by John Donne
The woodbine quivering, are her arms and hands.
Like rough-bark’d elm-boughs, or the russet skin
Of men late scourged for madness, or for sin,
Like sun-parch’d quarters on the city gate,
Such is thy tann’d skin’s lamentable state;
And like a bunch of ragged carrots stand
The short swollen fingers of thy gouty hand.
Then like the chemic’s masculine equal fire,
Which in the limbec’s warm womb doth inspire
Into th’ earth’s worthless dirt a soul of gold,
Such cherishing heat her best loved part doth hold.
Thine’s like the dread mouth of a fired gun,
Or like hot liquid metals newly run
Into clay moulds, or like to that Ætna,
Where round about the grass is burnt away.
Are not your kisses then as filthy, and more,
As a worm sucking an envenom’d sore?
Doth not thy fearful hand in feeling quake,
As one which gathering flowers still fears a snake?
Is not your last act harsh and violent,
As when a plough a stony ground doth rent?
So kiss good turtles, so devoutly nice
Are priests in handling reverent sacrifice,
And such in searching wounds the surgeon is,
As we, when we embrace, or touch, or kiss.
Leave her, and I will leave comparing thus,
She and comparisons are odious.
ELEGY IX.
THE AUTUMNAL.
NO spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face;
Young beauties force our love, and that’s a rape;
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape.
If ‘twere a shame to love, here ‘twere no shame;
Affections here take reverence’s name.
Were her first years the Golden Age? that’s true,
But now they’re gold oft tried, and ever new.
That was her torrid and inflaming time;
This is her tolerable tropic clime.
Fair eyes; who asks more heat than comes from hence,
He in a fever wishes pestilence.
Call not these wrinkles, graves; if graves they were,
They were Love’s graves, for else he is nowhere.
Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit,
Vow’d to this trench, like an anachorite,
And here, till hers, which must be his death, come,
He doth not dig a grave, but build a tomb.
Here dwells he; though he sojourn everywhere,
In progress, yet his standing house is here;
Here, where still evening is, not noon, nor night;
Where no voluptuousness, yet all delight.
In all her words, unto all hearers fit,
You may at revels, you at council, sit.
This is love’s timber; youth his underwood;
There he, as wine in June, enrages blood;
Which then comes seasonablest, when our taste
And appetite to other things is past.
Xerxes’ strange Lydian love, the platane tree,
Was loved for age, none being so large as she;
Or else because, being young, nature did bless
Her youth with age’s glory, barrenness.
If we love things long sought, age is a thing
Which we are fifty years in compassing;
If transitory things, which soon decay,
Age must be loveliest at the latest day.
But name not winter faces, whose skin’s slack,
Lank as an unthrift’s purse, but a soul’s sack;
Whose eyes seek light within, for all here’s shade;
Whose mouths are holes, rather worn out, than made;
Whose every tooth to a several place is gone,
To vex their souls at resurrection;
Name not these living death-heads unto me,
For these, not ancient, but antique be.
I hate extremes; yet I had rather stay
With tombs than cradles, to wear out a day.
Since such love’s motion natural is, may still
My love descend, and journey down the hill,
Not panting after growing beauties; so
I shall ebb out with them who homeward go.
ELEGY X.
THE DREAM.
IMAGE of her whom I love, more than she,
Whose fair impression in my faithful heart
Makes me her medal, and makes her love me,
As kings do coins, to which their stamps impart
The value; go, and take my heart from hence,
Which now is grown too great and good for me.
Honours oppress weak spirits, and our sense
Strong objects dull; the more, the less we see.
When you are gone, and reason gone with you,
Then fantasy is queen and soul, and all;
She can present joys meaner than you do,
Convenient, and more proportional.
So, if I dream I have you, I have you,
For all our joys are but fantastical;
And so I ‘scape the pain, for pain is true;
And sleep, which locks up sense, doth lock out all.
After a such fruition I shall wake,
And, but the waking, nothing shall repent;
And shall to love more thankful sonnets make,
Than if more honour, tears, and pains were spent.
But, dearest heart and dearer image, stay;
Alas! true joys at best are dream enough;
Though you stay here, you pass too fast away,
For even at first life’s taper is a snuff.
Fill’d with her love, may I be rather grown
Mad with much heart, than idiot with none.
ELEGY XI.
THE BRACELET.
UPON THE LOSS OF HIS MISTRESS’ CHAIN, FOR
WHICH HE MADE SATISFACTION.
NOT that in colour it was like thy hair,
For armlets of that thou mayst let me wear;
Nor that thy hand it oft embraced and kiss’d,
For so it had that good, which oft I miss’d;
Nor for that silly old morality,
That, as these links were knit, our love should be,
Mourn I that I thy sevenfold chain have lost;
Nor for the luck sake; but the bitter cost.
