John Donne’s poem, “Good Friday, 1613. Riding
Westward,” offers a meditation upon Easter from the perspective of one who is
caught up in worldly affairs when he would rather be taken up with heavenly
considerations.
Forty-two lines arranged in 21 rhymed couplets
comprise a poem of three major sections: lines 1-14 introduce a metaphor of the
soul as a heavenly sphere and Christ as the Sun; lines 15-32 meditate upon the
crucifixion of Christ; and lines 33-42 meet the gaze of the narrator with the
gaze of Christ from the cross; concluding in a prayer for reconciliation wherein
Christ and the narrator commune face to face.
The opening ten lines draw the reader to the
heavens and the soul. Comparing the soul to a heavenly body matches microcosmic
man and macrocosmic cosmos. However, the narrator elides the idea of musical
harmony of the spheres for an image of the cosmos as a frustration of
self-motion. Each sphere’s own rotation about its axis competes with the pull
of the othes, such that a sphere’s self-motion occurs “scarce in a yeare.” This
change highlights the soul’s contemplation of the Cross during Easter, which
occurs but once a year, but ought to impel the soul’s motion every day. Instead
of heavenly bodies, the pleasures and business of earth draws man’s soul away
from contemplating the work of Christ. The narrator’s actual bodily movement
West contrasts his soul’s desire to go East, the place from whence Christ shall
return.
The meter is predominantly iambic, with a few
variations that underscore the interpretation above. The poem begins with
spondaic substitution, giving the first three monosyllabic words the prominence
of a thesis: “Let mans Soule.” But let mans soul be what? The iamb brings the
emphasis upon the metaphoric comparison: a sphere. The caesura after “sphere”
allows the reader to pause for the briefest of moments to digest the thesis.
The trochaic substitution in line four highlights the contrast between the idea
of the soul growing—in conjunction with intelligence and devotion—and subjection
to foreign motion. The soul’s motion, like the spheres’s motion, is subject to
others than itself. The trochaic substitution in line six parallels line four
and develops the idea of subjection—not only does the soul not move of itself,
self-motion is “scarce in a yeare” obeyed. A final spondaic substitution in
line nine (“Hence is’t”) marks the end of the thesis and offers a sense of
finality to the claim.
Despite the thesis of the opening ten lines, the narrator
nonetheless finds his soul capable of bending East, and begins a mediation upon
Christ that occurs through a seamless transition from the heavenly Sun’s rising
metaphorically identified with Christ’s taking up flesh, and the Sun’s setting
with Christ’s crucifixion. The cosmological Son’s setting begets night, but the
theological Son’s setting begets an “endlesse day.” The metaphor complete, line
thirteen begins with pyrhrhic and trochaic substitutions (“But that / Christ
on”) before returning to iambic feet. The result is to bring two subsequent crescendos
upon “Christ” and the “Cross”. Line fourteen’s trochaic substitution in the
first foot draws up the contrast contained in the couplet: Had Christ not been
raised upon the Cross to fall into death, “Sinne” would have brought eternal
night rather than the endlesse day of line twelve.
Line fifteen begins a new unit. There, a spondaic
substitution mirrors the pattern from the first line, and a new thesis emerges.
Instead of drawing the narrator’s soul into the cosmic realm, his soul
transverses time and beholds the crucifixion. Line seventeen follows a chiastic
meter: iambic feet enclose spondaic feet with a pyrrhic central foot. The
caesura falls after “face” which allows the pyrrhic hinge to swing smoothly
into the trochaic comparative claim: God’s face is “selfe life”. The sweeping
rhythm of line sixteen brings the thought into relief in line eighteen as the
narrator hammers two trochaic feet into an iambic foot that pauses on the
caesura before driving home the emphatic contrast on an iambic to spondaic
ending to the line (“to see / God dye”). If beholding God’s face, which
encompasses both His own self-contained life as well as the life of all His
creatures invites death, how much more a death comes from seeing God die on the
cross? The scandalous image leads directly to the cosmic effects that occurred
in Christ’s death: the Father’s face turned aside, the earth broken, and the
sun darkened. The energy of these cataclysms invites a rising tone and pace; brought
to rapid conclusion with a penultimate pyrrhic hinge shutting upon the doubly
emphatic spondee (“and the / Sunne winke”).
