John Donne

by John Donne

  Be more than woman, she would get above

  All thought of sex, and think to move

  My heart to study’her and not to love;

  Both these were monsters; since there must reside

  Falsehood in woman, I could more abide,

  [20] She were by art, than Nature, falsified.

  Live primrose then, and thrive

  With thy true number, five;

  And women, whom this flower doth represent,

  With this mysterious number be content;

  Ten is the farthest number; if half ten

  Belongs unto each woman, then

  Each woman may take half us men;

  Or, if this will not serve their turn, since all

  Numbers are odd, or even, and they fall

  [30] First into this five, women may take us all.

  The Relic

  When my grave is broke up again

  Some second guest to entertain

  (For graves have learned that woman-head,

  To be to more than one a bed),

  And he that digs it spies

  A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,

  Will he not let’us alone,

  And think that there a loving couple lies,

  Who thought that this device might be some way

  [10] To make their souls, at the last busy day,

  Meet at this grave, and make a little stay?

  If this fall in a time or land

  Where mis-devotion doth command,

  Then he that digs us up will bring

  Us to the bishop and the king

  To make us relics; then

  Thou shalt be’a Mary Magdalen, and I

  A something else thereby;

  All women shall adore us, and some men;

  [20] And since at such time miracles are sought,

  I would have that age by this paper taught

  What miracles we harmless lovers wrought.

  First, we loved well and faithfully,

  Yet knew not what we loved, nor why;

  Difference of sex no more we knew

  Than our guardian angels do;

  Coming and going, we

  Perchance might kiss, but not between those meals;

  Our hands ne’er touched the seals

  [30] Which nature, injured by late law, sets free.

  These miracles we did, but now, alas,

  All measure, and all language, I should pass,

  Should I tell what a miracle she was.

  The Damp

  When I am dead, and doctors know not why,

  And my friends’ curiosity

  Will have me cut up to survey each part,

  When they shall find your picture in my heart,

  You think a sudden damp of love

  Will through all their senses move,

  And work on them as me, and so prefer

  Your murder to the name of massacre.

  Poor victories; but if you dare be brave,

  [10] And pleasure in your conquest have,

  First kill th’enormous giant, your Disdain,

  And let th’enchantress Honour, next be slain,

  And like a Goth and Vandal rise,

  Deface records and histories

  Of your own arts and triumphs over men,

  And without such advantage kill me then.

  For I could muster up as well as you

  My giants and my witches too,

  Which are vast Constancy and Secretness,

  [20] But these I neither look for, nor profess;

  Kill me as woman, let me die

  As a mere man; do you but try

  Your passive valour, and you shall find then,

  In that you’have odds enough of any man.

  The Dissolution

  She’is dead; and all which die

  To their first elements resolve;

  And we were mutual elements to us,

  And made of one another.

  My body then doth hers involve,

  And those things whereof I consist, hereby

  In me abundant grow and burdenous,

  And nourish not, but smother.

  My fire of passion, sighs of air,

  [10] Water of tears, and earthly sad despair,

  Which my materials be

  (But ne’r worn out by love’s security),

  She, to my loss, doth by her death repair;

  And I might live long wretched so,

  But that my fire doth with my fuel grow.

  Now, as those active kings,

  Whose foreign conquest treasure brings,

  Receive more, and spend more, and soonest break,

  This (which I am amazed that I can speak),

  [20] This death hath with my store

  My use increased.

  And so my soul, more earnestly released,

  Will outstrip hers; as bullets flown before

  A latter bullet may o’ertake, the powder being more.

  A Jet Ring Sent

  Thou art not so black as my heart,

  Nor half so brittle as her heart, thou art;

  What would’st thou say? Shall both our properties by thee be spoke,

  Nothing more endless, nothing sooner broke?

  Marriage rings are not of this stuff;

  O, why should ought less precious, or less tough

  Figure our loves? Except in thy name thou have bid it say,

  I’am cheap, and nought but fashion, fling me’away.

  Yet stay with me since thou art come,

  [10] Circle this finger’s top, which didst her thumb.

  Be justly proud, and gladly safe, that thou dost dwell with me,

  She that, O, broke her faith, would soon break thee.

  Negative Love

  I never stooped so low, as they

  Which on an eye, cheek, lip, can prey,

  Seldom to them, which soar no higher

  Than virtue or the mind to’admire,

  For sense and understanding may

  Know what gives fuel to their fire:

  My love, though silly, is more brave,

  For may I miss whene’er I crave,

  If I know yet what I would have.

  [10] If that be simply perfectest

  Which can by no way be expressed

  But negatives, my love is so.

