In Memoriam

My one-time English teacher and friend of many years, Ilid Landry, died on 10 June. She asked for John Donne's poem ‘Death be not proud’ to be read at her funeral, and it was read superbly, by another former pupil of hers. Donne was her favourite poet.

So here, in memory of Ilid, is another of Donne’s poems. I am not a Donne enthusiast. My favourite among the metaphysicals is Andrew Marvell. But this poem I have always liked a lot:

Loves growth

I scarce beleeve my love to be so pure
     As I had thought it was,
     Because it doth endure
Vicissitude, and season, as the grasse;
Me thinkes I lyed all winter, when I swore,
My love was infinite, if spring make it more.

But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence,
But mixt of all stuffes, paining soule, or sense,
And of the Sunne his working vigour borrow,
Love’s not so pure, and abstract, as they use
To say, which have no Mistresse but their Muse,
But as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.

And yet no greater, but more eminent,
     Love by the spring is grown ;
     As in the firmament,
Starres by the Sunne are not inlarg’d, but showne.
Gentle love deeds, as blossomes on a bough,
From loves awakened root do bud out now.

If, as in water stir’d more circles bee
Produc’d by one, love such additions take,
Those like so many spheares, but one heaven make,
For, they are all concentrique unto thee;
And though each spring doe adde to love new heate,
As princes doe in times of action get
New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate the springs encrease.

John Donne (1573–1631)