To Your Scattered Bodies Go

I've been reading a lot of John Donne lately. Donne is one of my favorite poets, possibly even more so than Shakespeare (which is saying something for me, as I am sort of a Shakespeare geek). I had trouble choosing one (or two or three) poems for this blog post, as I love quite a bit of his work, but I eventually settled on one of the Holy Sonnets. It is not terribly cheerful in tone - the subject has to do with repentance, redemption and religious grace - but I have always found the imagery in this particular sonnet to be quite powerful. I'm particularly fond of the first four lines.

VII

At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ;
For, if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that's as good
As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.

Although I have not modeled any specific design on this sonnet, I have been thinking quite a bit about issues of mortality as expressed through memento mori (more on this later this week), and this is one of the works I dug up while looking for inspiration. Also, it's been ages since I've posted any poetry on the blog, so I thought it was time to do so.

Oh, by the way, I couldn't find any photo that really related to the poem, so I settled on this one that I actually designed with "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in mind. Yeah, I know it doesn't make sense, but none of the other potential choices did, either. (Plus, while I know you see part of this necklace every day on the blog, I thought I'd show off the rest of it...) The beatific face cabochon is by Earthenwood Studio. This was my first attempt to set a ceramic cab in fine silver.

Thanks for stopping by!