next stanza by a return to the former idea. He is
alternately a map and a man sailing on the map of himself. But the first
half of the stanza is lovely: my reader must remember that the region of
the West was at that time the Land of Promise to England.

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.

It is hardly worth while, except for the strangeness of the phenomenon,
to spend any time in elucidating this. Once more a map, he is that of the
two hemispheres, in which the east of the one touches the west of the
other. Could anything be much more unmusical than the line, "In all flat
maps (and I am one) are one"? But the next stanza is worse.

Is the Pacific sea my home? Or are
The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
Anvan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar?
All straits, and none but straits are ways to them,
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Sem.

The meaning of the stanza is this: there is no earthly home: all these
places are only straits that lead home, just as they themselves cannot be
reached but through straits.

Let my reader now forget all but the first stanza, and take it along with
the following, the last two:

We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ's cross and Adam's tree, stood in one place:
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.

So, in his purple wrapped, receive me, Lord;
By these his thorns give me his other crown;
And as to others' souls I preached thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:
_Therefore, that he may raise, the Lord throws down._

Surely these are very fine, especially the middle verse of the former and
the first verse of the latter stanza. The three stanzas together make us
lovingly regret that Dr. Donne should have ridden his Pegasus over quarry
and housetop, instead of teaching him his paces.

The next I quote is artistic throughout. Perhaps the fact, of which we
are informed by Izaak Walton, "that he caused it to be set to a grave and
solemn tune, and to be often sung to the organ by the choristers of St.
Paul's church in his own hearing, especially at the evening service," may
have something to do with its degree of perfection. There is no sign