Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON DONNE'S FIRST POEM, by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ON DONNE'S FIRST POEM, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Be proud, as spaniards! And leap for pride, ye fleas
Last Line: The natural alien of their negative eye.
Subject(s): Donne, John (1572-1631); Poetry & Poets


Be proud, as Spaniards! and Leap for Pride, ye Fleas
Henceforth in Nature's Minim World Grandees,
In Phoebus' Archives registered are ye --
And this your Patent of Nobility.
No Skip-Jacks now, nor civiller Skip-Johns,
Dread Anthropophagi! Specks of living Bronze,
I hail you one & all, sans Pros or Cons,
Descendants from a noble Race of Dons.

What tho' that great ancestral Flea be gone
Immortal with immortalizing Donne --
His earthly Spots bleach'd off as Papists gloze,
In purgatory fire on Bardolph's Nose,
Or else starved out, his aery tread defied
By the dry Potticary's bladdery Hide,
Which cross'd unchang'd and still keeps in ghost-Light
Of lank Half-nothings his, the thinnest Sprite
The sole true Something this in Limbo Den
It frightens Ghosts as Ghosts here frighten men --
For skimming in the wake, it mock'd the care
Of the Old Boat-God for his Farthing Fare,
Tho' Irus' Ghost itself he neer frown'd blacker on,
The skin and skin-pent Druggist crost the Acheron,
Styx and with Puriphlegethon Cocytus:
The very names, methinks, might thither fright us --
Unchang'd it cross'd & shall, some fated Hour,
Be pulverized by Demogorgon's Power
And given as poison, to anni'late Souls --
Even now it shrinks them! they shrink in, as Moles
(Nature's mute Monks, live Mandrakes of the ground)
Creep back from Light, then listen for its Sound --
See but to dread, and dread they know not why
The natural Alien of their negative Eye.





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