is sickness.
Besides, as I have lived to see (not as a witness only, but as a
partaker), the happiness of a part of your royal father's time, so shall
I live (in my way) to see the happiness of the times of your Highness
too, if this child of mine, inanimated by your gracious acceptation, may
so long preserve alive the memory of

Your Highness humblest and devotedest,

JOHN DONNE.

CONTENTS

_The Stations of the Sickness_

PAGE

1. The first alteration, the first grudging of the sickness 7

2. The strength and the function of the senses, and other
faculties, change and fail 12

3. The patient takes his bed 17

4. The physician is sent for 23

5. The physician comes 30

6. The physician is afraid 35

7. The physician desires to have others joined with him 43

8. The king sends his own physician 50

9. Upon their consultation, they prescribe 56

10. They find the disease to steal on insensibly, and endeavor
to meet with it so 63

11. They use cordials, to keep the venom and the malignity
of the disease from the heart 69

12. They apply pigeons, to draw the vapours from the head 77

13. The sickness declares the infection and malignity thereof
by spots 83

14. The Physicians observe these accidents to have fallen
upon the critical days 88

15. I sleep not day or night 96

16. From the bells of the church adjoining, I am daily
remembered of my burial in the funerals of others 102

17. Now, this bell tolling softly for another, says to me,
Thou must die 107

18. The bell rings out, and tells me in him, that I am dead 114

19. At last the physicians, after a long and stormy voyage,
see land: They have so good signs of the concoction of
the disease, as that they may safely proceed to purge 122

20. Upon these indications of digested matter, they proceed
to purge