John Donne (1572-1631) was an Anglican priest, poet, member of Parliment, and Dean of St. Paul’s. He preached his last sermon during Lent of 1631. He left behind an impressive collection of works, but he his most popularly known lines are, “no man is an island,” and “never send to know for whom the bell tolls.” His poem, “Good Friday, 1631, Riding Westward” inspired this sketch.
Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward
Let man’s soul be a sphere, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey;
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirled by it.
Hence is’t, that I am carried towards the West,
This day, when my soul’s form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget:
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle, of too much weight for me.
Who sees Gods face, that is self-life, must die;
What a death were it then to see God die?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our souls, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for His apparel, ragged and torn?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,
Who was God’s partner here, and furnished thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom’d us?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and Thou look’st towards me,
O Saviour, as Thou hangst upon the tree.
I turn my back to Thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger; punish me,
Burn off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face.
—John Donne
(art by Israel Galindo)
