Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

By Donne, John

Book Id: WPLBN0000700198
Format Type: PDF eBook
File Size: 185.79 KB.
Reproduction Date: 2005

Title:	Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
Author:	Donne, John
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Literature, Literature & thought, Literature & drama
Collections:	DjVu Editions Classic Literature
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	DjVu Editions Classic Literature


Citation APA MLA Chicago Donne, J. (n.d.). Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. Retrieved from http://gutenberg.cc/

Excerpt
Excerpt: VARIABLE, and therfore miserable condition of Man; this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute. I am surpriz?d with a sodaine change, and alteration to worse, and can impute it to no cause, nor call it by any name. We study Health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and ayre, and exercises, and we hew, and wee polish every stone, that goes to that building; and so our Health is a long and regular work; But in a minute a Canon batters all, overthrowes all, demolishes all; a Sicknes unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiositie; nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroyes us in an instant. O miserable condition of Man, which was not imprinted by God, who as hee is immortall himselfe, had put a coale, a beame of Immortalitie into us, which we might have blowen into a flame, but blew it out, by our first sinne; wee beggard our selves by hearkning after false riches, a?nd infatuated our selves by hearkning after false knowledge. So that now, we doe not onely die, but die upon the Rack, die by the torment of sicknesse; nor that onely, but are preafflicted, super-afflicted with these jelousies and suspitions, and apprehensions of Sicknes, before we can cal it a sicknes; we are not sure we are ill; one hand askes the other by the pulse, and our eye asks our urine, how we do. O multiplied misery I we die, and cannot enjoy death, because wee die in this torment of sicknes; we art tormented with sickness and cannot stay till the torment come, but preapprehensions and presages, prophecy those torments, which induce that death before either come; and our dissolution is conceived in these first changes, quickned in the sicknes it selfe, and borne in death, which beares date from these first changes. Is this the honour which Man hath by being a litle world, That he hath these earthquakes in him selfe, sodaine shakings; these lightnings, sodaine flashes; these thunders, sodaine noises; these Eclypses, sodain offuscations, and darknings of his senses; these Blazing stars, sodaine fiery exhalations; these Rivers of blood, sodaine red waters? Is he a world to himselfe onely therefore, that he hath inough in himself, not only to destroy, and execute himselfe, but to presage that execution upon himselfe; to assist the sickness to antidate the sickness to make the sicknes the more irremediable, by sad apprehensions, and as if JOHN DONNE he would make a fire the more vehement, by sprinkling water upon the coales, so to wrap a hote fever in cold Melancholy, least the fever alone should not destroy fast enough, without this contribution, nor perfit the work (which is destruction) except we joynd an artificiall sickness of our owne melancholy, to our natural, our un-naturall fever. O perplex?d discomposition, O ridling distemper, O miserable condition of Man!

Table of Contents
Table of Contents: I., 1 -- II., 3 -- III., 4 -- IV., 6 -- V., 8 -- VI., 10 -- VII., 11 -- VIII., 13 -- IX., 15 -- X., 17 -- XI., 19 -- XII., 21 -- XIII., 23 -- XIV., 25 -- XV., 27 -- XVI., 29 -- XVII., 31 -- XVIII., 33 -- XIX., 35 -- XX., 37 -- XXI., 39 -- XXII., 41 -- XXIII., 43