Poetica: "Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward" by John Donne

By Lanie Anderson

Welcome to Poetica, the monthly poetry column of Shadowlands Dispatch! This Good Friday, we are pleased to feature Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward" by John Donne, followed by an analysis and reflection by Lanie Anderson, Shadowlands Dispatch Editor-in-Chief.

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward*

By John Donne (January 22, 1572 - March 31, 1631)

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is't, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once peirc'd with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag'd, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here, and furnish'd thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom'd us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They'are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may'st know mee, and I'll turne my face.

*This poem is written in Early Modern English. In the analysis and reflection that follow, Lanie quotes the poem with contemporary usages of words to help readers engage with the poem more easily.

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Analysis and Reflection

By Lanie Anderson

My five-year-old daughter and I saw King of Kings last week in the theatre. Produced by Angel Studios, the animated film follows the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as Charles Dickens recounts these events to his son.

I have mixed thoughts about the film, but it accomplished what I had hoped for as Easter approaches this weekend: a drive home full of questions and conversation with my daughter about this King of Kings we profess.

“I want to watch it again,” she said, “but I don’t want to watch the part where Jesus dies on the cross by myself. It’s too sad and scary.”

I was impressed by the film’s portrayal of the crucifixion in an age-appropriate way. Still, like my daughter, we all feel the pull to “look away” from the gruesomeness of the cross, whether because of the brutality of Roman crucifixion or because, in one very real sense, “It was my sin that held him there,” as the hymn “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” describes.

Good Friday encourages us to gaze on “That spectacle of too much weight for me,” as John Donne admits in his poem, “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward.”

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Ordained as a priest in the church of England in 1615, Donne was a prolific writer of poetry, devotions, and sermons. Although Donne’s poetry gained admiration among small circles during his lifetime, it went largely unnoticed until the 1920s and 1930s when poets like T.S. Elliot and William Butler Yeats discovered some of his powerful techniques they also hoped to employ in their work. Donne is now recognized as one of the great metaphysical poets of the English canon.

Our poem’s title, “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward,” leaves no room for obscurity about when Donne wrote it. On Good Friday in 1613, Donne was traveling westward from Warwickshire to a friend’s home in Wales. His direction away from the sun on this Good Friday sparks reflection on his soul’s own pull away from the Son of God.

Donne was a master of “conceit,” extended metaphors in poetry known for their surprising comparisons between two dissimilar things. He begins this poem with what we’d expect—a striking metaphor, kindly inviting us to imagine the soul as a celestial sphere.

He delves into a beautiful conceit, comparing souls to celestial spheres pulled to and fro by gravitational forces:

And as the other Spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey:
Pleasure or business, so, our Souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirled by it.

A reader can’t help but be amazed by the astronomy, philosophy, theology, and anthropology Donne packs into these lines. Like celestial bodies pulled from their “natural form” by “foreign motion,” our souls are made for life in God but are constantly pulled away from it, whether by hurry, pleasure, business, or something else. Time passes until “Scarce in a year [our] natural form obey.” These foreign motions reveal our “first mover,” the unrelenting usurper of our Soul’s true King.

To See God Die

On that Good Friday in 1615 while Done is “carried towards the West,” he’s reminded that his “Soul’s form bends toward the East,” towards Calvary and the risen Christ. Notice how Donne plays on the rising “Sun” and the risen “Son.” For Donne, the “Soul’s form” bends toward the crucified, resurrected, and glorified Son of God. Donne then shifts to the reality of the Incarnation:

Who sees God’s face, that is self life, must die;
What a death were it then to see God die?

These lines in the poem echo God’s explanation to Moses in Exodus 33:20 of why he would only allow Moses to see his back: “You cannot see my face, for humans cannot see me and live.” Neither Donne nor we can imagine, then, what it must have been like for Jesus’s onlookers to watch God incarnate die. Take some time to read these beautiful lines again, full of metaphors and doctrine about the events of Good Friday:

[God’s death] made his own Lieutenant Nature shrink,
It made his footstool crack, and the Sun wink.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheres at once pierced with those holes?
Could I behold that endless height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Souls, if not of his,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God, for his apparel, rag'd, and torn?
If on these things I dare not look, dare I
Upon his miserable mother cast my eye,
Who was God’s partner here, and furnish'd thus
Half of that Sacrifice, which ransom'd us?

Donne asks himself a series of honest questions that we can also meditate on this Good Friday:

Could we behold “those hands… pierced with those holes?”

Could we behold “that blood which is / The seat of all our Souls, if not of his”?

Could we behold “that flesh which was worn / By God, for his apparel, rag’d, and torn?”

Love and Fury

As my daughter admitted to me that Christ’s crucifixion in King of Kings was hard to watch, I tried my best to explain, “It is difficult to watch the pain and suffering that Jesus experienced, but it’s important to think about it from time to time to remember what Jesus did for us.” Although we weren’t present, like Donne, Christ’s crucifixion is “present yet unto [our] memory,” especially when we participate in the Eucharist.

Donne ends the poem with a petition to His Savior:

O think me worth your anger, punish me,
Burn off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore your Image, so much, by your grace,
That you may know me, and I'll turn my face.

Why invite God’s anger? It’s a curious thing to ask, until we begin to grasp what God’s anger really is. I love John Stott’s explanation of what provokes God’s wrath in The Cross of Christ:

…sin arouses the wrath of God. This does not mean… that he is likely to fly off the handle at the most trivial provocation, still less that he loses his temper for no apparent reason at all. For there is nothing capricious or arbitrary about the holy God. Nor is he malicious, spiteful, or vindictive. His anger is neither mysterious nor irrational. It is never unpredictable, because it is provoked by evil and evil alone. The wrath of God… is his steady, unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising antagonism to evil in all its manifestations. In short, God’s anger is poles apart from ours. What provokes our anger (injured vanity) never provokes his; what provokes his anger (evil) seldom provokes ours.¹

This is a holy anger we can trust, and I think Donne understood that better than most. God’s love ultimately provokes His fury, His “steady, unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising antagonism to evil in all its manifestations.”

This is why Donne even asks God to “punish” him. Donne’s final lines of this poem are reminiscent of other poems in which he sometimes uses jarring language to describe God’s ongoing sanctification in us to “Burn off [our] rusts, and [our] deformity, / Restore your Image, so much, by your grace.” Consider his sonnet “Batter my heart, three-person'd God”:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

As today’s poem illustrates, Donne is always inviting God’s overthrow in his poetry of any other “foreign motions” that would lure him away from his “Soul’s form.” In a twist of cosmic irony, the way we live is to gaze on that Death at Calvary and die, as Jesus told His disciples: “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it.”²

As Augustine famously writes in Confessions, “Thou has formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.” However difficult the task, my prayer is that you turn your gaze this Good Friday to “that flesh which was worn / By God, for his apparel, rag'd, and torn” and find your rest in His words: “It is finished.”

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—Lanie Anderson is Editor-in-Chief of Shadowlands Dispatch and a member of The Society for Women of Letters Leadership Council. She earned her MDiv with a specialization in Christian Apologetics from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and also holds a BA in English from the University of Mississippi. Lanie has written for Christianity Today and The Center for Faith and Culture. She currently stays home with her two children and works remotely as a writer, editor, and digital marketer.

1. John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 171.

2. Matthew 16:24-26 (CSB).