O, shall twelve righteous angels, which as yet
No leaven of vile solder did admit;
Nor yet by any way have stray’d or gone
From the first state of their creation;
Angels, which heaven commanded to provide
All things to me, and be my faithful guide;
To gain new friends, to appease great enemies;
To comfort my soul, when I lie or rise;
Shall these twelve innocents, by thy severe
Sentence, dread judge, my sin’s great burden bear?
Shall they be damn’d, and in the furnace thrown,
And punish’d for offenses not their own?
They save not me, they do not ease my pains,
When in that hell they’re burnt and tied in chains.
Were they but crowns of France, I carèd not,
For most of these their country’s natural rot,
I think, possesseth; they come here to us
So pale, so lame, so lean, so ruinous.
And howsoe’er French kings most Christian be,
Their crowns are circumcised most Jewishly.
Or were they Spanish stamps, still travelling,
That are become as Catholic as their king;
These unlick’d bear-whelps, unfiled pistolets,
That — more than cannon shot — avails or lets;
Which, negligently left unrounded, look
Like many-angled figures in the book
Of some great conjurer that would enforce
Nature, so these do justice, from her course;
Which, as the soul quickens head, feet and heart,
As streams, like veins, run through th’ earth’s every part,
Visit all countries, and have slily made
Gorgeous France, ruin’d, ragged and decay’d,
Scotland, which knew no state, proud in one day,
And mangled seventeen-headed Belgia.
Or were it such gold as that wherewithal
Almighty chemics, from each mineral
Having by subtle fire a soul out-pull’d,
Are dirtily and desperately gull’d;
I would not spit to quench the fire they’re in,
For they are guilty of much heinous sin.
But shall my harmless angels perish? Shall
I lose my guard, my ease, my food, my all?
Much hope which they would nourish will be dead.
Much of my able youth, and lustihead
Will vanish; if thou love, let them alone,
For thou wilt love me less when they are gone;
And be content that some loud squeaking crier,
Well-pleas’d with one lean threadbare groat, for hire,
May like a devil roar through every street,
And gall the finder’s conscience, if he meet.
Or let me creep to some dread conjurer,
That with fantastic schemes fills full much paper;
Which hath divided heaven in tenements,
And with whores, thieves, and murderers stuff’d his rents
So full, that though he pass them all in sin,
He leaves himself no room to enter in.
But if, when all his art and time is spent,
He say ‘twill ne’er be found; yet be content;
Receive from him that doom ungrudgingly,
Because he is the mouth of destiny.
Thou say’st, alas! the gold doth still remain,
Though it be changed, and put into a chain.
So in the first fallen angels resteth still
Wisdom and knowledge, but ‘tis turn’d to ill;
As these should do good works, and should provide
Necessities; but now must nurse thy pride.
And they are still bad angels; mine are none;
For form gives being, and their form is gone.
Pity these angels yet; their dignities
Pass Virtues, Powers, and Principalities.
But thou art resolute; thy will be done;
Yet with such anguish, as her only son
The mother in the hungry grave doth lay,
Unto the fire these martyrs I betray.
Good souls — for you give life to everything —
Good angels — for good messages you bring —
Destined you might have been to such an one,
As would have loved and worshipp’d you alone;
One that would suffer hunger, nakedness,
Yea death, ere he would make your number less;
But, I am guilty of your sad decay;
May your few fellows longer with me stay.
But O! thou wretched finder whom I hate
So, that I almost pity thy estate,
Gold being the heaviest metal amongst all,
May my most heavy curse upon thee fall.
Here fetter’d, manacled, and hang’d in chains,
First mayst thou be; then chain’d to hellish pains;
Or be with foreign gold bribed to betray
Thy country, and fail both of it and thy pay.
May the next thing thou stoop’st to reach, contain
Poison, whose nimble fume rot thy moist brain;
Or libels, or some interdicted thing,
Which negligently kept thy ruin bring.
Lust-bred diseases rot thee; and dwell with thee
Itching desire, and no ability.
May all the evils that gold ever wrought;
All mischief that all devils ever thought;
Want after plenty, poor and gouty age,
The plagues of travellers, love, marriage
Afflict thee, and at thy life’s last moment,
May thy swollen sins themselves to thee present.
But, I forgive; repent thee, honest man!
Gold is restorative; restore it then:
But if from it thou be’st loth to depart,
Because ‘tis cordial, would ‘twere at thy heart.
ELEGY XII.
COME FATES; I FEAR YOU NOT!
COME Fates; I fear you not! All whom I owe
Are paid, but you; then ‘rest me ere I go.
