Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Hymn to God, my God in my sickness

From another favourite poem by John Donne. I love the imagery of the map


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 those 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.