The speaker says
that since he will soon die and come to “that holy room” where he will be made
into the music of God as sung by a choir of saints, he tunes “the instrument”
now and thinks what he will do when the final moment comes. He likens his
doctors to cosmographers and himself to a map, lying flat on the bed to be
shown “that this is my south-west discovery / Per fretum febris, by
these straits to die.” He rejoices, for in those straits he sees his “west,”
his death, whose currents “yield return to none,” yet which will not harm him.
West and east meet and join in all flat maps (the speaker says again that he is
a flat map), and in the same way, death is one with the resurrection.
The speaker asks
whether his home is the Pacific Sea, or the eastern riches, or Jerusalem. He
lists the straights of Anyan, Magellan, and Gibraltar, and says that only
straits can offer access to paradise, whether it lies “where Japhet dwelt, or
Cham, or Shem.” The speaker says that “Paradise and Calvary, / Christ’s Cross,
and Adam’s tree” stood in the same place. He asks God to look and to note that
both Adams (Christ being the second Adam) are unified in him; as the first
Adam’s sweat surrounds his face, he says, may the second Adam’s blood embrace
his soul. He asks God to receive him wrapped in the purple of Christ, and, “by
these his thorns,” to give him Christ’s other crown. As he preached the word of
God to others’ souls, he says, let this be his sermon to his own soul:
“Therefore that he may raise the Lord throws down.”
Form
Like many of Donne’s
religious poems, the “Hymn to God my God” is formally somewhat simpler than
many of his metaphysical secular poems. Each of the six five-line stanzas
follows an ABABB rhyme scheme, and the poem is metered throughout in iambic
pentameter.
Commentary
Scholars are
divided over the question of whether this poem was written on Donne’s deathbed
in 1630 or during the life-threatening fever he
contracted in 1623. In either case, the “Hymn to
God my God” was certainly written at a time when Donne believed he was likely
to die. This beautiful, lyrical, and complicated poem represents his mind’s
attempt to summarize itself, and his attempt to offer, as he says, a sermon to
his soul. In the first stanza, the speaker looks forward to the time when he
will be in “that holy room” where he will be made into God’s music—an
extraordinary image—with His choir of saints. In preparation for that time, he
says, he will “tune the instrument” (his soul) by writing this poem.
The next several
stanzas, devoted to the striking image of Donne’s body as a map looked over by
his navigator-doctors, develop an elaborate geographical symbolism with which
to explain his condition. He is entering, he says, his “south-west
discovery”—the south being, traditionally, the region of heat (or fever) and
the west being the site of the sunset and, thus, in this poem, the region of
death. (A key to this geographical symbolism can be found in A.J. Smith’s
concise
notation in the
Penguin Classics edition of Donne’s Complete English Poems.) The speaker
says that his discovery is made Per fretum febris, or by the strait of
fever, and that he will die “by these straits.”
Donne employs an
elaborate pun on the idea of “straits,” a word that denotes the narrow passages
of water that connect oceans, yet which also refers to grim personal
difficulties (as in “dire straights”): Donne’s personal struggles with his
illness are like the straits that will connect him to the paradise of the
Pacific Sea, Jerusalem, and the eastern riches; no matter where one is in the
world—in the region of Japhet, Cham, or Shem—such treasures can only be reached
through straits. (Japhet, Cham, and Shem were the sons of Noah, who divided the
world between them after the ark came to rest: Japhet lived in Europe, Cham
lived in Africa, and Shem lived in Asia.) Essentially, all of this word play
and allusion is merely another way of saying that Donne expects his fever to
lead him to heaven (even on his deathbed, his mind delighted in spinning
metaphysical complexities). The speaker says that on maps, west and east are
one—if one travels far enough in either direction, one ends up on the other
side of the map—and, therefore, his death in the “west” will lead to his
“eastern” resurrection.
He then shifts to a
dramatically different set of images, claiming that Christ’s Cross and Adam’s
tree stood physically on the same place, and that by the same token, both the
characteristics of Adam (sin and toil) and of Christ (resurrection and purity)
are present in Donne himself: The phrase “Look Lord, and find both Adams met in
me” is Donne’s most perfect statement of the contrary strains of spirituality
and carnality that run through his poems and ran through his life. As the sweat
of the first Adam (who was cursed to work after expulsion from Eden) surrounds
his face in his fever, he hopes the blood of Christ, the second Adam, will
embrace and purify his soul.
Donne concludes by
charting his actual entry into heaven, saying that he hopes to be received by
God wrapped in the purple garment of Christ—purple with blood and with
triumph—and to obtain his crown. As his final poetic act, he writes a sermon
for his own soul, just as he preached sermons to the souls of others during his
years as a priest. The Lord, he says, throws down that he may raise up; Donne,
thrown down by the fever, will be lifted up to heaven, where his soul, having
been “tuned” now on Earth, may be used to make the music of God.
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