Classic and Contemporary Poetry
AN ELEGY UPON THE DEATH OF DOCTOR DONNE, DEAN OF PAUL'S, by THOMAS CAREW Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Can we not force from widowed poetry Last Line: Apollo's first, at last the true god's priest. Variant Title(s): An Elegy Upon The Death Of The Dean Of Paul's, John Donne Subject(s): Donne, John (1572-1631); Poetry & Poets | ||||||||
Can we not force from widowed poetry, Now thou art dead, great Donne, one elegy To crown thy hearse? Why yet did we not trust, Though with unkneaded dough-baked prose, thy dust, Such as the unscissored lect'rer from the flower Of fading rhetoric, short-lived as his hour, Dry as the sand that measures it, should lay Upon the ashes on the funeral day? Have we nor tune, nor voice? Didst thou dispense Through all our language both the words and sense? 'Tis a sad truth. The pulpit may her plain And sober Christian precepts still retain; Doctrines it may, and wholesome uses, frame, Grave homilies and lectures; but the flame Of thy brave soul, that shot such heat and light As burnt our earth and made our darkness bright, Committed holy rapes upon our will, Did through the eye the melting heart distill, And the deep knowledge of dark truths so teach As sense might judge what fancy could not reach, Must be desired forever. So the fire That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic choir, Which, kindled first by thy Promethean breath, Glowed here a while, lies quenched now in thy death. The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds O'erspread, was purged by thee; the lazy seeds Of servile imitation thrown away, And fresh invention planted: thou didst pay The debts of our penurious bankrupt age; Licentious thefts, that make poetic rage A mimic fury, when our souls must be Possessed, or with Anacreon's ecstasy, Or Pindar's, not their own; the subtle cheat Of sly exchanges, and the juggling feat Of two-edged words, or whatsoever wrong By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue, Thou hast redeemed, and opened us a mine Of rich and pregnant fancy, drawn a line Of masculine expression, which had good Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood Our superstitious fools admire, and hold Their lead more precious than thy burnished gold, Thou hadst been their exchequer, and no more They in each other's dung had searched for ore. Thou shalt yield no precedence, but of time And the blind fate of language, whose tuned chime More charms the outward sense; yet thou mayest claim From so great disadvantage greater fame, Since to the awe of thy imperious wit Our troublesome language bends, made only fit With her tough thick-ribbed hoops, to gird about Thy giant fancy, which had proved too stout For their soft melting phrases. As in time They had the start, so did they cull the prime Buds of invention many a hundred year, And left the rifled fields, besides the fear To touch their harvest; yet from those bare lands Of what is only thine, thy only hands (And that their smallest work) have gleaned more Than all those times and tongues could reap before. But thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be Too hard for libertines in poetry. They will recall the goodly exiled train Of gods and goddesses, which in thy just reign Were banished nobler poems; now with these The silenced tales i' th' Metamorphoses Shall stuff their lines and swell the windy page, Till verse, refined by thee in this last age, Turn ballad-rhyme, or those old idols be Adored again with new apostasy. O pardon me, that break with untuned verse The reverend silence that attends thy hearse, Whose solemn awful murmurs were to thee, More than these faint lines, a loud elegy, That did proclaim in a dumb eloquence The death of all the arts, whose influence, Grown feeble, in these panting numbers lies Gasping short-winded accents, and so dies: So doth the swiftly turning wheel not stand In th' instant we withdraw the moving hand, But some small time retain a faint weak course By virtue of the first impulsive force; And so whilst I cast on thy funeral pile Thy crown of bays, oh, let it crack awhile And spit disdain, till the devouring flashes Suck all the moisture up; then turn to ashes. I will not draw thee envy to engross All thy perfections, or weep all the loss; Those are too numerous for one elegy, And this too great to be expressed by me. Let others carve the rest; it shall suffice I on thy grave this epitaph incise: Here lies a king, that ruled as he thought fit The universal monarchy of wit; Here lies two flamens [priests], and both those the best: Apollo's first, at last the true God's priest. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS by ROBERT HASS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS A SONG by ROBERT HASS THE FATALIST: TIME IS FILLED by LYN HEJINIAN OXOTA: A SHORT RUSSIAN NOVEL: CHAPTER 192 by LYN HEJINIAN LET ME TELL YOU WHAT A POEM BRINGS by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA JUNE JOURNALS 6/25/88 by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA FOLLOW ROZEWICZ by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA HAVING INTENDED TO MERELY PICK ON AN OIL COMPANY, THE POEM GOES AWRY by HICOK. BOB A DEPOSITION FROM LOVE by THOMAS CAREW A PASTORAL DIALOGUE: SHEPHERD, NYMPH, CHORUS by THOMAS CAREW |
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