Since I am coming to that holy room

Where with thy choir of saints for evermore

I shall be made thy music; as I come

I tune the instrument here at the door,

And what I must do then, think here before.

While my physicians by their love are grown

Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie

Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown

That this is my south-west discovery,

Per fretum febris, by these straits to die.

I joy, that in these straits I see my west;

For, though their currents yield return to none,

What shall my west hurt me? As west and east

In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,

So death doth touch the resurrection ….

We think that Paradise and Calvary,

Christ’s cross, and Adam’s tree, stood in one place;

Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;

As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,

May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.

So, in his purple wrapped, receive me, Lord;

By these his thorns, give me his other crown;

And as to others’ souls I preached thy word,

Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:

‘Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down.’

John Donne (1573-1631), A Hymn to God, my God, in my sickness.