XV

Wilt thou love God as He thee? then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation,
How God the Spirit, by angels waited on
In heaven, doth make His temple in thy breast.
The Father having begot a Son most blest,
And still begetting⁠—for he ne’er begun⁠—
Hath deign’d to choose thee by adoption,
Co-heir to His glory, and Sabbath’s endless rest.
And as a robb’d man, which by search doth find
His stolen stuff sold, must lose or buy it again,
The Sun of glory came down, and was slain,
Us whom He had made, and Satan stole, to unbind.
’Twas much, that man was made like God before,
But, that God should be made like man, much more.

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 2026-08-12.

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

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