by John Donne
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
[20] With strangling snare, or windowy net:
Let coarse, bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest,
Or curious traitors, sleave-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes’ wand’ring eyes.
For thee, thou need’st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait;
That fish, that is not catched thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.
The Apparition
When by thy scorn, O murd’ress, I am dead,
And that thou think’st thee free
From all solicitation from me,
Then shall my ghost come to thy bed,
And thee, feigned vestal, in worse arms shall see;
Then thy sick taper will begin to wink,
And he, whose thou art then, being tired before,
Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think
Thou call’st for more,
[10] And in false sleep will from thee shrink,
And then poor aspen wretch, neglected thou
Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie
A verier ghost than I;
What I will say, I will not tell thee now,
Lest that preserve thee;’and since my love is spent,
I’had rather thou should’st painfully repent,
Than by my threat’nings rest still innocent.
The Broken Heart
He is stark mad whoever says
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour;
Who will believe me if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
Who would not laugh at me if I should say
I saw a flask of powder burn a day?
Ah, what a trifle is a heart
[10] If once into Love’s hands it come?
All other griefs allow a part
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some;
They come to us, but us Love draws,
He swallows us, and never chaws:
By him, as by chained shot, whole ranks do die;
He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.
If ’twere not so, what did become
Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
[20] But from the room I carried none with me;
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
More pity unto me: but Love, alas,
At one first blow did shiver it as glass.
Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite,
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite;
And now as broken glasses show
[30] A hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more.
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
As virtuous men pass mildly’away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whil’st some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say, no,
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
’Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th’earth brings harms and fears,
[10] Men reckon what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers’ love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by’a love so much refined
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
[20] Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the’other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
[30] Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’other foot, obliquely run.
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
The Ecstasy
Where, like a pillow on a bed,
A pregnant bank swelled up to rest
The violet’s reclining head,
Sat we two, one another’s best.
Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm, which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;
So to’intergraft our hands as yet
[10] Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As ’twixt two equal armies, Fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls (which to advance their state
Were gone out) hung ’twixt her and me.
And whil’st our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
[20] And we said nothing all the day.
If any, so by love refined
That he souls’ language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,
He (though he knows not which soul spake
Because both meant, both spake, the same)
Might thence a new concoction take,
And part far purer than he came.
This ecstasy doth unperplex
[30] (We said) and tell us what we love;
We see by this, it was not sex;
We see, we saw not what did move;
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love these mixed souls doth mix again,
And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size
(All which before was poor, and scant)
[40] Redoubles still, and multiplies.
When love, with one another so
Interanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are composed and made,
For th’atomies of which we grow,
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But O, alas, so long, so far
[50] Our bodies why do we forbear?
They’are ours, though they’re not we; we are
The’intelligences, they the spheres.
We owe them thanks because they thus
Did us to us at first convey,
Yielded their sense’s force to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.
On man heaven’s influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air,
For soul into the soul may flow,
[60] Though it to body first repair.
As our blood labours to beget
Spirits as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot which makes us man,
> So must pure lovers’ souls descend
T’affections and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.
To’our bodies turn we then, that so
[70] Weak men on love revealed may look;
Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
And if some lover such as we
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us; he shall see
Small change, when we’are to bodies gone.
Love’s Deity
I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost,
Who died before the god of love was born,
I cannot think that he who then loved most
Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn.
But since this god produced a destiny,
And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be,
I must love her that loves not me.
Sure, they which made him god meant not so much,
Nor he, in his young godhead, practised it;
[10] But when an even flame two hearts did touch,
His office was indulgently to fit
Actives to passives. Correspondency
Only his subject was; it cannot be
Love, till I love her that loves me.
But every modern god will now extend
His vast prerogative as far as Jove.
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend,
All is the purlieu of the god of love.
O were we wakened by this tyranny
[20] To’ungod this child again, it could not be,
I should love her who loves not me.
Rebel and atheist too, why murmur I,
As though I felt the worst that love could do?
Love may make me leave loving, or might try
A deeper plague, to make her love me too,
Which, since she loves before, I’am loath to see;
Falsehood is worse than hate, and that must be
If she whom I love should love me.
Love’s Diet
To what a cumbersome unwieldiness
And burdenous corpulence my love had grown,
But that I did, to make it less,
And keep it in proportion,
Give it a diet, made it feed upon
That which love worst endures, discretion.
Above one sigh a day I’allowed him not,
Of which my fortune and my faults had part;
And if sometimes by stealth he got
[10] A she-sigh from my mistress’ heart,
And thought to feast on that, I let him see
’Twas neither very sound, nor meant to me.
If he wrung from me’a tear, I brined it so
With scorn or shame, that him it nourished not;
If he sucked hers, I let him know
’Twas not a tear which he had got,
His drink was counterfeit, as was his meat;
For eyes which roll towards all, weep not, but sweat.
Whatever he would dictate, I writ that,
[20] But burnt my letters; when she writ to me,
And that that favour made him fat,
I said, if any title be
Conveyed by this, ah, what doth it avail
To be the fortieth name in an entail?
