lustful woman came this plant to grieve,
But ’twas because there was none yet but Eve:
And she (with other purpose) killed it quite;
Her sin had now brought in infirmities,
And so her cradled child, the moist red eyes
Had never shut, nor slept since it saw light,
Poppy she knew, she knew the mandrake’s might,
And tore up both, and so cooled her child’s blood;
Unvirtuous weeds might long unvexed have stood;
But he’s short-lived, that with his death can do most good.
18
To an unfettered soul’s quick nimble haste
Are falling stars, and heart’s thoughts, but slow-paced:
Thinner than burnt air flies this soul, and she
Whom four new coming, and four parting suns
Had found, and left the mandrake’s tenant, runs
Thoughtless of change, when her firm destiny
Confined, and enjailed her, that seemed so free,
Into a small blue shell, the which a poor
Warm bird o’erspread, and sat still evermore,
Till her enclosed child kicked, and picked itself a door.
19
Out crept a sparrow, this soul’s moving inn,
On whose raw arms stiff feathers now begin,
As children’s teeth through gums, to break with pain,
His flesh is jelly yet, and his bones threads,
All a new downy mantle overspreads,
A mouth he opes, which would as much contain
As his late house, and the first hour speaks plain,
And chirps aloud for meat. Meat fit for men
His father steals for him, and so feeds then
One, that within a month, will beat him from his hen.
20
In this world’s youth wise nature did make haste,
Things ripened sooner, and did longer last;
Already this hot cock in bush and tree
In field and tent o’erflutters his next hen,
He asks her not, who did so taste, nor when,
Nor if his sister, or his niece she be,
Nor doth she pule for his inconsistancy
If in her sight he change, nor doth refuse
The next that calls; both liberty do use;
Where store is of both kinds, both kinds may freely choose.
21
Men, till they took laws which made freedom less,
Their daughters, and their sisters did ingress;
Till now unlawful, therefore ill, ’twas not.
So jolly, that it can move, this soul is,
The body so free of his kindnesses,
That self-preserving it hath now forgot,
And slackeneth so the soul’s, and body’s knot
Which temperance straitens; freely on his she friends
He blood, and spirit, pith, and marrow spends,
Ill steward of himself, himself in three years ends.
22
Else might he long have lived; man did not know
Of gummy blood, which doth in holly grow,
How to make bird-lime, nor how to deceive
With feigned calls, hid nets, or enwrapping snare,
The free inhabitants of the pliant air.
Man to beget, and woman to conceive
Asked not of roots, nor of cock-sparrows, leave:
Yet chooseth he, though none of these he fears,
Pleasantly three, than straitened twenty years
To live, and to increase his race, himself outwears.
23
This coal with overblowing quenched and dead,
The soul from her too active organs fled
To a brook; a female fish’s sandy roe
With the male’s jelly, newly leavened was,
For they had intertouched as they did pass,
And one of those small bodies, fitted so,
This soul informed, and abled it to row
Itself with finny oars, which she did fit,
Her scales seemed yet of parchment, and as yet
Perchance a fish, but by no name you could call it.
24
When goodly, like a ship in her full trim,
A swan, so white that you may unto him
Compare all whiteness, but himself to none,
Glided along, and as he glided watched,
And with his arched neck this poor fish catched.
It moved with state, as if to look upon
Low things it scorned, and yet before that one
Could think he sought it, he had swallowed clear
This, and much such, and unblamed devoured there
All, but who too swift, too great, or well armed were.
25
Now swam a prison in a prison put,
And now this soul in double walls was shut,
Till melted with the swan’s digestive fire,
She left her house the fish, and vapoured forth;
Fate not affording bodies of more worth
For her as yet, bids her again retire
To another fish, to any new desire
Made a new prey; for, he that can to none
Resistance make, nor complaint, sure is gone.
Weakness invites, but silence feasts oppression.

