To Mr. Rowland Woodward

John Donne (1572–1631) · Letters to Several Personages · 1899

Zealously my Muse doth salute all thee,
Enquiring of that mystic trinity
Whereof thou, and all to whom heavens do infuse
Like fire, are made; thy body, mind, and Muse.
Dost thou recover sickness, or prevent?
Or is thy Mind travailed with discontent?
Or art thou parted from the world and me,
In a good scorn of the world’s vanity?
Or is thy devout Muse retired to sing
Upon her tender elegiac string?
Our minds part not, join then thy Muse with mine
For mine is barren thus divorced from thine.

Where this text comes from

First published in Edmund Gosse, The Life and Letters of John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's (London, William Heinemann, 1899), vol. I, at the end of the volume. Not in any of the old editions of the Poems. Gosse prints it from the Westmoreland MS. and says the verse-letter “has never until now been printed”; the page is on the scan. [1] [2]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.

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

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L12.

Cite this poem

John Donne (1572–1631). “To Mr. Rowland Woodward.” First published in Edmund Gosse, The Life and Letters of John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's (London, William Heinemann, 1899), vol. I, at the end of the volume. Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/john-donne/to-mr-rowland-woodward-2/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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