Nativity. Poems. John Donne

all assum’d unto this dignity

      So many weedless paradises be,

      Which of themselves produce no venomous sin,

      Except some foreign serpent bring it in)

      Yet, because outward storms the strongest break,

      And strength itself by confidence grows weak,

      This new world may be safer, being told

      The dangers and diseases of the old;

      For with due temper men do then forgo,

      Or covet things, when they their true worth know.

      There is no health; physicians say that we

      At best enjoy but a neutrality.

      And can there be worse sickness than to know

      That we are never well, nor can be so?

      We are born ruinous: poor mothers cry

      That children come not right, nor orderly;

      Except they headlong come and fall upon

      An ominous precipitation.

      How witty’s ruin! how importunate

      Upon mankind! It labour’d to frustrate

      Even God’s purpose; and made woman, sent

      For man’s relief, cause of his languishment.

      They were to good ends, and they are so still,

      But accessory, and principal in ill,

      For that first marriage was our funeral;

      One woman at one blow, then kill’d us all,

      And singly, one by one, they kill us now.

      We do delightfully our selves allow

      To that consumption; and profusely blind,

      We kill our selves to propagate our kind.

      And yet we do not that; we are not men;

      There is not now that mankind, which was then,

      When as the sun and man did seem to strive,

      (Joint tenants of the world) who should survive;

      When stag, and raven, and the long-liv’d tree,

      Compar’d with man, died in minority;

      When, if a slow-pac’d star had stol’n away

      From the observer’s marking, he might stay

      Two or three hundred years to see’t again,

      And then make up his observation plain;

      When, as the age was long, the size was great

      (Man’s growth confess’d, and recompens’d the meat),

      So spacious and large, that every soul

      Did a fair kingdom, and large realm control;

      And when the very stature, thus erect,

      Did that soul a good way towards heaven direct.

      Where is this mankind now? Who lives to age,

      Fit to be made Methusalem his page?

      Alas, we scarce live long enough to try

      Whether a true-made clock run right, or lie.

      Old grandsires talk of yesterday with sorrow,

      And for our children we reserve tomorrow.

      So short is life, that every peasant strives,

      In a torn house, or field, to have three lives.

      And as in lasting, so in length is man

      Contracted to an inch, who was a span;

      For had a man at first in forests stray’d,

      Or shipwrack’d in the sea, one would have laid

      A wager, that an elephant, or whale,

      That met him, would not hastily assail

      A thing so equall to him; now alas,

      The fairies, and the pigmies well may pass

      As credible; mankind decays so soon,

      We’are scarce our fathers’ shadows cast at noon,

      Only death adds t’our length: nor are we grown

      In stature to be men, till we are none.

      But this were light, did our less volume hold

      All the old text; or had we chang’d to gold

      Their silver; or dispos’d into less glass

      Spirits of virtue, which then scatter’d was.

      But ’tis not so; w’are not retir’d, but damp’d;

      And as our bodies, so our minds are cramp’d;

      «Tis shrinking, not close weaving, that hath thus

      In mind and body both bedwarfed us.

      We seem ambitious, God’s whole work t’undo;

      Of nothing he made us, and we strive too,

      To bring our selves to nothing back; and we

      Do what we can, to do’t so soon as he.

      With new diseases on our selves we war,

      And with new physic, a worse engine far.

      Thus man, this world’s vice-emperor, in whom

      All faculties, all graces are at home

      (And if in other creatures they appear,

      They’re but man’s ministers and legates there

      To work on their rebellions, and reduce

      Them to civility, and to man’s use);

      This man, whom God did woo, and loath t’attend

      Till man came up, did down to man descend,

      This man, so great, that all that is, is his,

      O what a trifle, and poor thing he is!

      If man were anything, he’s nothing now;

      Help, or at least some time to waste, allow

      T’his other wants, yet when he did depart

      With her whom we lament, he lost his heart.

      She, of whom th’ancients seem’d to prophesy,

      When they call’d virtues by the name of she;

      She in whom virtue was so much refin’d,

      That for alloy unto so pure a mind

      She took the weaker sex; she that could drive

      The poisonous tincture, and the stain of Eve,

      Out of her thoughts, and deeds, and purify

      All, by a true religious alchemy,

      She, she is dead; she’s dead: when thou knowest this,

      Thou knowest how poor a trifling thing man is,

      And learn’st thus much by our anatomy,

      The heart being perish’d, no part can be free,

      And that except thou feed (not banquet) on

      The supernatural food, religion,

      Thy better growth grows withered, and scant;

      Be more than man, or thou’rt less than an ant.

      Then, as mankind, so is the world’s whole frame

      Quite out of joint, almost created lame,

      For, before God had made up all the rest,

      Corruption ent’red, and deprav’d the best;

      It