{"id":1609,"date":"2017-02-14T18:43:29","date_gmt":"2017-02-14T18:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/?p=1609"},"modified":"2017-02-14T18:43:29","modified_gmt":"2017-02-14T18:43:29","slug":"john-donne-love-poet-and-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/2017\/02\/14\/john-donne-love-poet-and-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"John Donne: Love Poet and Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a><\/p>\n

(John Donne Effigy by Nicholas Stone, 1631, at St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral, London)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nValentine\u2019s Day once again turns our thoughts to romantic love. Interestingly, one of the UK Telegraph\u2019s \u201c10 Best Love Poems\u201d <\/a>was penned by a man of seeming contradictions: A man who could capture erotic impulses in words that resound in elegance, he also embraced the Christian faith, becoming a priest and one of his era\u2019s best spokesmen for the faith.<\/p>\n

John Donne (1573-1631) was born in the Elizabethan era, a time of prosperity and of the flowering of literature in England. Donne\u2019s writings shine along with those of his contemporaries William Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, and Sir Francis Bacon.<\/p>\n

The poem selected by the Telegraph for special honor is \u201cThe Good Morrow\u201d published in his 1633 collection Songs and Sonnets<\/em>. I love the second stanza:<\/p>\n

If ever any beauty I did see,
\nWhich I desired, and got, \u2019twas but a dream of thee.
\nAnd now good-morrow to our waking souls,
\nWhich watch not one another out of fear;
\nFor love, all love of other sights controls,
\nAnd makes one little room an everywhere.<\/em><\/p>\n

For Donne it was a deep and abiding love that altered the course of his life. While working for Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, he fell in love with Anne More, Egerton\u2019s niece. They secretly married without the approval of her father, for which Donne was fired and prevented from obtaining a government position. He lived in poverty, struggling to provide for a rapidly growing family (Anne bore him 12 children). In 1614, formally blocked by King James I from any employment outside of the Church, John Donne took on holy orders.<\/p>\n

By all accounts, Donne was a very devoted husband. James Kiefer, in his online sketch of the life of Donne<\/a>, has opined: From the above information, the reader might conclude that Donne\u2019s professed religious belief was mere opportunism. But the evidence of his poetry is that, long before his ordination, and probably beginning with his marriage, his thoughts were turned toward holiness, and he saw in his wife Anne (as Dante had earlier seen in Beatrice) a glimpse of the glory of God, and in human love a revelation of the nature of Divine Love. <\/em><\/p>\n

Donne was devastated by Anne\u2019s death in 1617. He vowed never to marry again, despite the troubles that would cause in raising his children. He threw his energies fully into his priestly work, rising quickly to the post of Dean of St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral in London. He gained fame for his sermons, and was regarded in his day as the best preacher in England. Phrases from his writings remain familiar to us today, such as \u201cdeath be not proud\u201d, \u201cfor whom the bell tolls\u201d and \u201cno man is an island\u201d. Here is an excerpt:<\/p>\n

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 promentory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend\u2019s or of thine own were. Any man\u2019s death dimishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. <\/em>(John Donne\u2013meditation 17)<\/p>\n

He fell ill of stomach cancer, but managed to rise from his death bed on Feb 25, 1631, to deliver a final sermon entitled \u201cDeath\u2019s Duell,\u201d to a stunned audience at Whitehall Palace. Izaak Walton, in his The Life of Dr. John Donne, <\/em>wrote: \u201cWhen to the amazement of some beholders, he appeared in the pulpit, many of them thought he presented himself not to preach mortification by a living voice, but mortality by a decayed body, and a dying face.\u201d His publisher called it \u201cThe Doctors Owne Funerall Sermon.\u201d Donne exhorted his hearers with these final words:<\/p>\n

There we leave you in that blessed dependency, to hang upon him that hangs upon the cross, there bathe in his tears, there suck at his wounds, and lie down in peace in his grave, till he vouchsafe you a resurrection, and an ascension into that kingdom which He hath prepared for you with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood. Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n

A marble effigy of Donne made soon after his death can be viewed at St Paul\u2019s cathedral, where it survived the 1666 Great Fire of London. He is remembered with a feast day in the Anglican Church calendar, on March 31.<\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Valentine\u2019s Day once again turns our thoughts to romantic love. Interestingly, one of the UK Telegraph\u2019s \u201c10 Best Love Poems\u201d was penned by a man of seeming contradictions: A man who could capture erotic impulses in words that resound in elegance, he also embraced the Christian faith, becoming a priest and one of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[268,310,99,369],"tags":[745,746,741,77,744,743,211],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-and-literature","category-feasts-and-seasons","category-heroes-of-the-faith","category-theological-ideas","tag-the-good-morrow","tag-anne-more","tag-john-donne","tag-love","tag-meditation-xvii","tag-poetry","tag-st-pauls-cathedral"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1621,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions\/1621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}