as entire to none, and few had part.

Donne shows women themselves, in delight, anger, or despair; they know
that he finds nothing in the world more interesting, and they much more
than forgive him for all the ill he says of them. If women most
conscious of their sex were ever to read Donne, they would say, He was a
great lover; he understood.

And, in the poems of divine love, there is the same quality of mental
emotion as in the poems of human love. Donne adores God reasonably,
knowing why he adores Him. He renders thanks point by point, celebrates
the heavenly perfections with metaphysical precision, and is no vaguer
with God than with woman. Donne knew what he believed and why he
believed, and is carried into no heat or mist as he tells over the
recording rosary of his devotions. His _Holy Sonnets_ are a kind of
argument with God; they tell over, and discuss, and resolve, such
perplexities of faith and reason as would really occur to a speculative
brain like his. Thought crowds in upon thought, in these tightly packed
lines, which but rarely admit a splendour of this kind:

At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go.

More typical is this too knotted beginning of another sonnet:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

Having something very minute and very exact to say, he hates to leave
anything out; dreading diffuseness, as he dreads the tame sweetness of
an easy melody, he will use only the smallest possible number of words
to render his thought; and so, as here, he is too often ingenious rather
than felicitous, forgetting that to the poet poetry comes first, and all
the rest afterwards.

For the writing of great poetry something more is needed than to be a
poet and to have great occasions. Donne was a poet, and he had the
passions and the passionate adventures, in body and mind, which make the
material for poetry; he was sincere to himself in expressing what he
really felt under the burden of strong emotion and sharp sensation.
Almost every poem that he wrote is written on a genuine inspiration, a
genuine personal inspiration, but most of his poems seem to have been
written befor