John Donne

He is stark mad, who ever 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

Father, part of his double interest Unto thy kingdom, thy Son gives to me, His jointure in the knotty Trinity He keeps, and gives to me his death’s conquest. This Lamb, whose death with

Dear love, for nothing less than thee Would I have broke this happy dream; It was a theme For reason, much too strong for phantasy: Therefore thou waked’st me wisely; yet My dream thou

Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows and through curtains, call on us? Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late schoolboys and sour ‘prentices,

I can love both fair and brown, Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays, Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays, Her whom the country formed, and whom

For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love, Or chide my palsy, or my gout, My five grey hairs, or ruin’d fortune flout, With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun, Which is my sin, though it were done before? Wilt thou forgive that sin through which I run, And do run still, though still I do

Nature’s lay idiot, I taught thee to love, And in that sophistry, Oh, thou dost prove Too subtle: Foole, thou didst not understand The mystic language of the eye nor hand: Nor couldst thou

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

Wilt thou love God, as he thee? Then digest, My soul, this wholesome meditation, How God the Spirit, by angels waited on In heaven, doth make his Temple in thy breast. The Father having

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damned, alas, why should I be? Why should intent or reason,

No Lover saith, I love, nor any other Can judge a perfect Lover; Hee thinkes that else none can, nor will agree That any loves but hee; I cannot say I’lov’d. for who can

O might those sighs and tears return again Into my breast and eyes, which I have spent, That I might in this holy discontent Mourn with some fruit, as I have mourned in vain;

No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As

As due by many titles I resign My self to Thee, O God; first I was made By Thee, and for Thee, and when I was decayed Thy blood bought that, the which before

He that cannot choose but love, And strives against it still, Never shall my fancy move, For he loves ‘gainst his will; Nor he which is all his own, And can at pleasure choose,

I am two fools, I know – For loving, and for saying so In whining poetry; But where’s that wiseman that would not be I, If she would not deny? Then, as th’ earths

Why are we by all creatures waited on? Why do the prodigal elements supply Life and food to me, being more pure than I, Simple, and further from corruption? Why brook’st thou, ignorant horse,

Once, and but once found in thy company, All thy supposed escapes are laid on me; And as a thief at bar is questioned there By all the men that have been robed that

When I died last, and, Dear, I die As often as from thee I go, Though it be but an hour ago, And Lovers’ hours be full eternity, I can remember yet, that I

Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove, Of golden sand, and crystal brooks, With silken lines and silver hooks. There will the river whispering run, Warmed

Show me, dear Christ, thy Spouse, so bright and clear. What! is it She, which on the other shore Goes richly painted? or which, robbed and tore, Laments and mourns in Germany and here?

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then, But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the seven sleepers’ den? ‘Twas

Let me pour forth My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here, For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear, And by this mintage they are something worth, For thus they

So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away, Turn thou ghost that way, and let me turn this, And let our selves benight our happiest day,

Where, like a pillow on a bed A pregnant bank swell’d 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

As the sweet sweat of roses in a still, As that which from chafed musk-cats’ pores doth trill, As the almighty balm of th’ early East, Such are the sweat drops of my mistress’

Some man unworthy to be possessor Of old or new love, himself being false or weak, Thought his pain and shame would be lesser If on womankind he might his anger wreak, And thence

Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deny’st me is; It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be; Thou

If faithful souls be alike glorified As angels, then my fathers soul doth see, And adds this even to full felicity, That valiantly I hells wide mouth o’erstride: But if our minds to these

Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt To Nature, and to hers, and my good is dead, And her soul early into heaven ravished, Wholly on heavenly things my mind is

For every hour that thou wilt spare me now I will allow, Usurious God of Love, twenty to thee, When with my brown my gray hairs equal be; Till then, Love, let my body

I have a friend who still believes in heaven. Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God. She thinks someone listens in heaven. On earth she’s unusually competent.

‘Tis true, ’tis day; what though it be? O wilt thou therefore rise from me? Why should we rise? because ’tis light? Did we lie down, because ’twas night? Love which in spite of