John Donne: Romantic and Holy

John Donne in his Shroud, 1631, engraved by Martin Droeshout. Donne posed in his shroud for the portrait and kept it on until he died 5 weeks later. Public Domain

Donne is remembered in the Calendar of Saints of the Church of England, the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar and the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for his life as both poet and priest. His commemoration is on 31 March.

I met John Donne in 1964 in Newark, New Jersey in English 101.

• The Relic took my breat away, and my heart too.

• T.S Eiot introduced me to "Batter My Heart" which led him to Jesus.

• Margaret Edson used "No Man Is an Island" to deal with terminal cancer.

You will be moved when you read today's article; may it move you to Jesus!

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The Relic by John Donne* (1572-1631)

When my grave is broke up again

Some second guest to entertain,

(For graves have learn'd that woman head,

To be to more than one a bed)

And he that digs it, spies

A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,

Will he not let'us alone,

And think that there a loving couple lies,

Who thought that this device might be some way

To make their souls, at the last busy day,

Meet at this grave, and make a little stay?

If this fall in a time, or land,

Where mis-devotion doth command,

Then he, that digs us up, will bring

Us to the bishop, and the king,

To make us relics; then

Thou shalt be a Mary Magdalen, and I

A something else thereby;

All women shall adore us, and some men;

And since at such time miracles are sought,

I would have that age by this paper taught

What miracles we harmless lovers wrought.

First, we lov'd well and faithfully,

Yet knew not what we lov'd, nor why;

Difference of sex no more we knew

Than our guardian angels do;

Coming and going, we

Perchance might kiss, but not between those meals;

Our hands ne'er touch'd the seals

Which nature, injur'd by late law, sets free;

These miracles we did, but now alas,

All measure, and all language, I should pass,

Should I tell what a miracle she was.

An asterisk* after a name means the person is in SPIRITUAL LIVES.

I was a freshman at Rutgers when I read this poem and had a girlfriend who live 3,000 miles away in Alberta, Canada. She had give me a lock of her beautiful blonde hair and I had woven it into a little ring. Donne had done the same this 300 years before me, and that connected me with him -- a kindred spirit. It also showed me the everlasting power of unseen, gentle things.

His poems kept my life close to these things and too Jesus who carried us both in His arms. Here is a short biography adapted from SPIRITUAL LIVES.

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A late contemporary of King James* (1566-1625), John Donne was born in London in 1572. His family was Roman Catholic and therefore suspect by Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603) and her Protestant Church of England. His father died when the boy was 4, and his mother remarried quickly. Donne received a good education at Oxford and Cambridge but was not granted a degree because of his Catholicism. He had inherited substantial wealth and ran through it quickly, spending lavishly on women, pleasure, and travel.

He decided to study law and began to question his Catholic faith when Elizabeth issued statutes against dissent from the Church of England. At age 25, he got an important diplomatic post for the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Thomas Egerton, and soon fell in love with his niece, whom he secretly married in 1601.

Both Egerton and the bride’s father were enraged and had Donne and the minister who married them imprisoned. This cost Donne his livelihood, and he was compelled to live in the country in poverty. He summarized his troubles with these words in a letter to his wife: John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done.

The marriage was blessed with children, but they struggled with poverty; when a child died, they could not afford the funeral expenses. On top of all of this, Anne died shortly after the still-born birth of their 12th child. Donne struggled with his religious beliefs too and wrote the Holy Sonnets during this time.

Never published during his life, these have become famous and influential as the most accomplished and powerful sonnets in the English language. This one displays his desperate desire to find the Lord in the striking and dramatic style that characterized both his poems and sermons:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.

I, like an usurpt town, to another due,

Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,

Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy:

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

As a former Roman Catholic who converted to Protestantism, Donne was a positive example whom King James valued highly. The King ordered him to be ordained and later made him Dean of St. Paul’s, England’s finest cathedral. There, he preached for the rest of his life, often before King James and then his son Charles I. (1600-1649),

In 1631, Donne became mortally ill, perhaps with stomach cancer. Knowing death lay before him shortly, he put on his burial shroud and had a portrait of himself wearing it hung where he could see it constantly. He preached his last sermons wearing it, including his own funeral sermon to Charles at St. Paul’s.

He and his writings have had an enormous influence on English literature in the 20th century. They played a major role in the conversion of T.S. Eliot* (1889-1965) and helped make Christianity a living force and blessing in poetry again.

Perhaps Donne would be pleased with this, but I think he is now more pleased to be with Jesus in eternal life:

Eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period; and eternity had been the same as it is, though time had never been.

– John Donne, Book of Devotions

No Man is an Island

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s

Or of thine own were:

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

Margaret Edson used this poem as a theme in her Pulizer Prise winning play W;t. Her analysis of Donne is that he was hiding behind his wit, which is her failing too. Donne's faith gave him entry into that eternity where Jesus is preparing a lace for us:

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. --Jesus in John 14:2

Sadly, Edon's unbelief blinded her to this.