Each Man Is An Island by Dennis Allen Lange

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In midst of isolation, quarantine,
My grass still goes to work and it does thrive.
This morning while I mowed it ere the rain,
To turn around the mail”man” used my drive.
And smiling, I waved, and she waved at me;
Both glad to see another one alive.

In this new world of caution lest we die,
Smoke signals or a distant wave must do
(Replacing handshakes or heartwarming hugs)
For each brave kayak with a lonely crew.
When one’s a Crusoe on his private isle,
His inner strength and God must see him through.

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photo by Kevin Tuck at https://www.rgbstock.com/photo/ply57HE/Lofoten+Islands

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© Dennis Allen Lange, 2020.

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Crucifying by John Donne

By miracles exceeding power of man,
He faith in some, envy in some begat,
For, what weak spirits admire, ambitions, hate,
In both affections many to him ran,
But Oh! the worst are most, they will and can,
Alas, and do, unto the immaculate,
Whose creature fate is, now prescribe a fate,
Measuring self-life’s infinity to a span
Nay to an inch. Lo, where condemned he
Bears his own cross, with pain, yet by and by
When it bears him, he must bear more and die.
Now thou art lifted up, draw me to thee,
And at thy death giving such liberal dole,
Moist, with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul.

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The Good-Morrow by John Donne

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we lov’d? were we not wean’d till then?
But suck’d on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?
T’was so; But this, all pleasures fancies bee.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir’d, and got, t’was but a dreame of thee. 

And now good morrow to our waking soules,
Which watch not one another out of feare;
For love, all love of other sights controules,
And makes one little roome, an every where.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let Maps to other, worlds on worlds have showne,
Let us possesse one world, each hath one, and is one. 

My face is thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest,
Where can we finde two better hemispheares
Without sharpe North, without declining West?
What ever dyes, was not mixt equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.

 

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A Hymn To God The Father by John Donne

A……..A Hymn To God The Father

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
…Which is my sin though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive those sins through which I run,
…And do them still, though still I do deplore?
……When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
………For I have more. 

Wilt thou forgive that sin by which I won
…Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
…A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
……When thou has done, thou has not done,
………For I have more. 

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
…My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
Swear by thyself that at my death thy Sun
…Shall shine as it shines now, and heretofore;
……And having done that, thou hast done.
………I have no more.

 

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Song by John Donne

……………Song

Go and catch a falling star,
…Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
…Or who cleft the Devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
……And find
……What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou beest born to strange sights,
…Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
…Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
……And swear
……Nowhere
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find’st one, let me know,
…Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
…Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true when you met her,
And last till you write your letter,
……Yet she
……Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

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A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
   And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
   The breath goes now, and some say, No;

So let us melt, and make no noise,
   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
Twere profanation of our joys
   To tell the laity our love. 

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears,
   Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
   Though greater far, is innocent. 

Dull sublunary lovers’ love
   (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
   Those things which elemented it. 

But we, by a love so much refined
   That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
   Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. 

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
   Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
   Like gold to airy thinness beat. 

If they be two, they are two so
   As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
   To move, but doth, if th’ other do. 

And though it in the center sit,
   Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
   And grows erect, as that comes home. 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
   Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
   And makes me end where I begun.

 

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Break Of Day by John Donne

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

                Break Of Day

‘Tis true, ‘tis day; what though it be?
Oh, wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because ‘tis light?
Did we lie down because ‘twas night?
Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither
Should, in despite of light, keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say:
That, being well, I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honor so,
That I would not from him that had them go.

Must business thee from hence remove?
Oh, that’s the worst disease of love;
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business and makes love, doth do
Such wrong as when a married man doth woo.

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