John Donne.
1573-1631
STAY, O sweet, and do not rise! The light that shines comes from thine eyes; The day breaks
not: it is my heart, Because that you and I must part. Stay! or else my joys will die And perish in their infancy.
GO and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or
who cleft the Devils foot; Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envys stinging, And find What
wind Serves to advance an honest mind.
If thou best born to strange sights, Things invisible to see, Ride ten thousand days and nights Till
Age snow white hairs on thee; Thou, when thou returnst, wilt tell me All strange wonders that befell thee, And
swear No where Lives a woman true and fair.
If thou findst one, let me know; Such a pilgrimage were sweet. Yet do not; I would not go, Though
at next door we might meet. Though she were true when you met her, And last till you write your letter, Yet
she Will be False, ere I come, to two or three.
WHEN by thy scorn, O murdress I am dead, And that thou thinkst thee free From all solicitation
from me, Then shall my ghost come to thy bed, And thee, faind vestal, in worse arms shall see; Then thy
sick taper will begin to wink, And he, whose thou art then, being tired before, Will, if thou stir, or pinch
to wake him, think Thou callst for more, And in false sleep will from thee shrink, And then poor aspen
wretch, neglected thou Bathd in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie A verier ghost than I; What I will say I will
not tell thee now, Lest that preserve thee; and since my love is spent, I had rather thou shouldst painfully
repent, Than by my threatnings rest still innocent.
WHERE, like a pillow on a bed, A pregnant bank swelld up, to rest The violets reclining head, Sat
we two, one anothers best. Our hands were firmly càemented By a fast balm which thence did spring; Our
eye-beams twisted, and did thread Our eyes upon one double string. So to engraft our hands, as yet Was
all the means to make us one; And pictures in our eyes to get Was all our propagation. As twixt two equal
armies Fate Suspends uncertain victory, Our soulswhich to advance their state Were gone outhung
twixt her and me. 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. If any, so by love refined, That he souls language
understood, And by good love were grown all mind, Within convenient distance stood, He (though he
knew not which soul spake, Because both meant, both spake the same) Might thence a new concoction
take, And part far purer than he came. This Ecstasy doth unperplex (We said) and tell us what we love, We
see by this, it was not sex, We see, we saw not what did move: But as all several souls contain Mixture
of things, they know not what, Love, these mixed souls doth mix again, And makes both one, each this
and that. A single violet transplant, The strength, the colour, and the size (All which before was poor and
scant) Redoubles still, and multiplies. When love, with one another so Interinanimates two souls, That
abler soul, which thence doth flow, Defects of loneliness controls. We then, who are this new soul, know,
Of what we are composed and made, For th Atomies of which we grow, Are souls, whom no change
can invade. But O alas, so long, so far Our bodies why do we forbear? They are ours, though they are
not we, We are The intelligences, they the sphere. We owe them thanks, because they thus, Did us,
to us, at first convey, Yielded their forces, sense, to us, Nor are dross to us, but allay. On man heavens
influence works not so, But that it first imprints the air, So soul into the soul may flow, Though it to body
first repair. As our blood labours to beget Spirits, as like souls as it can, Because such fingers need to
knit That subtle knot, which makes us man: So must pure lovers souls descend T affections, and to
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