Pace with her native stream, this fish doth keep,
And journeys with her, towards the glassy deep,
But oft retarded, once with a hidden net
Though with great windows, for when need first taught
These tricks to catch food, then they were not wrought
As now, with curious greediness to let
None ‘scape, but few, and fit for use to get,
As, in this trap a ravenous pike was ta’en,
Who, though himself distressed, would fain have slain
This wretch; so hardly are ill habits left again.
27
Here by her smallness she two deaths o’erpast,
Once innocence ‘scaped, and left the oppressor fast;
The net through-swum, she keeps the liquid path,
And whether she leap up sometimes to breathe
And suck in air, or find it underneath,
Or working parts like mills, or limbecks hath
To make the water thin and airlike, faith
Cares not, but safe the place she’s come unto
Where fresh, with salt waves meet, and what to do
She knows not, but between both makes a board or two.
28
So far from hiding her guests, water is
That she shows them in bigger quantities
Than they are. Thus doubtful of her way,
For game and not for hunger a sea pie
Spied through this traitorous spectacle, from high,
The silly fish where it disputing lay,
And to end her doubts and her, bears her away,
Exalted she is, but to the exalter’s good,
As are by great ones, men which lowly stood.
It’s raised, to be the raiser’s instrument and food.
29
Is any kind subject to rape like fish?
Ill unto man, they neither do, nor wish:
Fishers they kill not, nor with noise awake,
They do not hunt, nor strive to make a prey
Of beasts, nor their young sons to bear away;
Fowls they pursue not, nor do undertake
To spoil the nests industrious birds do make;
Yet them all these unkind kinds feed upon,
To kill them is an occupation,
And laws make Fasts, and Lents for their destruction.
30
A sudden stiff land-wind in that self hour
To sea-ward forced this bird, that did devour
The fish; he cares not, for with ease he flies,
Fat gluttony’s best orator: at last
So long he hath flown, and hath flown so fast
That many leagues at sea, now tired he lies,
And with his prey, that till then languished, dies:
The soul’s no longer foes, two ways did err,
The fish I follow, and keep no calendar
Of the other; he lives yet in some great officer.
31
Into an embryon fish, our soul is thrown,
And in due time thrown out again, and grown
To such vastness as, if unmanacled
From Greece, Morea were, and that by some
Earthquake unrooted, loose Morea swum,
Or seas from Afric’s body had severed
And torn the hopeful promontory’s head,
This fish would seem these, and, when all hopes fail,
A great ship overset, or without sail
Hulling, might (when this was a whelp) be like this whale.
32
At every stroke his brazen fins do take,
More circles in the broken sea they make
Than cannons’ voices, when the air they tear:
His ribs are pillars, and his high arched roof
Of bark that blunts best steel, is thunder-proof:
Swim in him swallowed dolphins, without fear,
And feel no sides, as if his vast womb were
Some inland sea, and ever as he went
He spouted rivers up, as if he meant
To join our seas, with seas above the firmament.
33
He hunts not fish, but as an officer,
Stays in his court, as his own net, and there
All suitors of all sorts themselves enthral;
So on his back lies this whale wantoning,
And in his gulf-like throat, sucks every thing
That passeth near. Fish chaseth fish, and all,
Flyer and follower, in this whirlpool fall;
O might not states of more equality
Consist? and is it of necessity
That thousand guiltless smalls, to make one great, must die?
34
Now drinks he up seas, and he eats up flocks,
He jostles islands, and he shakes firm rocks.
Now in a roomful house this soul doth float,
And like a Prince she sends her faculties
To all her limbs, distant as provinces.
The sun hath twenty times both crab and goat
Parched, since first launched forth this living boat.
‘Tis greatest now, and to destruction
Nearest; there’s no pause at perfection.
Greatness a period hath, but hath no station.
35
Two little fishes whom he never harmed,
Nor fed on their kind, two not throughly armed
With hope that they could kill him, nor could do
Good to themselves by his death: they did not eat
His flesh, nor suck those oils, which thence outstreat,
Conspired against him, and it might undo
The plot of all, that the plotters were two,
But that they fishes were, and could not speak.
How shall a tyrant wise strong projects break,
If wretches can on them the common anger wreak?

36
The flail-finn’d thresher, and steel-beak’d sword-fish
Only attempt to do what all do wish.
The thresher backs him, and to beat begins;
The sluggard whale yields to oppression,
And to hide himself from shame and danger, down
Begins to sink; the sword-fish upward spins,
And gores him with his beak; his staff-like fins
So well the one, his sword the other plies,
That now a scoff, and prey, this tyrant dies,
And his own dole-feeds with himself all companies.

Who will revenge his death? or who will call
Those to account, that thought and wrought his fall?
The heirs of slain kings, we see, are often so
Transported with the joy of what they get,
That they revenge and obsequies forget;
Nor will against such men the people go,
Because he’s now dead to whom they should show
Love in that act; some kings by vice being grown
So needy of subjects’ love, that of their own
They think they lose, if love be to the dead prince shown.

This soul, now free from prison and passion,
Hath yet a little indignation
That so small hammers should so soon down beat
So great a castle. And having for her house
Got the strait cloister of a wretched mouse
―As basest men, that have not what to eat,
Nor enjoy aught, do far more hate the great
Than they who good reposed estates possess―
This soul, late taught that great things might by less
Be slain, to gallant mischief doth herself address.

Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant,
The only harmless great thing, the giant
Of beasts, who thought none had, to make him wise,
But to be just and thankful, loth to offend
—Yet nature hath given him no knees to bend
Himself he up-props, on himself relies,
And foe to none, suspects no enemies—
Still sleeping stood; vex’d not his fantasy
Black dreams; like an unbent bow carelessly
His sinewy proboscis did remissly lie.

In which, as in a gallery, this mouse
Walk’d, and survey’d the rooms of this vast house,
And to the brain, the soul’s bed-chamber, went,
And gnaw’d the life-cords there. Like a whole town
Clean undermined, the slain beast tumbled down.
With him the murderer dies, whom envy sent
To kill, not ‘scape; for only he that meant
To die, did ever kill a man of better room;
And thus he made his foe his prey and tomb.
Who cares not to turn back, may any whither come.