Thus I redeemed my buzzard love, to fly
At what, and when, and how, and where I choose;
Now negligent of sports I lie,
And now as other falconers use,
I spring a mistress, swear, write, sigh, and weep,
[30] And the game killed or lost, go talk, and sleep.
The Will
Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe,
Great Love, some legacies; here I bequeath
Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see;
If they be blind, then Love, I give them thee;
My tongue to Fame; to’ambassadors mine ears;
To women or the sea, my tears;
Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore
By making me serve her who’had twenty more,
That I should give to none but such as had too much before.
[10] My constancy I to the planets give;
My truth to them who at the court do live;
Mine ingenuity and openness
To Jesuits; to’buffoons my pensiveness;
My silence to’any who abroad hath been;
My money to a Capuchin.
Thou, Love, taught’st me, by’appointing me
To love there where no love received can be,
Only to give to such as have an incapacity.
My faith I give to Roman Catholics;
[20] All my good works unto the schismatics
Of Amsterdam; my best civility
And courtship to an university;
My modesty I give to soldiers bare;
My patience let gamesters share.
Thou, Love, taught’st me, by making me
Love her that holds my love disparity,
Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity.
I give my reputation to those
Which were my friends; mine industry to foes;
[30] To schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulness;
My sickness to physicians, or excess;
To Nature, all that I in rhyme have writ;
And to my company my wit.
Thou, Love, by making me adore
Her who begot this love in me before,
Taught’st me to make as though I gave, when I did but restore.
To him for whom the passing bell next tolls,
I give my physic books; my written rolls
Of moral counsels, I to Bedlam give;
[40] My brazen medals unto them which live
In want of bread; to them which pass among
All foreigners, mine English tongue.
Thou, Love, by making me love one
Who thinks her friendship a fit portion
For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.
Therefore I’ll give no more; but I’ll undo
The world by dying, because love dies too.
Then all your beauties will be no more worth
Than gold in mines where none doth draw it forth,
[50] And all your graces no more use shall have
Than a sun-dial in a grave.
Thou, Love, taught’st me, by making me
Love her who doth neglect both me and thee,
To’invent, and practise, this one way, to’annihilate all three.
The Funeral
Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm
Nor question much
That subtle wreath of hair which crowns my arm;
The mystery, the sign, you must not touch,
For ’tis my outward soul,
Viceroy to that, which unto heaven being gone,
Will leave this to control
And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.
For if the sinewy thread my brain lets fall
[10] Through every part,
Can tie those parts, and make me one of all,
Those hairs which upward grew, and strength and art
Have from a better brain,
Can better do’it; except she meant that I
By this should know my pain,
As prisoners then are manacled, when they’are condemned to die.
What ere she meant by’it, bury it by me,
For since I am
Love’s martyr, it might breed idolatry,
[20] If into others’ hands these relics came;
As ’twas humility
To’afford to it all that a soul can do,
So, ’tis some bravery,
That since you would have none of me, I bury some of you.
The Blossom
Little think’st thou, poor flower,
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br /> Whom I have watched six or seven days,
And seen thy birth, and seen what every hour
Gave to thy growth, thee to this height to raise,
And now dost laugh and triumph on this bough,
Little think’st thou
That it will freeze anon, and that I shall
Tomorrow find thee fall’n, or not at all.
Little think’st thou, poor heart,
[10] That labours yet to nestle thee,
And think’st by hovering here to get a part
In a forbidden or forbidding tree,
And hop’st her stiffness by long siege to bow,
Little think’st thou
That thou tomorrow, ere that sun doth wake,
Must with this sun and me a journey take.
But thou which lov’st to be
Subtle to plague thyself, wilt say,
Alas, if you must go, what’s that to me?
[20] Here lies my business, and here I will stay;
You go to friends, whose love and means present
Various content
To your eyes, ears, and tongue, and every part.
If then your body go, what need you’a heart?
Well then, stay here; but know,
When thou hast stayed and done thy most,
A naked thinking heart, that makes no show,
Is to a woman but a kind of ghost;
How shall she know my heart, or, having none,
[30] Know thee for one?
Practice may make her know some other part,
But take my word, she doth not know a heart.
Meet me at London, then,
Twenty days hence, and thou shalt see
Me fresher, and more fat, by being with men,
Than if I had stayed still with her and thee.
For God’s sake, if you can, be you so too;
I will give you
There to another friend whom we shall find
[40] As glad to have my body as my mind.
The Primrose
Upon this primrose hill
Where, if heav’n would distil
A shower of rain, each several drop might go
To his own primrose, and grow manna so;
And where their form, and their infinity
Make a terrestrial galaxy,
As the small stars do in the sky,
I walk to find a true love; and I see
That ’tis not a mere woman that is she,
[10] But must, or more or less than woman be.
Yet know I not which flower
I wish, a six or four;
For should my true-love less than woman be,
She were scarce anything; and then, should she