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And do run still, though still I do deplore?—

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;

For I have more.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won

Others to sin, and made my sins their door?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two, but wallowed in a score?—

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;

For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I’ve spun

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;

But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son

Shall shine, as He Shines now and heretofore;

And having done that, Thou hast done:

I fear no more.

John Donne (1573-1631).

In line (1) the reference is to the old doctrine that the guilt of Adam and Eve’s “original sin” tainted all generations of man; (3) “run,” ran; (8) his sin—the example he has set—is the door which opened to others the way of sin.

In this fine poem there are puns. In the last verse one pun is on the words “Son” and “Sun,” Christ being the “Sun of righteousness who arises with healing in his wings” (Malachi iv, 2). Also in the fifth, eleventh, and seventeenth lines, the play is on the last word “done” and the poet’s name Donne, which was pronounced dun.[17] (It was occasionally written Dun, Dunne, or Done: see Grierson’s Poems of John Donne, Vol. II, pp. lvii, lxxvii, lxxxvii, 8 and 12. Contrariwise, the adjective “dun,” dull-brown, was spelt donne in the poet’s time.) We are accustomed only to the jocular use of puns, but here there is a serious intention to give two meanings to one expression. Such a use of puns was one of the “quaint conceits” of that period of our literature, and it is found also in serious Persian poetry.