hey were like to her;
She, in whose body (if we dare prefer
This low world to so high a mark as she),
The western treasure, eastern spicery,
Europe and Afric, and the unknown rest
Were easily found, or what in them was best;
And when we've made this large discovery
Of all, in her some one part then will be
Twenty such parts, whose plenty and riches is
Enough to make twenty such worlds as this;
She, whom had they known, who did first betroth
The tutelar angels and assigned one both
To nations, cities, and to companies,
To functions, offices, and dignities,
And to each several man, to him and him,
They would have giv'n her one for every limb;
She, of whose soul if we may say 'twas gold,
Her body was th' electrum and did hold
Many degrees of that; we understood
Her by her sight; _her pure and eloquent blood_
_Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought_
_That one might almost say, her body thought_;
She, she thus richly and largely hous'd is gone
And chides us, slow-paced snails who crawl upon
Our prison's prison earth, nor think us well
Longer than whilst we bear our brittle shell."

But no short extracts will show Donne, and there is no room for a full
anthology. He must be read, and by every catholic student of English
literature should be regarded with a respect only "this side idolatry,"
though the respect need not carry with it blindness to his undoubtedly
glaring faults.

Those faults are not least seen in his Satires, though neither the
unbridled voluptuousness which makes his Elegies shocking to modern
propriety, nor the far-off conceit which appears in his meditative and
miscellaneous poems, is very strongly or specially represented here. Nor,
naturally enough, is the extreme beauty of thought and allusion distinctly
noteworthy in a class of verse which does not easily admit it. On the other
hand, the force and originality of Donne's intellect are nowhere better
shown. It is a constant fault of modern satirists that in their just
admiration for Horace and Juvenal they merely paraphrase them, and, instead
of going to the fountainhead and taking their matter from human nature,
merely give us fresh studies of _Ibam forte via sacra_ or the Tenth of
Juvenal, adjusted to the meridians of Paris or London. Although Donne is
not quite free from this fault, he is much freer than either of his
contemporaries, Regn