John Donne is considered the definitive genius of the metaphysical school of poets. His extraordinary use of metaphors and mastery of complex forms distinguished him from his many capable contemporaries.
This week’s poem opens John Donne’s celebrated cycle of sonnets known as the Divine Meditations. They are impressive works of religious poetry and were composed during a period of spiritual, financial and emotional crisis for the poet. The Physicist Robert J Oppeinheimer, admired these poems so much that he codenamed the first testing of a nuclear bomb at Los Alamos “Holy Trinity” in reference to John Donne’s sonnets. Annunciation describes the paradoxical conception of Christ and the Virgin Mary’s messianic pregnancy.
We hope you enjoy this week’s poem as much as we did.
Annunciation
Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo, faithful virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He will wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death’s force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son and Brother;
Whom thou conceivst, conceived; yea thou art now
Thy Maker’s maker, and thy Father’s mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shutst in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.