The poet continues his meditation upon the
paradoxes of the Crucifixion in lines twenty-one through twenty-eight. The
narrator contemplates the four-fold implications of the cross: Christ’s all
encompassing latitude pierced, his all encompassing longitude humbled, his all
sustaining inner life-blood made dust; his outer fully-man-flesh torn. Line
twenty-two substitutes a spondee in the second foot to emphasize the universality
of Christ’s latitude: his hands span “all spheares” and then, after pausing at
the caesura, a trochaic fourth foot emphasizes the paradox that these hands
were “peirc’d” with holes. The twenty-fifth line appears to use a caesura to
split a trochaic substitution in the third foot, pausing on the end of the
question of whether the narrator could endure the humiliation of Christ, the
height and depth of all created things. A spondaic substitution in the third
foot of line twenty-six mirrors the one in line twenty-two: Christ’s hands
“tune all spheares” and Christ’s blood seats “all our Soules.” Another parallel
occurs in lines twenty-three and twenty-seven. A pyrrhic substitution succeeded
by a trochee in the third and fourth feet of line twenty-seven leads into the next
interrogative (thus _ _ / on “or that flesh”), which matches the introduction
of the interrogative in line twenty-five where the trochaic third foot is split
by the caesura and followed by an iambic foot (thus _ _ / on “or that blood”).
The narrator moves from the four-fold consequences
of the cross to the mother of Christ in lines twenty-nine through thirty-two.
The transition draws emphasis from the spondaic substitution at the end of line
twenty-nine and the spondaic substitution split by a caesura in the fourth foot
of line thirty (“durst I”. . .“mother//cast”). Lines thirty-one and thirty-two
use parallel trochaic substitutions in their first lines, emphasizing the
person of Mary (“Who”) and her contribution (“Halfe”). A trochee in the second
foot of line thirty-one also brings emphasis upon “God” as the partner.
The last unit begins in line thirty-three with the
same spondee and trochee substitution pattern as lines one and fifteen contain;
the other unit markers. The entire poem plays with the notion of motion and
sight: motion in space and time; and sight in terms of contemplation as well as
looking upon. Line thirty-four draws the four-fold divisions of motion and
sight together in the faculty of memory,
through which the narrator looks upon and may be looked upon by Christ. Line
thirty-five emphasizes this double-gaze with a trochaic substitution in the
second and third feet (“looks towards/them and”). The caesura breaks up the
fourth foot in the line, pausing to allow the spondee in the fourth foot to
draw into relief the gaze of Christ reflecting back upon the gaze of the
narrator. The gaze of Christ stops the narrator in a spondaic exclamation (“O
Sav / iour”) in the first foot of line thirty-six that then rushes through a
pyrrhic foot into an iambic, highlighting Christ’s location: hanging on the
cross. The enjambment at lines thirty-seven and thirty-eight illustrates the
double-nature of shame. The reader sees the narrator turning his back upon
Christ and cannot tell until the next line whether his shame results in the
blows of condemnation, or, as it turns out, the blows of loving chastisement.
The caesura after “Corrections” in line thirty-eight allows a breath of relief
before returning to the closing prayer’s plea, visible in the trochaic first foot
of line thirty-nine (“O thinke”) as well as in the spondaic substitution in the
fourth foot (“thine an/ger”)—the narrator calls upon Christ to care enough to
be angry with rather than indifferent to his sins. The emphasis upon the
chastisement continues in the spondaic substitution in the first foot of line
forty (“Burne off”). The ultimate line draws the prayer to its ultimate hope
with a trochaic substitution in the third foot, split by the caesura (“/ may’st
know / me//and /)—that Christ would know the narrator in righteousness; that
through the love of His correcting anger, his purging fire, the narrator might
be known, and so look upon Christ face to face.
Update: I've uploaded a video recitation of the poem that attempts to portray the interpretation offered above.
Update: I've uploaded a video recitation of the poem that attempts to portray the interpretation offered above.