  To all, which all love, I say no.

  If any who deciphers best

  What we know not, ourselves, can know,

  Let him teach me that nothing; this

  As yet my ease and comfort is,

  Though I speed not, I cannot miss.

  The Prohibition

  Take heed of loving me,

  At least remember, I forbade it thee;

  Not that I shall repair my’unthrifty waste

  Of breath and blood, upon thy sighs and tears,

  By being to thee then what to me thou wast;

  But so great joy our life at once outwears.

  Then, lest thy love, by my death, frustrate be,

  If thou love me, take heed of loving me.

  Take heed of hating me,

  [10] Or too much triumph in the victory.

  Not that I shall be mine own officer,

  And hate with hate again retaliate;

  But thou wilt lose the style of conqueror,

  If I, thy conquest, perish by thy hate.

  Then, lest my being nothing lessen thee,

  If thou hate me, take heed of hating me.

  Yet, love and hate me too,

  So these extremes shall neither’s office do:

  Love me, that I may die the gentler way;

  [20] Hate me, because thy love’is too great for me;

  Or let these two, themselves, not me decay;

  So shall I live thy stage, not triumph be.

  Lest thou thy love and hate and me undo,

  To let me live, O love and hate me too.

  The Expiration

  So, so, break o
ff this last lamenting kiss,

  Which sucks two souls, and vapours both away;

  Turn thou, ghost, that way, and let me turn this,

  And let ourselves benight our happiest day;

  We asked none leave to love, nor will we owe

  Any, so cheap a death as saying, Go;

  Go, and if that word have not quite killed thee,

  Ease me with death by bidding me go too.

  Or, if it have, let my word work on me,

  [10] And a just office on a murderer do,

  Except it be too late to kill me so,

  Being double dead, going, and bidding go.

  The Computation

  For the first twenty years, since yesterday,

  I scarce believed thou could’st be gone away;

  For forty more, I fed on favours past,

  And forty’on hopes, that thou would’st they might last.

  Tears drowned one hundred, and sighs blew out two;

  A thousand, I did neither think, nor do,

  Or not divide, all being one thought of you;

  Or, in a thousand more, forgot that too.

  Yet call not this, long life, but think that I

  [10] Am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die?

  The Paradox

  No lover saith, I love, nor any other

  Can judge a perfect lover;

  He thinks that else none can or will agree

  That any loves but he:

  I cannot say I loved, for who can say

  He was killed yesterday.

  Love with excess of heat, more young than old,

  Death kills with too much cold;

  We die but once, and who loved last did die,

  [10] He that saith twice, doth lie,

  For though he seem to move, and stir awhile,

  It doth the sense beguile.

  Such life is like the light which bideth yet

  When the light’s life is set,

  Or like the heat, which fire in solid matter

  Leaves behind, two hours after.

  Once I loved and died; and am now become

  Mine epitaph and tomb.

  Here dead men speak their last, and so do I;

  [20] Love-slain, lo, here I lie.

  Farewell to Love

  Whil’st yet to prove,

  I thought there was some deity in love,

  So did I reverence, and gave

  Worship, as atheists at their dying hour

  Call what they cannot name an unknown power,

  As ignorantly did I crave;

  Thus when

  Things not yet known are coveted by men,

  Our desires give them fashion, and so

  [10] As they wax lesser, fall, as they size, grow.

  But, from late fair

  His Highness, sitting in a golden chair,

  Is not less cared for after three days

  By children, than the thing which lovers so

  Blindly admire, and with such worship woo;

  Being had, enjoying it decays,

  And thence,

  What before pleased them all, takes but one sense,

  And that so lamely, as it leaves behind

  [20] A kind of sorrowing dullness to the mind.

  Ah, cannot we,

  As well as cocks and lions jocund be

  After such pleasures, unless wise

  Nature decreed (since each such act, they say,

  Diminisheth the length of life a day)

  This, as she would man should despise

  The sport;

  Because that other curse, of being short

  And only for a minute made to be

  [30] Eager, desires to raise posterity.

  Since so, my mind

  Shall not desire what no man else can find,

  I’ll no more dote and run

  To pursue things which had endamaged me.

  And when I come where moving beauties be,

  As men do when the summer’s sun

  Grows great,

  Though I admire their greatness, shun their heat;

  Each place can afford shadows. If all fail,

  [40] ’Tis but applying worm-seed to the tail.

  A Lecture upon the Shadow

  Stand still, and I will read to thee

  A lecture, love, in love’s philosophy.

