The date which Walton gives for this poem, March 23, 1630, is of
course March 23, 1631, i.e. eight days before the writer's death.
Donne's tense and torturing will never relaxed its hold before the
final moment: Being speechlesse, he did (as Saint Stephen) look
steadfastly towards heaven, till he saw the Sonne of God standing at
the right hand of his Father; And being satisfied with this blessed
sight, (as his soule ascended, and his last breath departed from him)
he closed his owne eyes, and then disposed his hands and body into
such a posture, as required no alteration by those that came to shroud
him.' _Walton_ (1670).
Donne's monument had been designed by himself and shows him thus
shrouded. The epitaph too is his own composition and is the natural
supplement to this hymn:
JOHANNES DONNE
SAC. THEOL. PROFESS.
POST VARIA STVDIA QVIBVS AB ANNIS
TENERRIMIS FIDELITER, NEC INFELICITER
INCVBVIT;
INSTINCTV ET IMPVLSV SP. SANCTI, MONITV
ET HORTATV
REGIS JACOBI, ORDINES SACROS AMPLEXVS
ANNO SVI JESV MDCXIV. ET SVÆ ÆTATIS XLII
DECANATV HVJVS ECCLESIÆ INDVTVS
XXVII NOVEMBRIS, MDCXXI.
EXVTVS MORTE VLTIMO DIE MARTII MDCXXXI.
HIC LICET IN OCCIDVO CINERE ASPICIT EVM
CVJVS NOMEN EST ORIENS.
The reference in the last line of the epitaph, and the figure of the
map with which he plays in the second and third stanzas of the _Hymne_
are both illustrated by a passage in a sermon on Psalm vi. 8-10: 'In
a flat Map, there goes no more, to make West East, though they be
distant in an extremity, but to paste that flat Map upon a round body,
and then West and East are all one. In a flat soule, in a dejected
conscience, in a troubled spirit, there goes no more to the making
of that trouble, peace, then to apply that trouble to the body of the
Merits, to the body of the Gospel of Christ Jesus, and conforme thee
to him, and thy West is East, thy Trouble of spirit is Tranquillity
of spirit. The name of Christ is _Oriens_, _The East_; And yet Lucifer
himself is called _Filius Orientis_, _The Son of the East_. If thou
beest fallen by _Lucifer_, fallen to _Lucifer_, and not fallen as
_Lucifer_, to a senselessnesse of thy fall, and an impenitiblenesse
therein, but to a troubled spirit, still thy prospect is the East,
still thy Climate is heaven, still thy Haven is Jerusalem; for, in
our lowest dejection of all, even in the dust of the grave, we are
so composed, so layed down, as that we look to the East: If I could
beleeve that _Trajan_, or _Tecla_, could look Eastward, that is,
towards Christ, in Hell, I could beleeve with them of Rome, that
Trajan and Tecla were redeemed by prayer out of hell.' _Sermons_ 80.
55. 558.
For 'the name of Christ is Oriens'. Donne refers in the margin to
_Zachariae_ vi. 12: 'Et loqueris ad eum dicens: Haec ait Dominus
exercituum, dicens: ECCE VIR ORIENS NOMEN EJUS; et subter eum orietur,
et aedificabit templum Domino.' In the English versions, Genevan and
Authorized, the words run 'whose name is the Branch', but to Donne the
Vulgate was the form in which he knew the Scriptures most intimately.
At the same time he consulted and refers to the English versions
frequently: 'that which we call the _Bishops Bible_, nor that which
we call the _Geneva Bible_, and that which we may call the _Kings_.'
_Sermons_ 80. 50. 506.
The difference between the two versions is due, I understand, to
the fact that the Hebrew participle 'rising' and the Hebrew word for
'branch' contain the same consonants. In unpointed Hebrew it was,
therefore, possible to confound them. The Septuagint version is
[Greek: Anatolê onoma autou].
