Free Donne by John Donne Page B

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    Whether a new made clocke runne right, or lie.
    Old Grandsires talke of yesterday with sorrow,
    And for our children we reserve to morrow.
    So short is life, that every peasant strives,
    In a torne 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 Forrests 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 assaile
    A thing so equall to him: now alas,
    The Fayries, and the Pigmies well may passe
    As credible; mankind decayes so soone,
    We’re scarse our Fathers shadowes cast at noone.
    Onely death addes t’our length: nor are we growne
    In stature to be men, till we are none.
    But this were light, did our lesse volume hold
    All the old Text; or had we chang’d to gold
    Their silver; or dispos’d into lesse glas,
    Spirits of vertue, which then scattred was.
    But ’tis not so: w’are not retir’d, but dampt;
    And as our bodies, so our mindes are cramp’t:
    ’Tis shrinking, not close-weaving, that hath thus,
    In minde and body both bedwarfed us.
    We seeme ambitious, Gods whole worke t’undoe;
    Of nothing he made us, and we strive too,
    To bring our selves to nothing backe; and we
    Do what we can, to do’t so soone as hee.
    With new diseases on our selves we warre,
    And with new phisicke, a worse Engin farre.
    Thus man, this worlds Vice-Emperor, in whom
    All faculties, all graces are at home;
    And if in other Creatures they appeare,
    They’re but mans ministers, and Legats there,
    To worke on their rebellions, and reduce
    Them to Civility, and to mans use.
    This man, whom God did wooe, and loth t’attend
    Till man came up, did downe to man descend,
    This man, so great, that all that is, is his,
    Oh what a trifle, and poore thing he is!
    If man were any thing, he’s nothing now:
    Helpe, or at least some time to wast, allow
    T’his other wants, yet when he did depart
    With her, whom we lament, he lost his hart.
    She, of whom th’Auncients seem’d to prophesie,
    When they call’d vertues by the name of shee;
    She in whom vertue was so much refin’d,
    That for Allay unto so pure a minde
    Shee tooke the weaker Sex, she that could drive
    The poysonous tincture, and the stayne of
Eve
,
    Out of her thoughts, and deeds; and purifie
    All, by a true religious Alchimy;
    Shee, shee is dead; shee’s dead: when thou knowest this,
    Thou knowest how poore a trifling thing man is.
    And learn’st thus much by our Anatomee,
    The heart being perish’d, no part can be free.
    And that except thou feed (not banquet) on
    The supernaturall food, Religion,
    Thy better Grouth growes withered, and scant;
    Be more then man, or thou’rt lesse then an Ant.
    Then, as mankinde, so is the worlds whole frame
    Quite out of joynt, almost created lame:
    For, before God had made up all the rest,
    Corruption entred, and deprav’d the best:
    It seis’d the Angels, and then first of all
    The world did in her Cradle take a fall,
    And turn’d her braines, and tooke a generall maime
    Wronging each joynt of th’universall frame.
    The noblest part, man, felt it first; and than
    Both beasts and plants, curst in the curse of man.
    So did the world from the first houre decay,
    The evening was beginning of the day,
    And now the Springs and Sommers which we see,
    Like sonnes of women after fifty bee.
    And new Philosophy cals all in doubt,
    The Element of fire is quite put out;
    The Sun is lost, and th’earth, and no mans wit
    Can well direct him, where to looke for it.
    And freely men confesse, that this world’s spent,
    When in the Planets, and the Firmament
    They seeke so many new; they see that this
    Is crumbled out againe to his Atomis.
    ’Tis all in pieces, all cohærence gone;
    All just supply, and all Relation:
    Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne, are things forgot,
    For every man alone thinkes he hath got
    To be a Phœnix, and that there can bee
    None of that kinde, of