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Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse  »  10. Resurrection, imperfect

Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.

John Donne (1573–1631)

10. Resurrection, imperfect

SLEEP sleep old Sun, thou canst not have repast

As yet, the wound thou took’st on friday last;

Sleepe then, and rest; The world may beare thy stay,

A better Sun rose before thee to day,

Who, not content to’englighten all that dwell

On the earths face, as thou, enlightned hell,

And made the darke fires languish in that vale,

As, at thy presence here, our fires grow pale.

Whose body having walk’d on earth, and now

Hasting to Heaven, would, that he might allow

Himselfe unto all stations, and fill all,

For these three daies become a minerall;

Hee was all gold when he lay downe, but rose

All tincture, and doth not alone dispose

Leaden and iron wills to good, but is

Of power to make even sinfull flesh like his.

Had one of those, whose credulous pietie

Thought, that a Soule one might discerne and see

Goe from a body,’at this sepulcher been,

And, issuing from the sheet, this body seen,

He would have justly thought this body a soule,

If not of any man, yet of the whole.

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