John Donne's "Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Eve"

 ‘TIS the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world’s whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be:
At the next world, that is, at the next spring ;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;
He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ;
I, by Love’s limbec, am the grave
Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown’d the whole world, us two ; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else ; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing the elixir grown ;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know ; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am none ; nor will my sun renew
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight is.

-- John Donne (1572- 1631)

"Considered by many to be the greatest of all Capricorn odes." -- Alastair Crowley

Comments

[Mark Shulgasser]

" . . . .the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust . . ."

Nice one! Of course, at the time of the writing of this poem England was still using the Julian calendar, so St. Lucy's eve, Dec. 13, took place in Capricorn -- no longer.
The switch to the Gregorian calendar shifted ancient astronomically-based celebrations away from their original heavenly correspondences, one reason why it was opposed.

Here's a dark view of Christmas from Capricorn poet Osip Mandelstam, born January 15 [Old Style January 3] 1891

Where night casts anchor
in the zodiac’s forsaken constellations,
where are you flying to,
October’s withered leaves,
forgotten suckling babes of dark?
Why have you fallen from the tree of life?
Bethlehem for you is alien and strange,
nor have you ever known a crib.

Alas, you leave no heirs behind;
a sexless bitchiness possesses you:
childless you shall go down
into your lamented graves;
and on the very brink of silence
where no remembrance is kept by nature,
it’s not to you the underlying nations
are condemned; they’re fated for the stars.
from 50 Poems, trans. Bernard Meares 1977

While I'm here, may I add to the list of Capricorn poets Philip Levine, author of What Work Is, and Ashes? ( b. Jan. 10, 1928)

Season's Greetings
--- Blue Zenith

[The Best American Poetry]

Thank you for the stellar commentary -- and the warm greetings. I wish you good fortune in this year full of portents and signs where signs and wonders had been wanted. Let us drink to Donne's "new lust" and to Mandelstam's chilling evocation of the "zodiac's forsaken constellations." -- DL

[Mark Shulgasser]

Not to be intrusive . . but we might observe Mandelstam's Old Style birthday:

And squashing the worn-out year of my birth
in my fist with the crowd and the herd
I whisper through bloodless lips:
"I was born in the night of the second and third
of January in the eighteen ninety-first
untrustworthy year, and the centuries
surround me with fire."

again Bernard Meares 1977 translated

Then read (if you like) in The Ode on Slate, of

"A mighty junction of star with star,
the flinty path in an older song,
in language of flint and air combined . . ."

[Is that the zodiac again?] and of the mountain and Capricorn, earth's most ambitious aspect,

"the steeply sloping goats' home cities". . .

--Blue Z.

[Terence Winch]

John Donne----that man could write a poem.