The Complete Poems
By John Donne
5/5
()
About this ebook
John Donne
Enter the Author Bio(s) here.
Read more from John Donne
50 Classic Love Poems You Have To Read (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of John Donne Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Love Poems of John Donne Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Poems of John Donne Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetry of John Donne Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeath Be Not Proud Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCollected Poems of John Donne - A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning + 57 other Songs and Sonnets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Holy Sonnets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetical Works of John Donne: A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning + 57 other Songs and Sonnets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLetters to Severall Persons of Honour Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDevotions Upon Emergent Occasions Together with Death's Duel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Complete Poems
Related ebooks
Metaphysical Poetry: An Anthology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Delphi Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDelphi Complete Poetical Works of John Donne (Illustrated) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Troilus and Criseyde (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Essential T.S. Eliot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Collected Poetry of William Butler Yeats Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Imagist Poetry: An Anthology: Pound, Lawrence, Joyce, Stevens and others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Poems of John Milton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One Hundred and One Famous Poems (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Delphi Complete Works of John Keats (Illustrated) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Poetry Of Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Byron's Complete Poetry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Delphi Collected Works of Robert Frost (Illustrated) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems 1966-1987 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Amores Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leaves of Grass: authentic reproduction of the 1855 first edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Delphi Collected Works of T. S. Eliot Illustrated Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Emily Dickinson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Waste Land and Other Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of the Poem: Oxford Lectures Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Human Chain: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun and Her Flowers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Way Forward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pretty Boys Are Poisonous: Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf: A New Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJust Kids: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Complete Poems
4 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book contains Songs of Innocence and of Experience, followed by an Appendix containing A Divine Image and The Book of Thel. My favourite poems are in Songs of Experience. They are darker and more critical of society, human nature and the Church than the Songs of Innocence. As they are well out of copyright, I will include a couple of them here. The Garden of LoveI laid me down upon a bankWhere Love lay sleepingI heard among the rushes dankWeeping, weepingThen I went to the heath and the wildTo the thistles and thorns of the wasteAnd they told me how they were beguiledDriven out, and compelled to the chasteI went to the Garden of LoveAnd saw what I never had seenA Chapel was built in the midstWhere I used to play on the greenAnd the gates of this Chapel were shutAnd "Thou shalt not," writ over the doorSo I turned to the Garden of LoveThat so many sweet flowers boreAnd I saw it was filled with gravesAnd tombstones where flowers should beAnd priests in black gowns were walking their roundsAnd binding with briars my joys and desiresLondonI wander through each chartered street,Near where the chartered Thames does flow,And mark in every face I meet,Marks of weakness, marks of woe.In every cry of every man,In every infant’s cry of fear,In every voice, in every ban,The mind-forged manacles I hear.How the chimney-sweeper’s cryEvery blackening church appalls;And the hapless soldier’s sighRuns in blood down palace-walls.But most, through midnight streets I hearHow the youthful harlot’s curseBlasts the new-born infant’s tear,And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An eternal source of inspiration. Beyond staggering.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An awesome little book full of great poems. Blake is a favorite of mine so I was very happy to get my hands on this and add it to my library!
Book preview
The Complete Poems - John Donne
THE COMPLETE POEMS
By JOHN DONNE
The Complete Poems
By John Donne
Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-6171-3
eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-6172-0
This edition copyright © 2019. Digireads.com Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Cover Image: a detail of a portrait of John Donne (oil on canvas), by Isaac Oliver (c. 1565-1617) (after) / National Portrait Gallery, London, UK / Bridgeman Images.
Please visit www.digireads.com
CONTENTS
Songs and Sonnets
THE GOOD-MORROW
SONG
WOMAN’S CONSTANCY
THE UNDERTAKING: PLATONIC LOVE
THE SUN RISING
BREAK OF DAY
THE INDIFFERENT
LOVE’S USURY
THE CANONIZATION
THE TRIPLE FOOL
LOVERS’ INFINITENESS
SONG
THE LEGACY
A FEVER
AIR AND ANGELS
THE ANNIVERSARY
A VALEDICTION: OF MY NAME IN THE WINDOW
A VALEDICTION: OF THE BOOK
COMMUNITY
LOVE’S GROWTH
LOVE’S EXCHANGE
CONFINED LOVE
THE DREAM
A VALEDICTION: OF WEEPING
LOVE’S ALCHEMY: MUMMY
THE FLEA
THE CURSE
THE MESSAGE
WITCHCRAFT BY A PICTURE
THE BAIT
THE APPARITION
THE BROKEN HEART
A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING
THE ECSTACY
LOVE’S DEITY
LOVE’S DIET
THE WILL
THE FUNERAL
THE BLOSSOM
THE PRIMROSE
THE RELIC
THE DAMP
THE DISSOLUTION
TO A JET RING SENT TO ME
NEGATIVE LOVE
THE PROHIBITION
VALEDICTION: THE EXPIRATION
THE COMPUTATION
THE PARADOX
FAREWELL TO LOVE
A LECTURE UPON THE SHADOW
SONNET: THE TOKEN
SELF-LOVE
TWICKENHAM GARDEN
A NOCTURNAL UPON ST. LUCY’S DAY, BEING THE SHORTEST DAY
Love Elegies
ELEGY I. JEALOUSY
ELEGY II. THE ANAGRAM
ELEGY III. CHANGE
ELEGY IV. THE PERFUME
ELEGY V. HIS PICTURE
ELEGY VI.