In describing the preparations for making Donne's tomb Walton says:
'Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of
the sheet turned aside, as might show his lean, pale, and deathlike
face, which was purposely turned towards the east, from whence he
expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus.' Walton
says that he stood, but Mr. Hamo Thornycroft has pointed out that the
drapery by its folds reveals that it was modelled from a recumbent
figure. Gosse, _Life, &c_., ii. 288.
ll. 18-20. _Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltare,
All streights, and none but streights, are wayes to them._
Grosart and Chambers have boggled unnecessarily at these lines. The
former inserts an unnecessary and unmetrical 'are' after 'Gibraltare'.
The latter interpolates a mark of interrogation after 'Gibraltare',
putting 'Anyan, and Magellan and Gibraltare' on a level with the
Pacific, the 'eastern riches' and Jerusalem, i.e. _six_ possible homes
instead of _three_. What the poet says is simply, 'Be my home in the
Pacific, or in the rich east, or in Jerusalem, to each I must sail
through a strait, viz. Anyan (i.e. Behring Strait) if I go west by the
North-West passage, or Magellan, or Gibraltar. These, all of which are
straits, are ways to them, and none but straits are ways to them.'
A condensed construction makes 'are ways to them' predicate to
two subjects. For 'the straight of Anian' see Hakluyt's _Principal
Navigations_, vol. vii, Glasgow, 1904, esp. the map at p. 256, which
shows very distinctly how the 'Straight of Anian' was conceived to
separate America from 'Cathaia in Asia' and to lead right on to
Japan and the 'Ilandes of Moluccae', 'the eastern riches.' The
_Mare Pacificum_ lies further to the south and east, entered by the
'Straight of Magellanes' between Peru and the 'Terra del Fuego', which
latter is not an island but part of the great 'Terra Australis'. Thus
'none but straights' lead to the 'eastern riches' or the Pacific.
'Outre ce que les navigations des modernes ont des-jà presque
descouvert que ce n'est point une isle, ains terre ferme et continente
avec l'Inde orientale d'un costé, et avec les terres qui sont soubs
les deux poles d'autre part; ou, si elle en est separée, que c'est
d'un si petit destroit et intervalle, qu'elle ne merite pas d'estre
nommé isle pour cela.' Montaigne, _Essais_, i. 31: _Des Cannibales_.
The conceit about the 'straits' Donne had already used: 'a narrower
way but to a better Land; thorow Straits; 'tis true; but to the
_Pacifique_ Sea, The consideration of the treasure of the Godly Man
in this World, and God's treasure towards him, both in this, and the
next.' _Sermons_ 26. 5. 71.
'Who ever amongst our Fathers thought of any other way to the
Moluccaes, or to China, then by the Promontory of _Good Hope_? Yet
another way opened itself to _Magellan_; a Straite; it is true; but
yet a way thither; and who knows yet, whether there may not be a
North-East, and a North-West way thither, besides?' _Sermons_ 80. 24.
241.
Nevertheless by the time Donne wrote his hymn the sea to the south of
Terra del Fuego had recently been discovered. He is using the language
of a slightly earlier date, of his own youth, when travels and far
countries were much in his imagination. In 1617 George, Lord Carew,
writing to Sir Thomas Roe, Ambassador at the Court of the Mogul, says:
'The Hollanders have discovered to the southward of the Strayghts of
Magellen an open sea and free passage to the south sea.' _Letters of
George, Lord Carew to Sir Thomas Roe_, Camden Society, 1860. For the
'Straight of Anyan' compare also:
This makes the foisting traveller to sweare,
And face out many a lie within the yeere.
And if he have beene an howre or two aboarde
To spew a little gall: then by the Lord,
He hath beene in both th'Indias, East and West,
Talks of Guiana, China, and the rest,
The straights of Gibraltare, and Ænian
Are but hard by; no, nor the Magellane:
Mandeville, Candish, sea-experienst Drake
Came never neere him, if he truly crake.
Gilpin, _Skialetheia_, Satyre I.
For 'Ænian' in this passage Grosart conjectures 'Aegean'! I have put a
semicolon for a comma in the third last line quoted. I take it and the
preceding to be a quotation from the traveller's talk.