Next, housed this soul a wolf’s yet unborn whelp,
Till the best midwife, nature, gave it help
To issue. It could kill, as soon as go.
Abel, as white and mild as his sheep were
—Who, in that trade of church and kingdoms there
Was the first type—was still infested so
With this wolf, that it bred his loss and woe;
And yet his bitch, his sentinel, attends
The flock so near, so well warns and defends,
That the wolf—hopeless else—to corrupt her intends.

He took a course, which since, successfully,
Great men have often taken, to espy
The counsels, or to break the plots of foes.
To Abel’s tent he stealeth in the dark,
On whose skirts the bitch slept; ere she could bark,
Attach’d her with straight grips; yet he call’d those
Embracements of love; to love’s work he goes,
Where deeds move more than words; nor doth she show
Nor much resist, nor needs he straiten so
His prey, for, were she loose, she would nor bark nor go.

He hath engaged her; his, she wholly bides;
Who not her own, none others’ secrets hides.
If to the flock he come, and Abel there,
She feigns hoarse barkings, but she biteth not;
Her faith is quite, but not her love forgot.
At last a trap, of which some everywhere
Abel had placed, ends all his loss and fear,
By the wolf’s death; and now just time it was
That a quick soul should give life to that mass
Of blood in Abel’s bitch, and thither this did pass.

Some have their wives, their sisters some begot,
But in the lives of emperors you shall not
Read of a lust, the which may equal this.
This wolf begot himself, and finished
What he began alive, when he was dead;
Son to himself, and father too, he is
A riddling lust, for which schoolmen would miss
A proper name. The whelp of both these lay
In Abel’s tent, and with soft Moaba,
His sister, being young, it used to sport and play.

He soon for her too harsh and churlish grew,
And Abel—the dam dead-would use this new
For the field; being of two kinds thus made,
He, as his dam, from sheep drove wolves away,
And, as his sire, he made them his own prey.
Five years he lived, and cozen’d with his trade;
Then hopeless that his faults were hid, betray’d
Himself by flight, and by all followed,
From dogs, a wolf; from wolves, a dog he fled.
And, like a spy spy to both sides false, he perished.

It quicken’d next a toyful ape, and so
Gamesome it was, that it might freely go
From tent to tent, and with the children play.
His organs now so like theirs he doth find,
That why he cannot laugh and speak his mind,
He wonders. Much with all, most he doth stay
With Adam’s fifth daughter, Siphatecia;
Doth gaze on her, and, where she passeth, pass,
Gathers her fruits, and tumbles on the grass;
And wisest of that kind, the first true lover was.

He was the first that more desired to have
One than another; first that e’er did crave
Love by mute signs, and had no power to speak;
First that could make love faces, or could do
The vaulter’s somersaults, or used to woo
With hoiting gambols, his own bones to break,
To make his mistress merry, or to wreak
Her anger on himself. Sins against kind
They easily do, that can let feed their mind
With outward beauty; beauty they in boys and beasts do find.

By this misled, too low things men have proved,
And too high; beasts and angels have been loved.
This ape, though else through-vain, in this was wise,
He reached at things too high, but open way
There was, and he knew not she would say nay.
His toys prevail not, likelier means he tries.
He gazeth on her face with tear-shot eyes,
And uplifts subtly with his russet paw
Her kidskin apron without fear or awe
Of nature; nature hath no gaol, though she hath law.

First she was silly and knew not what he meant.
That virtue, by his touches chafed and spent,
Succeeds an itchy warmth, that melts her quite;
She knew not first, nor cares not what he doth,
And willing half, and more, more than half wroth,
She neither pulls nor pushes, but out-right
Now cries and now repents; when Thelemite,
Her brother, entered, and a great stone threw
After the ape, who, thus prevented, flew.
This house, thus batter’d down, the soul possess’d a new.

And whether by this change she lose or win,
She comes out next where th’ ape would have gone in.
Adam and Eve had mingled bloods, and now,
Like chemic’s equal fires, her temperate womb
Had stew’d and form’d it; and part did become
A spongy liver, that did richly allow,
Like a free conduit on a high hill’s brow,
Life-keeping moisture unto every part;
Part hardened itself to a thicker heart,
Whose busy furnaces life’s spirits do impart.

Another part became the well of sense,
The tender well-arm’d feeling brain, from whence
Those sinewy strings, which do our bodies tie,
Are ravell’d out, and fast there by one end,
Did this soul limbs, these limbs a soul attend.
And now they join’d, keeping some quality
Of every past shape; she knew treachery,
Rapine, deceit, and lust, and ills enow
To be a woman. Themech she is now,
Sister and wife to Caïn, Cain that first did plough.

Whoe’er thou beest that read’st this sullen writ,
Which just so much courts thee, as thou dost it,
Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me,
Why ploughing, building, ruling, and the rest,
Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Caïn’s race invented be,
And blest Seth vex’d us with astronomy.
There’s nothing simply good, nor ill alone;
Of every quality Comparison
The only measure is, and judge, Opinion.

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