ELEGY VII.
ELEGY VIII. THE COMPARISON
ELEGY IX. THE AUTUMNAL
ELEGY X. THE DREAM
ELEGY XI. THE BRACELET
ELEGY XII. AT HIS MISSTRESS’S DEPARTURE
ELEGY XIII. JULIA
ELEGY XIV. A TALE OF A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE
ELEGY XV. THE EXPOSTULATION
ELEGY XVI. ON HIS MISTRESS’S DESIRE TO BE DISGUISED AND TO GO LIKE A PAGE WITH HIM
ELEGY XVII. VARIETY
ELEGY XVIII. LOVE’S PROGRESS
ELEGY XIX. TO HIS MISTRESS GOING TO BED
ELEGY XX. LOVE’S WAR
ELEGY XXI.
HEROICAL EPISTLE. SAPPHO TO PHILAENIS
Satires
SATIRE I.
SATIRE II.
SATIRE III.
SATIRE IV. THE COURT
SATIRE V.
UPON MR. THOMAS CORYAT’S CRUDITIES
Epigrams
HERO AND LEANDER
PYRAMUS AND THISBE
NIOBE
A BURNT SHIP
FALL OF A WALL
CADIZ AND GUYANA
IL CAVALLIERE GIO. WINGFIELD
A LAME BEGGAR
A SELF-ACCUSER
A LICENTIOUS PERSON
ANTIQUARY
MANLINESS
DISINHERITED
PHRYNE
AN OBSCURE WRITER
KLOCKIUS
RADERUS
MERCURIUS GALLO-BELGICUS
RALPHIUS
THE LIAR
AD AUTOREM
METEMPSYCHOSIS
Verse Letters
TO MR. THOMAS WOODWARD (?)
FROM THOMAS WOODWARD (?)
TO MR. THOMAS WOODWARD
TO MR. THOMAS WOODWARD
TO MR. THOMAS WOODWARD
TO MR. ROWLAND WOODWARD
TO MR. ROWLAND WOODWARD
TO MR. CHRISTOPHER BROOKE
TO MR. EVERARD GILPIN (?)
TO MR. SAMUEL BROOKE
TO MR. ROWLAND WOODWARD
TO MR. J. L.
TO MR. J. L.
TO MR. B. B.
THE STORM
THE CALM
TO MR. ROWLAND WOODWARD
TO SIR HENRY WOTTON
TO JOHN DONNE FROM MR. HENRY WOTTON
TO SIR HENRY WOTTON FROM COURT
TO MY EVER TO BE RESPECTED FRIEND
HENRICO WOTTONI IN HIBERNIA BELLIGERANTI
TO THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON (?)
TO SIR HENRY WOTTON AT HIS GOING AMBASSADOR TO VENICE
TO SIR HENRY GOODERE MOVING HIM TO TRAVEL
TO MR. ROWLAND WOODWARD
TO MRS. MAGDALEN HERBERT (?)
TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD
TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD, WELCOMING HER TO TWICKENHAM
TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD
A LETTER WRITTEN BY SIR HENRY GOODERE AND JOHN DONNE, ALTERNIS VICIBUS
TO SIR EDWARD HERBERT
A LETTER TO THE LADY CAREY AND HER SISTER, MRS. ESSEX RICHE, FROM AMIENS
TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD
TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD
TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD ON NEW YEAR’S DAY
TO THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON
TO THE COUNTESS OF SALISBURY
Epithalamions or Marriage Songs
EPITHALAMION MADE AT LINCOLN’S INN
AN EPITHALAMION, OR MARRIAGE SONG
EPITHALAMION FOR THE EARL OF SOMERSET
A Funeral Elegy for Elizabeth Drury, and Two Anniversaries
A FUNERAL ELEGY
AN ANATOMY OF THE WORLD
OF THE PROGRESS OF THE SOUL
Funeral Elegies
ELEGY ON THE L. C.
