Poems for Christmas: John Donne’s Nativitie

John Donne

This pleasant little fourteener is actually number 3 of 7 from “Holy Sonnets,” a short cycle that links each poem by repeating the last line of the previous poem as the first of the next.

Nativitie

Immensity cloistered in thy dear wombe
Now leaves his welbelov’d imprisonment,
There he hath made himselfe to his intent
Weake enough, now into our world to come;
But Oh, for thee, for him, hath th’Inne no roome?
Yet lay him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Starres, and wisemen will travell to prevent
Th’effect of Herods jealous generall doome.
Seest thou, my Soule, with thy faiths eyes, how he
Which fils all place, yet none holds him, doth lye?
Was not his pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pittied by thee?
Kisse him, and with him into Egypt goe,
With his kinde mother, who partakes thy woe.