But Chance from you all sovereignty hath got;
Love woundeth none but those whom Death dares not;
True if you were, and just in equity,
I should have vanquish’d her, as you did me;
Else lovers should not brave Death’s pains, and live;
But ‘tis a rule, “ Death comes not to relieve.”
Or, pale and wan Death’s terrors, are they laid
So deep in lovers, they make Death afraid?
Or — the least comfort — have I company?
O’ercame she Fates, Love, Death, as well as me?
Yes, Fates do silk unto her distaff pay,
For ransom, which tax they on us do lay.
Love gives her youth — which is the reason why
Youths, for her sake, some wither and some die.
Poor Death can nothing give; yet, for her sake,
Still in her turn, he doth a lover take.
And if Death should prove false, she fears him not;
Our Muses, to redeem her, she hath got.
That fatal night we last kiss’d, I thus pray’d,
— Or rather, thus despair’d, I should have said —
Kisses, and yet despair! The forbid tree
Did promise (and deceive) no more than she.
Like lambs, that see their teats, and must eat hay,
A food, whose taste hath made me pine away.
Dives, when thou saw’st bliss, and craved’st to touch
A drop of water, thy great pains were such.
Here grief wants a fresh wit, for mine being spent,
And my sighs weary, groans are all my rent.
Unable longer to endure the pain,
They break like thunder, and do bring down rain.
Thus till dry tear solder my eye, I weep;
And then, I dream, how you securely sleep,
And in your dreams do laugh at me. I hate,
And pray Love all may; he pities my state,
But says, I therein no revenge shall find;
The sun would shine, though all the world were blind.
Yet, to try my hate, Love show’d me your tear;
And I had died, had not your smile been there.
Your frown undoes me; your smile is my wealth;
And as you please to look, I have my health.
Methought, Love pitying me, when he saw this,
Gave me your hands, the backs and palms to kiss.
That cured me not, but to bear pain gave strength;
And what is lost in force, is took in length.
I call’d on Love again, who fear’d you so,
That his compassion still proved greater woe;
For, then I dream’d I was in bed with you,
But durst not feel, for fear it should not be true.
This merits not your anger, had it been;
The queen of chastity was naked seen;
And in bed not to feel, the pain I took,
Was more than for Actæon not to look;
And that breast which lay ope, I did not know,
But for the clearness, from a lump of snow;
Nor that sweet teat which on the top it bore
From the rose-bud which for my sake you wore.
These griefs to issue forth, by verse I prove;
&nb
sp; Or turn their course by travel and new love.
All would not do; the best at last I tried;
Unable longer to hold out, I died.
And then I found I lost life, death by flying;
Who hundreds live, are but so long in dying.
Charon did let me pass; I’ll him requite.
To mark the groves or shades wrongs my delight;
I’ll speak but of those ghosts I found alone,
Those thousand ghosts, whereof myself made one,
All images of thee; I asked them why?
The judge told me, all they for thee did die,
And therefore had for their Elysian bliss,
In one another their own loves to kiss.
O here I miss’d not blissh, but being dead;
For lo! I dreamt, I dreamt, and waking said,
“ Heaven, if who are in thee there must dwell,
How is’t I now was there, and now I fell?”
ELEGY XIII.
HIS PARTING FROM HER.
SINCE she must go, and I must mourn, come night,
Environ me with darkness, whilst I write;
Shadow that hell unto me, which alone
I am to suffer when my love is gone.
Alas! the darkest magic cannot do it,
Thou and great hell, to boot, are shadows to it.
Should Cynthia quit thee, Venus, and each star,
It would not form one thought dark as mine are.
I could lend them obscureness now, and say
Out of my self, there should be no more day.
Such is already my self-want of sight,
Did not the fire within me force a light.
O Love, that fire and darkness should be mix’d,
Or to thy triumphs such strange torments fix’d!
Is it because thou thyself art blind, that we,
Thy martyrs, must no more each other see?
Or takest thou pride to break us on the wheel,
And view old Chaos in the pains we feel?
Or have we left undone some mutual rite,
That thus with parting thou seek’st us to spite?
No, no. The fault is mine, impute it to me,
Or rather to conspiring destiny,
Which, since I loved in jest before, decreed
That I should suffer, when I loved indeed;
And therefore, sooner now than I can say,
I saw the golden fruit, ‘tis rapt away;
Or as I’d watch’d one drop in the vast stream,
And I left wealthy only in a dream.
Yet, Love, thou’rt blinder than myself in this,
To vex my dove-like friend for my amiss;
And where one sad truth may expiate
Thy wrath, to make her fortune run my fate.
So blinded justice doth, when favourites fall,
Strike them, their house, their friends, their favourites all.
