The Annunciation and Passion by John Donne

Tamely, frail body, abstain today; today / My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away. / She sees Him man, so like God made in this, / That of them both a circle emblem is, / Whose first and last concur; this doubtful day / Of feast or fast, Christ came, and went away; / She sees Him nothing, twice at once, who's all; / She sees a cedar plant itself, and fall; / Her Maker put to making, and the head / Of life at once not yet alive, yet dead; / She sees at once the Virgin Mother stay / Reclused at home, public at Golgotha; / Sad and rejoiced she's seen at once, and seen / At almost fifty, and at scarce fifteen; / At once a son is promised her, and gone; / Gabriel gives Christ to her, He her to John; / Not fully a mother, she's in orbity; / At once receiver and the legacy. / All this, and all between, this day hath shown, / Th' abridgement of Christ's story, which makes one- / As in plain maps, the furthest west is east- / Of th' angels Ave, and Consummatum est. / How well the Church, God's Court of Faculties, / Deals, in sometimes, and seldom joining these. / As by the self-fix'd Pole we never do / Direct our course, but the next star thereto, / Which shows where th'other is, and which we say / -Because it strays not far-doth never stray, / So God by His Church, nearest to him, we know, / And stand firm, if we by her motion go. / His Spirit, as His fiery pillar, doth / Lead, and His Church, as cloud; to one end both. / This Church by letting those days join, hath shown / Death and conception in mankind is one; / Or 'twas in Him the same humility, / That He would be a man, and leave to be; / Or as creation He hath made, as God, / With the last judgment but one period, / His imitating spouse would join in one / Manhood's extremes; He shall come, He is gone; / Or as though one blood drop, which thence did fall, / Accepted, would have served, He yet shed all, / So though the least of His pains, deeds, or words, / Would busy a life, she all this day affords. / This treasure then, in gross, my soul, uplay, / And in my life retail it every day.