V

Crucifying

By miracles exceeding power of man,
He faith in some, envy in some begat,
For, what weak spirits admire, ambitious hate;
In both affections many to Him ran.
But the worst are most, they will and can,
Alas! and do, unto th’ Immaculate,
Whose creature Fate is, now prescribe a fate,
Measuring self-life’s infinity to span,
Nay to an inch. Lo! where condemned He
Bears His own cross, with pain, yet by and by
When it bears him, He must bear more and die.
Now Thou art lifted up, draw me to Thee,
And at Thy death giving such liberal dole,
Moist with one drop of Thy blood my dry soul.

Where this text comes from

First published in Poems, by J. D. with Elegies on the Authors Death (1633). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-15.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/john-donne_poetry, divine-poems.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L14.

Cite this poem

John Donne (1572–1631). “Crucifying.” First published in Poems, by J. D. with Elegies on the Authors Death (1633). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/john-donne/crucifying/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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