Poore soule, in this thy flesh what dost thou know? Thou know'st thy selfe so little, as thou know'st not, How thou didst die, nor how thou wast begot. . . . . . . . . . Have not all soules thought For many ages, that our body is wrought Of Ayre, and Fire, and other Elements? And now they thinke of new ingredients; And one Soule thinkes one, and another way Another thinkes, and 'tis an even lay. . . . . . . . . . Wee see in Authors, too stiffe to recant, A hundred controversies of an Ant; And yet one watches, starves, freeses, and sweats, To know but Catechismes and Alphabets Of unconcerning things, matters of fact; How others on our stage their parts did Act; What _Cæsar_ did, yea, and what _Cicero_ said. With this welter of shifting theories and worthless facts he contrasts the vision of which religious faith is the earnest here: In this low forme, poore soule, what wilt thou doe? When wilt thou shake off this Pedantery, Of being taught by sense, and Fantasie? Thou look'st through spectacles; small things seeme great Below; But up unto the watch-towre get, And see all things despoyl'd of fallacies: Thou shalt not peepe through lattices of eyes, Nor heare through Labyrinths of eares, nor learne By circuit, or collections, to discerne. In heaven thou straight know'st all concerning it, And what concernes it not, shalt straight forget. It will seem to some readers hardly fair to compare a poem like _In Memoriam_, which, if in places the staple of its feeling and thought wears a little thin, is entirely serious throughout, with poems which have so much the character of an intellectual _tour de force_ as Donne's _Anniversaries_, but it is easy to be unjust to the sincerity of Donne in these poems. Their extravagant eulogy did not argue any insincerity to Sir Robert and Lady Drury. It was in the manner of the time, and doubtless seemed to them as natural an expression of grief as the elaborate marble and alabaster tomb which they erected to the memory of their daughter. The _Second Anniversarie_ was written in France when Donne was resident there with the Drurys. And it was on this occasion that Donne had the vision of his absent wife which Walton has related so graphically. The spiritual sense in Donne was as real a thing as the restless and unruly wit, or the sensual, passionate temperament. The main thesis of the poem, the comparative worthlessness of this life, the transcendence of the spiritual, was as sincere in Donne's case as was in Tennyson the conviction of the futility of life if death closes all. It was to be the theme of the finest passages in his eloquent sermons, the burden of all that is most truly religious in the verse and prose of a passionate, intellectual, self-tormenting soul to whom the pure ecstasy of love of a Vondel, the tender raptures of a Crashaw, the chastened piety of a