This is John Donne, and a call to repentance and to think about death fits with Lent. Although the energy of this poem makes saying it aloud feel like flying — which feels un-Lenten. It is really a poem about resurrection, too. The catalogue of ways people die has always struck me as both cosmic and sweeping and so tender — just in his taking the trouble to imagine and remember all these kinds of deaths.
At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never taste death’s woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For, if above all these, my sins abound,
‘Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,
When we are there; here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good
As if thou hadst seal’d my pardon, with thy blood.