John Donne: ”Hymn to Christ,” and ”This is my Play’s Last Scene”

In "Hymn to Christ" the poet is leaving his beloved England for the darkness and winter of Germany. His voyage is both literal and figurative, as he is leaving behind his temporal loves to discover the foundation of love itself. His wife, Ann More, having died two years before has united with Christ's love. As on his own name in "Hymn to God the Father," Donne plays on his wife's name, Ann More, here. The whole poem turns on the third stanza:

Nor Thou nor Thy religion dost control
The amorousness of an harmonious soul ;
But Thou wouldst have that love Thyself ; as Thou
Art jealous, Lord, so I am jealous now ;
Thou lovest not, till from loving more Thou free
My soul ; Who ever gives, takes liberty ;
    Oh, if Thou carest not whom I love,
        Alas ! Thou lovest not me.

God does not censure but incites the passions of His children when they are properly directed. Donne's love for his wife, now taken from him into Christ's love, was always the reflection of true freedom and love in Christ. Both Donne and Christ, "loving More," want her for their own, and Donne finds his own love for his wife properly centered now on the Savior, who loves her "more." The final stanza sees the poet soldiering forward into the love that binds all his earthly passions into the Mystery of eternal Love, into that  "winter ... Where none but Thee, the eternal root
        Of true love, I may know."

 

In "This is my Play's Last Scene," the poet awaits his death, that sublime moment of paradox - of terror and joy, 'shuffling off our mortal coil,' seeing at last "that [eternal] face."

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