idea of the poem; but not the less certainly does the whole resemble the
speech of a child of active imagination, to whom judgment as to the
character of his suggestions is impossible, his taste being equally
gratified with a lovely image and a brilliant absurdity: a butterfly and
a shining potsherd are to him similarly desirable. Whatever wild thing
starts from the thicket of thought, all is worthy game to the hunting
intellect of Dr. Donne, and is followed without question of tone,
keeping, or harmony. In his play with words, Sir Philip Sidney kept good
heed that even that should serve the end in view; in his play with ideas,
Dr. John Donne, so far from serving the end, sometimes obscures it almost
hopelessly: the hart escapes while he follows the squirrels and weasels
and bats. It is not surprising that, their author being so inartistic
with regard to their object, his verses themselves should be harsh and
unmusical beyond the worst that one would imagine fit to be called verse.
He enjoys the unenviable distinction of having no rival in ruggedness of
metric movement and associated sounds. This is clearly the result of
indifference; an indifference, however, which grows very strange to us
when we find that he _can_ write a lovely verse and even an exquisite
stanza.

Greatly for its own sake, partly for the sake of illustration, I quote a
poem containing at once his best and his worst, the result being such an
incongruity that we wonder whether it might not be called his best _and_
his worst, because we cannot determine which. He calls it _Hymn to God,
my God, in my Sickness_. The first stanza is worthy of George Herbert in
his best mood.

Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where with the choir of saints for evermore
I shall be made thy music, as I come