quoted in full as the
expression of one point of view in regard to Donne's work:

When thy loose raptures, Donne, shall meet with those
That do confine
Tuning unto the duller line,
And sing not but in sanctified prose,
How will they, with sharper eyes,
The foreskin of thy fancy circumcise,
And fear thy wantonness should now begin
Example, that hath ceased to be sin!
And that fear fans their heat; whilst knowing eyes
Will not admire
At this strange fire
That here is mingled with thy sacrifice,
But dare read even thy wanton story
As thy confession, not thy glory;
And will so envy both to future times,
That they would buy thy goodness with thy crimes.

To the modern reader, on the contrary, it will seem that there is as much
divinity in the best of the love-poems as in the best of the religious
ones. Donne's last word as a secular poet may well be regarded as having
been uttered in that great poem in celebration of lasting love, _The
Anniversary_, which closes with so majestic a sweep:

Here upon earth we are kings, and none but we
Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
Who is so safe as we, where none can do
Treason to us, except one of us two?
True and false fears let us refrain;
Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write three-score: this is the second of our reign.

Donne's conversion as a lover was obviously as complete and revolutionary
as his conversion in religion.

It is said, indeed, to have led to his conversion to passionate religion.
When his marriage with Sir George More's sixteen-year-old daughter brought
him at first only imprisonment and poverty, he summed up the sorrows of
the situation in the famous line--a line which has some additional
interest as suggesting the correct pronunciation of his name:

John Donne; Anne Donne; Undone.

His married life, however, in spite of a succession of miseries due to
ill-health, debt and thwarted ambition, seems to have been happy beyond
prophecy; and when at the end of sixteen years his wife died in childbed,
after having borne him twelve children, a religious crisis resulted that
turned his conventional churchmanship into sanctity. His original change
from Catholicism to Protestantism has been already mentioned. Most of the
authorities are agreed, however, that this was a conversion in a f