“When Magistrates Doe Mis-Apply”

 David Alan Black

I enjoy reading the poetry of John Donne (1572-1631). Many of his poems deal with conventional subjects such as passion, sorrow, and separation. For example, his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624) includes the well-known reflection on the meaning of a distant funeral bell:

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; …
any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

Donne was raised a Roman Catholic in a time when being Catholic in England could get you sent to prison and harboring a priest could get you executed. He converted to Anglicanism during the 1590s. At the age of 11 he entered the University of Oxford, where he studied for three years. Donne never received a degree because he wouldn’t take the oath declaring the King of England as the head of the church.

In 1596 Donne joined the naval expedition against Cádiz, Spain. On his return to England, he was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Keeper of the Great Seal. Donne’s secret marriage in 1601 to Egerton’s 17 year-old niece, Anne More, resulted in his dismissal from this position. The poet summed up the experience in a characteristic pun: “John Donne, Anne Donne, Undone.”

Donne became an Anglican priest in 1615 and was appointed Royal Chaplain later that year. In 1621 he was named Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. He attained distinction as a preacher, delivering sermons that are regarded by some as the most brilliant of his day.

Except for the Anniversaries, nearly all his poems were published posthumously. I leave you with my favorite, which speaks, I think, eloquently to our modern predicament and reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun. It comes from his Litanie (XXII):

In Churches, when the’infirmitie
Of him which speakes, diminishes the Word,
When Magistrates doe mis-apply
To us, as we judge, lay or ghostly sword,
When plague, which is thine Angell, raignes,
Or wars, thy Champions, swaie,
When Heresie, thy second deluge, gaines;
In th’houre of death, th’Eve of last judgement day,
Deliver us from the sinister way.

July 28, 2003

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.

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