Complete English Poems: John Donne (Penguin Classics)
John Donne
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busker on
09/02/2004
11:19:16 UTC
Complete English Poems: John Donne
The great John Donne: b 1572, educ Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, secretly married to Anne More 1601 (and imprisoned by her pa-in-law two months later); ordained priest 1615 with a Doctorate of Divinity at Cambridge the aame year. Dean of St Paul's 1621, which he held til death in 1631.
One of the great poets - certainly one of the most quoted and beloved
love poets - of them all, and the only reading I ever did at school that I recognized at the time as lasting with me long past those grisly days.
You know him well:
"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."
"Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks."
"I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we lov'd? were we not wean'd till then?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers den?"
This particular volume is superbly edited by A.J Smith - oh, to have had it my own early days - guiding us through the complexities of Donne's poetry with close attention to the text and quoting important manuscript variants. It's also the first to make use of the newly uncovered verse letter to Lady Carey and Mistress Essex Rich. Worth casting oneself atop the pyre so that this might survive.
