A Meditation on Good Friday

This is a great poem for all of us who have to work on a day where we should be thinking about Something Else.

This poem features some of the prettiest rhetoric in all Christian writing in English, but you have to get through that first sentence to appreciate it. That sentence is difficult to us, because we live in a post-Newtonian world where the movement of the spheres is controlled by gravity. But that wasn't John Donne's world. The idea behind that first sentence is basically this: "Imagine that your soul is like a sphere that should be ruled by devotion. But just like other spheres can fall under the influence of foreign bodies and therefore get pulled out of their normal position, our souls can be moved by pleasure or business instead of devotion." Then he goes on to explain that this is why he is going West, even though -- because it is Good Friday -- his thoughts move toward the East. This rest of it is pretty straightforward to anyone familiar with the Gospels.


Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motions, lose their owne,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or business, so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is 't, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is self life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And turne all spheares at once, peirc'd with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag'd, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here, and furnish'd thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom'd us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They'are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till they mercies bid thee leave.
O think mee worth thine anger, punish mee.
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may'st know mee, and I'll turne my face.

-- John Donne