  These three hours that we have spent

  Walking here, two shadows went

  Along with us, which we ourselves produced;

  But now the sun is just above our head,

  We do those shadows tread;

  And to brave clearness all things are reduced.

  So whil’st our infant loves did grow,

  [10] Disguises did, and shadows, flow,

  From us, and our cares; but, now ’tis not so.

  That love hath not attained the high’st degree,

  Which is still diligent lest others see.

  Except our loves at this noon stay,

  We shall new shadows make the other way.

  As the first were made to blind

  Others; these which come behind

  Will work upon ourselves, and blind our eyes.

  If our loves faint, and westwardly decline;

  [20] To me thou, falsely, thine,

  And I to thee mine actions shall disguise.

  The morning shadows wear away,

  But these grow longer all the day,

  But O, love’s day is short, if love decay.

  Love is a growing, or full constant light,

  And his first minute, after noon, is night.

  Image of Her Whom I Love

  Image of her whom I love, more than she

  Whose fair impression in my faithful heart

  Makes me her medal, and makes her love me

  As kings do coins to which their stamps impart

  The value: go, and take my heart from hence,

  Which now is grown too great and good for me.

  Honours oppress weak spirits, and our sense

  Strong objects dull; the more, the less we see.

  When you are gone, and reason gone with you,

  [10] Then fantasy is queen, and soul, and all;

  She can present joys meaner than you do,

  Convenient, and more proportional.

  So, if I dream I have you, I have you,

  For all our joys are but fantastical.

  And so I ’scape the pain, for pain is true;

  And sleep, which locks up sense, doth lock out all.

  After a such fruition I shall wake,

  And, but the waking, nothing shall repent;

  And shall to love more thankful sonnets make

  [20] Than if more honour, tears, and pains were spent.

  But dearest heart, and dearer image, stay;

  Alas, true joys at best are dream enough.

  Though you stay here you pass too fast away:

  For even at first life’s taper is a snuff.

  Filled with her love, may I be rather grown

  Mad with much heart, than idiot with none.

  Sonnet. The Token

  Send me some token, that my hope may live,

  Or that my easeless thoughts may sleep and rest.

  Send me some honey to make sweet my hive,

  That in my passions I may hope the best.

  I beg nor ribbon wrought with thine own hands

  To knit our loves in the fantastic strain

  Of new-touched youth, nor ring to show the stands

  Of our affection, that as that’s round and plain,

  So should our loves meet in simplicity.

  [10] No, nor the corals which thy wrist infold,

  Laced up together in congruity,

  To show our thoughts should rest in the same hold.

  No, nor thy picture, though most gracious

  And most desired ’cause ’tis like thee best;

  Nor witty lines, which are most copious,

  Within
the writings which thou hast addressed.

  Send me nor this nor that t’increase my score,

  But swear thou think’st I love thee, and no more.

  Self Love

  He that cannot choose but love

  And strives against it still,

  Never shall my fancy move,

  For he loves against his will.

  Nor he which is all his own,

  And can at pleasure choose,

  When I am caught he can be gone,

  And when he list refuse.

  Nor he that loves none but fair,

  [10] For such by all are sought;

  Nor he that can for foul ones care,

  For his judgement then is nought.

  Nor he that hath wit, for he

  Will make me his jest or slave;

  Nor a fool for when others …

  He can neither want nor crave.

  Nor he that still his mistress pays,

  For she is thralled therefore;

  Nor he that pays not, for he says

  [20] Within she’s worth no more.

  Is there then no kind of men

  Whom I may freely prove?

  I will vent that humour then

  In mine own self love.

  When My Heart Was Mine Own

  When my heart was mine own and not by vows

  Betrothed, nor by my sighs breathed into thee,

  What looks, tears, passions, and yet all but shows,

  Did mutely beg and steal my heart from me.

  Through thine eyes methought I could behold

  Thy heart as pictures through a crystal glass.

  Thy heart seemed soft and pure as liquid gold;

  Thy faith seemed bright and durable as brass.

  But as all princes ere they have obtained

  [10] Free sovereignty do gild their words and deeds

  With piety and right, when they have gained

  Full sway, dare boldly then sow vicious seeds,

  So after conquest thou dost me neglect.

  Could not thy once pure heart else now forbear,

  Nay more abhor an amorous respect

  To any other? O, towards me I fear

  Thy heart to steel, that faith to wax doth turn,

  Which taking heat from every amorous eye

  Melts with their flames as I consume and burn

  [20] With shame t’have hoped for woman’s constancy.

  Yet I had thy first oaths, and it was I

  That taught thee first love’s language t’understand,