XVII

Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt
To nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravished,
Wholly on heavenly things my mind is set.
Here the admiring her my mind did whet
To seek thee God; so streams do show their head,
But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.
But why should I beg more love, when as thou
Dost woo my soul for hers; offering all thine:
And dost not only fear least I allow
My Love to saints and angels things divine,
But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt
Least the World, flesh, yea Devil put thee out.

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. II, Appendix C, among the Holy Sonnets printed from the Westmoreland MS.; “Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt”. Not in any of the old editions of the Poems: twelve of the Holy Sonnets were printed in 1633 and four more added in 1635, and Gosse states that the series of nineteen “have never, until now, been printed in complete form”, giving the Westmoreland text in an appendix to his second volume. Grierson's 1912 edition records that the three Westmoreland sonnets had already been printed by Gosse. [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, 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). “XVII.” First published in Edmund Gosse, The Life and Letters of John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's (London, William Heinemann, 1899), vol. II, Appendix C, among the Holy Sonnets printed from the Westmoreland MS.; “Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt”. Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/john-donne/xvii/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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