John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (5 page)

I FIX mine eye on thine, and there
    Pity my picture burning in thine eye;
My picture drown’d in a transparent tear,
    When I look lower I espy;
   Hadst thou the wicked skill
By pictures made and marr’d, to kill,
How many ways mightst thou perform thy will?

But now I’ve drunk thy sweet salt tears,
    And though thou pour more, I’ll depart;
My picture vanished, vanish all fears
    That I can be endamaged by that art;
   Though thou retain of me
One picture more, yet that will be,
Being in thine own heart, from all malice free.

THE BAIT.

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.

There will the river whisp’ring run
Warm’d by thy eyes, more than the sun;
And there th’ enamour’d fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou, to be so seen, be’st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark’nest both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy net.

Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;
Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes’ wand’ring eyes.

For thee, thou need’st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait:
That fish, that is not catch’d thereby,
Alas! is wiser far than I.

THE APPARITION.

WHEN by thy scorn, O murd’ress, I am dead,
And that thou thinkst thee free
From all solicitation from me,
Then shall my ghost come to thy bed,
And thee, feign’d 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 call’st for more,
And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink:
And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou
Bathed 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’d rather thou shouldst painfully repent,
Than by my threatenings rest still innocent.

THE BROKEN HEART.

He is stark mad, whoever 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 me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
    Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
    I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
    If once into love’s hands it come!
All other griefs allow a part
    To other griefs, and ask themselves but some;
They come to us, but us love draws;
He swallows us and never chaws;
    By him, as by chain’d shot, whole ranks do die;
    He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

If ‘twere not so, what did become
    Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
    But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
    More pity unto me; but Love, alas!
    At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
    Nor any place be empty quite;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
    Those pieces still, though they be not unite;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
    My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
    But after one such love, can love no more.

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.

AS virtuous men pass mildly away, 
    And whisper to their souls to go, 
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
    “Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.”

So let us melt, and make no noise,
    5
    No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
‘Twere profanation of our joys 
    To tell the laity our love. 

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears;
    Men reckon what it did, and meant;  10
But trepidation of the spheres, 
    Though greater far, is innocent. 

Dull sublunary lovers’ love 
    — Whose soul is sense — cannot admit 
Of absence, ‘cause it doth remove  15
    The thing which elemented it. 

But we by a love so much refined,
    That ourselves know not what it is, 
Inter-assurèd of the mind, 
    Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss. 
    20

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. 

If they be two, they are two so25
    As stiff twin compasses are two; 
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show 
    To move, but doth, if th’ other do. 

And though it in the centre sit, 
    Yet, when the other far doth roam,
    30
It leans, and hearkens after it, 
    And grows erect, as that comes home. 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
    Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just, 35
    And makes me end where I begun. 

THE ECSTACY.

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
    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 souls — which to advance their state,
    Were gone out — hung ‘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 soul’s 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 mix’d 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
    Interanimates 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 not we; we are
    Th’ intelligences, they the spheres.

We owe them thanks, because they thus
    Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses’ force to us,
    Nor are dross to us, but allay.

On man heaven’s influence works not so,
    But that it first imprints the air;
For 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
    To affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
    Else a great prince in prison lies.

To our bodies turn we then, that so
    Weak men on love reveal’d may look;
Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
    But yet the body is his book.

And if some lover, such as we,
    Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
    Small change when we’re to bodies gone.

LOVE’S DEITY.

I LONG to talk with some old lover’s ghost,
    Who died before the god of love was born.
I cannot think that he, who then loved most,
    Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn.
But since this god produced a destiny,
And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be,
    I must love her that loves not me.

Sure, they which made him god, meant not so much,
    Nor he in his young godhead practised it.
But when an even flame two hearts did touch,
    His office was indulgently to fit
Actives to passives. Correspondency
Only his subject was; it cannot be
    Love, till I love her, who loves me.

But every modern god will now extend
    His vast prerogative as far as Jove.
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend,
    All is the purlieu of the god of love.
O! were we waken’d by this tyranny
To ungod this child again, it could not be
    I should love her, who loves not me.

Rebel and atheist too, why murmur I,
    As though I felt the worst that love could do?
Love might make me leave loving, or might try
    A deeper plague, to make her love me too;
Which, since she loves before, I’m loth to see.
Falsehood is worse than hate; and that must be,
    If she whom I love, should love me.

LOVE’S DIET.

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

Above one sigh a day I allow’d him not,
Of which my fortune, and my faults had part;
    And if sometimes by stealth he got
    A she sigh from my mistress’ heart,
And thought to feast upon that, I let him see
‘Twas neither very sound, nor meant to me.

If he wrung from me a tear, I brined it so
With scorn and shame, that him it nourish’d not;
    If he suck’d hers, I let him know
    ‘Twas not a tear which he had got;
His drink was counterfeit, as was his meat;
For eyes, which roll towards all, weep not, but sweat.

Whatever he would dictate I writ that,
But burnt her letters when she writ to me;
    And if that favour made him fat,
    I said, “If any title be
Convey’d by this, ah! what doth it avail,
To be the fortieth name in an entail?”

Thus I reclaim’d my buzzard love, to fly
At what, and when, and how, and where I choose.
    Now negligent of sports I lie,
    And now, as other falconers use,
I spring a mistress, swear, write, sigh, and weep;
And the game kill’d, or lost, go talk or sleep.

THE WILL.

    BEFORE I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe,
    Great Love, some legacies; I here bequeath
    Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see;
    If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee;
    My tongue to Fame; to ambassadors mine ears;
       To women, or the sea, my tears;
   Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore
    By making me serve her who had twenty more,
That I should give to none, but such as had too much before.

    My constancy I to the planets give;
    My truth to them who at the court do live;
    My ingenuity and openness,
    To Jesuits; to buffoons my pensiveness;
    My silence to any, who abroad hath been;
       My money to a Capuchin:
   Thou, Love, taught’st me, by appointing me
    To love there, where no love received can be,
Only to give to such as have an incapacity.

    My faith I give to Roman Catholics;
    All my good works unto the Schismatics
    Of Amsterdam; my best civility
    And courtship to an University;
    My modesty I give to soldiers bare;
       My patience let gamesters share:
   Thou, Love, taught’st me, by making me
    Love her that holds my love disparity,
Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity.

    I give my reputation to those
    Which were my friends; mine industry to foes;
    To schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulness;
    My sickness to physicians, or excess;
    To nature all that I in rhyme have writ;
       And to my company my wit:
   Thou, Love, by making me adore
    Her, who begot this love in me before,
Taught’st me to make, as though I gave, when I do but restore.

    To him for whom the passing-bell next tolls,
    I give my physic books; my written rolls
    Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give;
    My brazen medals unto them which live
    In want of bread; to them which pass among
       All foreigners, mine English tongue:
   Though, Love, by making me love one
    Who thinks her friendship a fit portion
For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.

    Therefore I’ll give no more, but I’ll undo
    The world by dying, because love dies too.
    Then all your beauties will be no more worth
    Than gold in mines, where none doth draw it forth;
    And all your graces no more use shall have,
       Than a sun-dial in a grave:
   Thou, Love, taught’st me by making me
    Love her who doth neglect both me and thee,
To invent, and practise this one way, to annihilate all three.

THE FUNERAL.

WHOEVER 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,
     Will leave this to control
And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.

For if the sinewy thread my brain lets fall
     Through every part
Can tie those parts, and make me one of all,
Those hairs which upward grew, and strength and art
     Have from a better brain,
Can better do ‘t; except she meant that I
     By this should know my pain,
As prisoners then are manacled, when they’re condemn’d to die.