John Donne

Who ever 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 then to heaven being gone,

Keep midnight's promise; mistake by the way The maid, and tell the lady of that delay; Only let me love none; no, not the sport From country grass to confitures of court, Or city's quelque-choses; let not report My mind transport.

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.

To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend, All is the purlieu of the god of love.

I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born.

Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book.

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.

We then, who are this new soul, know Of what we are composed and made, For the' atomies of which we grow Are souls, whom no change can invade. But oh alas, so long, so far, Our bodies why do we forbear?

And whilst our souls negotiate there, We like sepulchral statues lay; All day, the same our postures were, And we said nothing, all the day.

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread Our eyes, upon one double string; So to entergraft our hands, as yet Was all the means to make us one, And pictures in our eyes to get Was all our propagation.

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.

O more than moon, Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere, Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear To teach the sea what it may do too soon.

Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end, where I begun.

Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to aery thinness beat.

As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls, to go, Whilst 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 …

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.

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.

Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.

Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks.

For I am every dead thing, In whom love wrought new alchemy. For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness He ruined me, and I am re-begot

The world's whole sap is sunk: The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk, Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk, Dead and interred; yet all these seem to laugh, Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's.

Send home my long strayed eyes to me, Which (Oh) too long have dwelt on thee.

Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.