Hymn to God, My God, in my Sickness

    Since I am coming to that holy room,

        Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,

    I shall be made thy music; as I come

        I tune the instrument here at the door,

        And what I must do then, think here before.

    Whilst my physicians by their love are grown

        Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie

    Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown

        That this is my south-west discovery,

    Per fretum febris, by these straits to die,

  I joy, that in these straits I see my west;

      For, though their currents yield return to none,

  What shall my west hurt me? As west and east

      In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,

      So death doth touch the resurrection.

  Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are

      The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?

  Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar,

      All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them,

      Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.

  We think that Paradise and Calvary,

      Christ's cross, and Adam's tree, stood in one place;

  Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;

      As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,

      May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.

  So, in his purple wrapp'd, receive me, Lord;

      By these his thorns, give me his other crown;

  And as to others' souls I preach'd thy word,

      Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:

  "Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down."

NOTES

Composition Date:

1593-97

Form:

ababb

1.

Walton says this poem was written in March 1631,

a few days before Donne's death, but this has been

questioned in favour of 1623.

3.

thy music: part of God's orchestra or company of musicians.

10.

Per fretum febris: through the straits of fever,

with a pun on straits.

13-15.

In one of his sermons Donne writes: "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 ... conforme thee to him [Christ] and

thy West is East ... the name of Christ is Oriens, the East....''

18.

Anyan: Bering Straits.

20.

the three sons of Noah, to whom were traditionally

given Europe, Africa, and Asia.

21-22.

There is no authority for any precise identity, but

appropriate correspondences of this kind are common in

early biblical commentaries\; place may mean `region.'