John Donne - Delphi Poets Series

by John Donne

— For graves have learn’d 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

  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 mass-devotion doth command,

  Then he that digs us up will bring

  Us to the bishop or 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.

  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 we never knew,

  No more than guardian angels do;

  Coming and going we

  Perchance might kiss, but not between those meals;

  Our hands ne’er touch’d the seals,

  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 thorough 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,

  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;

  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,

  Naked you have odds enough of any man.

  THE DISSOLUTION.

  SHE’s 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,

  Water of tears, and earthly sad despair,

  Which my materials be,

  But near 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 —

  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;

  Oh, why should ought less precious, or less tough

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

  “ — I’m cheap, and nought but fashion; fling me away.”

  Yet stay with me since thou art come,

  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 stoop’d 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.

  If that be simply perfectest,

  Which can by no way be express’d

  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,

  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 ne’er their office do;

  Love me, that I may die the gentler way;

  Hate me, because thy love’s 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,

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

  THE EXPIRATION.

  SO, so, break off 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 ask 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,

  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 my first twenty years, since yesterday,

  I scarce believed thou couldst be gone away;

  For forty more I fed on favours past,

  And forty on hopes that thou wouldst they might last;

  Tears drown’d one hundred, and sighs blew out two;

  A thousa
nd, 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

  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 kill’d 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,

  He that saith, twice, doth lie;

  For though he seem to move, and stir a while,

  It doth the sense beguile.

  Such life is like the light which bideth yet

  When the life’s light 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;

  Love-slain, lo! here I die.

  SOUL’S JOY, NOW I AM GONE.

  SOUL’S joy, now I am gone,

  And you alone,

  — Which cannot be,

  Since I must leave myself with thee,

  And carry thee with me —

  Yet when unto our eyes

  Absence denies

  Each other’s sight,

  And makes to us a constant night,

  When others change to light;

  O give no way to grief,

  But let belief

  Of mutual love

  This wonder to the vulgar prove,

  Our bodies, not we move.

  Let not thy wit beweep

  Words but sense deep;

  For when we miss

  By distance our hope’s joining bliss,

  Even then our souls shall kiss;

  Fools have no means to meet,

  But by their feet;

  Why should our clay

  Over our spirits so much sway,

  To tie us to that way?

  O give no way to grief, &c.

  FAREWELL TO LOVE.

  WHILST 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

  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

  A kind of sorrowing dulness 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

  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,

  ‘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 whilst our infant loves did grow,

  Disguises did, and shadows, flow

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

  That love hath not attain’d the highest 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 westerwardly decline,

  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 short minute, after noon, is night.

  A DIALOGUE BETWEEN SIR HENRY WOTTON AND MR. DONNE.

  [W.]

  IF her disdain least change in you can move,

  You do not love,

  For when that hope gives fuel to the fire,

  You sell desire.

  Love is not love, but given free;

  And so is mine; so should yours be.

  [D.]

  Her heart, that weeps to hear of others’ moan,

  To mine is stone.

  Her eyes, that weep a stranger’s eyes to see,

  Joy to wound me.

  Yet I so well affect each part,

  As — caused by them — I love my smart.

  [W.]

  Say her disdainings justly must be graced

  With name of chaste;

  And that she frowns lest longing should exceed,

  And raging breed;

  So her disdains can ne’er offend,

  Unless self-love take private end.

  [D.]

  ‘Tis love breeds love in me, and cold disdain

  Kills that again,

  As water causeth fire to fret and fume,

  Till all consume.

  Who can of love more rich gift make,

  That to Love’s self for love’s own sake?

  I’ll never dig in quarry of an heart

  To have no part,

  Nor roast in fiery eyes, which always are

  Canicular.

  Who this way would a lover prove,

  May show his patience, not his love.

  A frown may be sometimes for physic good,

  But not for food;

  And for that raging humour there is sure

  A gentler cure.

  Why bar you love of private end,

  Which never should to public tend?

  THE TOKEN.

  SEND me some tokens, 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-touch’d youth; nor ring to show the stands

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

  So should our loves meet in simplicity;

  No,
nor the corals, which thy wrist enfold,

  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 the best

  Nor witty lines, which are most copious,

  Within the writings which thou hast address’d.

  Send me nor this nor that, to 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 cannot pleasure choose;

  When I am caught he can be gone,

  And when he list refuse;

  Nor he that loves none but fair,

  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 when others —

  He can neither —

  Nor he that still his mistress prays,

  For she is thrall’d therefore;

  Nor he that pays, not, for he says

  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.

  ELEGIES

  These poems were written at various times during the poet’s younger years, but they were not published until some time after Donne’s death. Like the songs and sonnets, the elegies reveal Donne’s imaginative and witty genius, as well as his bawdy humour. For example, in the famous elegy To His Mistress Going to Bed, Donne poetically undresses his mistress, likening the act to the exploration of America. In Elegy XVIII, he compares the gap between his lover’s breasts to traversing the Hellespont and there are many other examples of imaginative and humorous jests. Although these poems were never published in the poet’s lifetime, Donne did allow them to circulate widely in manuscript form.

  A 1595 portrait of Donne as a young man, by an unknown artist, now housed in the National Portrait Gallery, London

  CONTENTS

  JEALOUSY.

  THE ANAGRAM.

  CHANGE.

  THE PERFUME.

  HIS PICTURE.

  O, LET ME NOT SERVE SO, AS THOSE MEN SERVE

  NATURE’S LAY IDIOT, I TAUGHT THEE TO LOVE

  THE COMPARISON.

  THE AUTUMNAL.

  THE DREAM.

  THE BRACELET.

  COME FATES; I FEAR YOU NOT!

  HIS PARTING FROM HER.

  JULIA.