John Donne

By our first strange and fatal interview, By all desires which thereof did ensue.

The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I Abjure my so much loved variety.

I will not look upon the quickening sun, But straight her beauty to my sense shall run; The air shall note her soft, the fire, most pure; Waters suggest her clear, and the earth sure. Time shall not lose our passages.

Great sorrows cannot speak.

Fill'd with her love, may I be rather grown Mad with much heart, than idiot with none.

So, if I dream I have you, I have you, For, all our joys are but fantastical.

No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace, As I have seen in one autumnal face.

She, and comparisons are odious.

Are not your kisses then as filthy, and more, As a worm sucking an envenom'd sore? Doth not thy fearful hand in feeling quake, As one which gathering flowers still fears a snake? Is not your last act harsh and violent, As when a plough a …

Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love.

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.

Up, up, fair bride, and call Thy stars from out their several boxes, take Thy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and make Thyself a constellation of them all.

If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

For having purposed change and falsehood, you Can have no way but falsehood to be true! Vain lunatic, against these 'scapes I could Dispute, and conquer, if I would.

Now thou hast loved me one whole day, To-morrow when thou leavest, what wilt thou say?

If yet I have not all thy love, Dear, I shall never have it all.

Stand still, and I will read to thee A lecture, love, in love’s philosophy.

Dear love, for nothing less than thee Would I have broke this happy dream, It was a theme For reason, much too strong for fantasy, Therefore thou waked’st me wisely; yet My dream thou brok’st not, but continued’st it.

A naked thinking heart, that makes no show, Is to a woman, but a kind of ghost.

Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.

Ah cannot we As well as cocks and lions jocund be, After such pleasures?

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 our selves benight our happiest day. We asked none leave to love; nor will we owe Any, so …

Take heed of loving me.

When my grave is broke up again Some second guest to entertain, (For graves have learnt 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,