Have a John Donne Morning!

The delectable swooop has just put up a second entry discussing Donne - this one is tied to Sayers and her use of Donne's poetry to shape Peter Wimsey's character. I will resonate sympathetically by posting one of my many favorite Donne poems, because, dude - it's Donne. You can never have too much. And even the ones that get printed in every poetry anthology, the ones that always get quoted, the ones you see everywhere - they don't lose their charm in the least.

The Sun Rising

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school boys, and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me
Whether both the Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask, for those Kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

She is all States, and all Princes, I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compar'd to this,
All honor's mimic; all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

N

Let's take a wild left turn now, from Italian Ren sculpture to modern architecture. I loathed much of it on general principles, but then I took a class with a very good professor, and now, although I don't necessarily thrill to the sight of a concrete building, I at least know what's going on a little bit more. This building is one of the few that I do like very much.

is for Notre Dame du Haut, by Le Corbusier

( Our Lady of the Heights )