ELEGY ON THE LADY MARKHAM
ELEGY ON MISTRESS BOULSTRED
TO THE LADY BEDFORD.
DEATH
ELEGY UPON THE UNTIMELY DEATH
OBSEQUIES TO THE LORD HARINGTON
A HYMN TO THE SAINTS, AND TO MARQUIS HAMILTON
EPITAPH ON HIMSELF
Divine Poems
LA CORONA
THE CROSS
RESURRECTION
UPON THE ANNUNCIATION AND PASSION FALLING UPON ONE DAY
THE LITANY
GOOD-FRIDAY, RIDING WESTWARD
HOLY SONNETS
TO MR. TILMAN AFTER HE HAD TAKEN ORDERS
A HYMN TO CHRIST
UPON THE TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS
HYMN TO GOD, MY GOD, IN MY SICKNESS
A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER
Latin Poems and Translations
AMICISSIMO EX MERITISSIMO BEN. JONSON. IN VOLPONEM
TO MY MOST FRIENDLY AND DESERVING BENJAMIN JONSON ON HIS VOLPONE OR THE FOX
DE LIBRO CUM MUTUARETUR IMPRESSO
TO MY VERY LEARNED FRIEND
TO MR. GEORGE HERBERT
VOTA AMICO FACTA
THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
Songs and Sonnets
THE GOOD-MORROW
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 so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.
SONG
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
If thou beest born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.
If thou find’st 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.
WOMAN’S CONSTANCY
Now thou hast loved me one whole day,
To-morrow when thou leav’st, what wilt thou say?
Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow?
Or say that now
We are not just those persons which we were?
Or that oaths made in reverential fear
Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?
Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,
So lovers’ contracts, images of those,
Bind but till sleep, death’s image, them unloose?
Or, your own end to justify,
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;
Which I abstain to do,
For by to-morrow I may think so too.
THE UNDERTAKING: PLATONIC LOVE
I have done one braver thing
Than all the Worthies did;
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is, to keep that hid.
It were but madness now t’ impart
The skill of specular stone,
When he, which can have learned the art
To cut it, can find none.
So, if I now should utter this,
Others (because no more
Such stuff to work upon, there is)
Would love but as before.
But he who loveliness within
Hath found, all outward loathes,
For he who color loves, and skin,
Loves but their oldest clothes.
If, as I have, you also do
Virtue in woman see,
And dare love that, and say so too,
And forget the He and She;
And if this love, though placed so,
From profane men you hide,
Which will no faith on this bestow,
Or, if they do, deride;
Then you have done a braver thing
Than all the Worthies did;
And a braver thence will spring,
Which is, to keep that hid.
THE SUN RISING
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 school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both the Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.
She’s all states, and all princes I;
Nothing else is;
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.
BREAK OF DAY
’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 darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.
Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst, that it could say,
That being well, I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honor so,
That I would not from him, that had them, go.
Must business thee from hence remove?
Oh, that’s the worst disease of love,
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.
THE INDIFFERENT
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 the town;
Her who believes, and her who tries;
Her who still weeps with spongy eyes,
And her who is dry cork, and never cries.
I can love her, and her, and you, and you;
I can love any, so she be not true.
Will no other vice content you?
Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers?
Or have you all old vices spent, and now would find out others?
Or doth a fear that men are true torment you?
O we are not, be not you so;
Let me (and do you) twenty know;
Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go.
Must I, who came to travel thorough you,
Grow your fixed subject, because you are true?
Venus heard me sigh this song;
And by love’s sweetest part, variety, she swore,
She heard not this till now; and that it should be so no more.
She went, examined, and returned ere long,
And said, "Alas! some two or three
Poor heretics in love there be,
Which think to establish dangerous constancy.
But I have told them, ‘Since you will be true,
You shall be true to them who’re false to you.’"
LOVE’S USURY
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 range, and let
Me travel, sojourn, snatch, plot, have, forget,
Resume my last year’s relict; think that yet
We’d never met.
Let me think any rival’s letter mine,
And at next nine
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 comfitures of court,
Or city’s quelque-choses; let not report
My mind transport.
This bargain’s good; if when I’m old, I be
Inflamed by thee,
If thine own honor, or my shame and pain,
Thou covet most, at that age thou shalt gain.
Do thy will then; then subject and degree
And fruit of love, Love, I submit to thee.
Spare me till then; I’ll bear it, though she be
One that love me.
THE CANONIZATION
For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love;
Or chide my palsy, or my gout;
My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve;
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honor, or his Grace;
Or the king’s real, or his stamped face
Contemplate; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.
Alas! alas! who’s injured by my love?
What merchant’s ships have my sighs drowned?
Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.
Call’s what you will, we are made such by love;
Call her one, me another fly,
We’re tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find the eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two being one, are it;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.
We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love;
And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love
Made one another’s hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world’s soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes;
(So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize)
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love."
THE TRIPLE FOOL
I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry;
(But where’s that wise man, that would not be I,
If she would not deny?)
Then as th’ earth’s inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water’s fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme’s vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.
But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain;
And, by delighting many, frees again
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when ’tis read.
Both are increased by such songs,
For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.
LOVERS’ INFINITENESS
If yet I have not all thy love,
Dear, I shall never have it all;
I cannot breathe one other sigh, to move,
Nor can entreat one other tear to fall;
And all my treasure, which should purchase thee,
Sighs, tears, and oaths, and letters I have spent;
Yet no more can be due to me,
Than at the bargain made was meant.
If then thy gift of love were partial,
That some to me, some should to others fall,
Dear, I shall never have thee all.
Or if then thou gavest me all,
All was but all, which thou hadst then;
But if in thy heart since there be or shall
New love created be by other men,
Which have their stocks entire, and can in tears,
In sighs, in oaths, and letters, outbid me,
This new love may beget new fears,
For this love was not vowed by thee.
And yet it was, thy gift being general;
The ground, thy heart, is mine; whatever shall
Grow there, dear, I should have it all.
Yet I would not have all yet.
He that hath all can have no more;
And since my love doth every day admit
New growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in store;
Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,
If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest it;
Love’s riddles are, that though thy heart depart,
It stays at home, and thou with losing savest it;
But we will have a way more liberal,
Than changing hearts, to join them; so we shall
Be one, and one another’s all.
SONG
Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
At the last must part, ’tis best,
To use my self in jest
Thus by feigned deaths to die.
Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here today;
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way;
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.
O how feeble is man’s power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall;
But come bad chance,
And we join to it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o’er us to advance.
When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st not wind,
But sigh’st my soul away;
When thou weepest, unkindly kind,
My life’s blood doth decay.
It cannot be
That thou lovest me as thou sayest,
If in thine my life thou waste,
Thou art the best of me.
Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfil.
But think that we
Are but turned aside to sleep.
They who one another keep
Alive, ne’er parted be.
THE LEGACY
When last I died, 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
Something did say, and something did bestow;
Though I be dead, which sent me, I might be
Mine own executor, and legacy.
I heard me say, "Tell her anon,
That myself, (that is you, not I)
Did kill me," and when I felt me die,
I bid me send my heart, when I was gone;
But I alas! could there find none,
When I had ripped, and searched where hearts should lie;
It killed me again, that I who still was true,
In life, in my last will should cozen you.
Yet I found something like a heart,
But colours it, and corners had;
It was not good, it was not bad,
It was entire to none, and few had part.
As good as could be made by art
It seemed, and therefore for our loss be sad.
I meant to send that heart instead of mine,
But O! no man could hold it, for ’twas thine.
A FEVER
Oh do not die, for I shall hate
All women so, when thou art gone,
That thee I shall not celebrate,
When I remember thou wast one.
But yet thou canst not die, I know;
To leave this world behind, is death;
But when thou from this world wilt go,
The whole world vapours with thy breath.
Or if, when thou, the world’s soul, goest,
It stay, ’tis but thy carcase then;
The fairest woman, but thy ghost,
But corrupt worms, the worthiest men.
O wrangling schools, that search what fire
Shall burn this world, had none the wit
Unto this knowledge to aspire,
That this her fever might be it?
And yet she cannot waste by this,
Nor long bear this torturing wrong,
For more corruption needful is,
To fuel such a fever long.
These burning fits but meteors be,
Whose matter in thee is soon spent;
Thy beauty, and all parts, which are thee,
Are unchangeable firmament.
Yet ’twas of my mind, seizing thee,
Though it in thee cannot persever;
For I had rather owner be
Of thee one hour, than all else ever.
AIR AND ANGELS
Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
(So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be);
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.
Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
(And so more steadily to have gone),
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love’s pinnace overfraught;
Every thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much; some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere;
Then as an angel face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love’s sphere;
Just such disparity
As is ’twixt air’s and angels’ purity,
’Twixt women’s love, and men’s, will ever be.
THE ANNIVERSARY
All kings, and all their favorites,
All glory of honors, beauties, wits,
The sun itself, which makes time, as they pass,
Is elder by a year now than it was
When thou and I first one another saw.
All other things to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay;
This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday;
Running it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.
Two graves must hide thine and my corse;
If one might, death were no divorce.
Alas, as well as other princes, we
(Who prince enough in one another be)
Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears,
Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt