John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (3 page)

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 intreat 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 vow’d by thee.
And yet it was, thy gift being general;
The ground, thy heart, is mine; what ever 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.

SWEETEST LOVE, I DO NOT GO

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,
Thus to use myself in jest
    By feigned deaths to die.

Yesternight the sun went hence,
    And yet is here to-day;
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 weep’st, unkindly kind,
    My life’s blood doth decay.
   It cannot be
That thou lovest me as thou say’st,
If in thine my life thou waste,
    That 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 turn’d 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 ripp’d, and search’d where hearts should lie,
It kill’d 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 seem’d, 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.

O! 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, go’st,
    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 feaver 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 perséver;
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 worshipp’d 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;
    Thy every 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. BREAK OF DAY.

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.

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 honour so
That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must business thee from hence remove?
O! 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 ANNIVERSARY.

    ALL kings, and all their favourites,
    All glory of honours, beauties, wits,
The sun it self, 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 tears;
    But souls where nothing dwells but love
 — All other thoughts being inmates — then shall prove
This or a love increasèd there above,
When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove.

    And then we shall be throughly blest;
    But now no more than all the rest.
Here upon earth we’re kings, and none but we
Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
Who is so safe as we? where none can do
Treason to us, except one of us two.
    True and false fears let us refrain,
Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore; this is the second of our reign.

A VALEDICTION OF MY NAME, IN THE WINDOW.

I.

   MY name engraved herein
Doth contribute my firmness to this glass,
    Which ever since that charm hath been
    As hard, as that which graved it was;
Thine eye will give it price enough, to mock
   The diamonds of either rock.

II.

   ‘Tis much that glass should be
As all-confessing, and through-shine as I;
    ‘Tis more that it shows thee to thee,
    And clear reflects thee to thine eye.
But all such rules love’s magic can undo;
   Here you see me, and I am you.

III.

   As no one point, nor dash,
Which are but accessories to this name,
    The showers and tempests can outwash
    So shall all times find me the same;
You this entireness better may fulfill,
   Who have the pattern with you still.

IV.

   Or if too hard and deep
This learning be, for a scratch’d name to teach,
    It as a given death’s head keep,
    Lovers’ mortality to preach;
Or think this ragged bony name to be
   My ruinous anatomy.

V.

   Then, as all my souls be
Emparadised in you — in whom alone
    I understand, and grow, and see —
    The rafters of my body, bone,
Being still with you, the muscle, sinew, and vein
   Which tile this house, will come again.

VI.

   Till my return repair
And recompact my scatter’d body so,
    As all the virtuous powers which are
    Fix’d in the stars are said to flow
Into such characters as gravèd be
   When these stars have supremacy.

VII.

   So since this name was cut,
When love and grief their exaltation had,
    No door ‘gainst this name’s influence shut.
    As much more loving, as more sad,
‘Twill make thee; and thou shouldst, till I return,
   Since I die daily, daily mourn.

VIII.

   When thy inconsiderate hand
Flings open this casement, with my trembling name,
    To look on one, whose wit or land
    New battery to thy heart may frame,
Then think this name alive, and that thou thus
   In it offend’st my Genius.

IX.

   And when thy melted maid,
Corrupted by thy lover’s gold and page,
    His letter at thy pillow hath laid,
    Disputed it, and tamed thy rage,
And thou begin’st to thaw towards him, for this,
   May my name step in, and hide his.

X.

   And if this treason go
To an overt act and that thou write again,
    In superscribing, this name flow
    Into thy fancy from the pane;
So, in forgetting thou rememb’rest right,
   And unaware to me shalt write.

XI.

   But glass and lines must be
No means our firm substantial love to keep;
    Near death inflicts this lethargy,
    And this I murmur in my sleep;
Inpute this idle talk, to that I go,
   For dying men talk often so.

TWICKENHAM GARDEN.

BLASTED with sighs, and surrounded with tears,
    Hither I come to seek the spring,
And at mine eyes, and at mine ears,
    Receive such balms as else cure every thing.
    But O! self-traitor, I do bring
The spider Love, which transubstantiates all,
And can convert manna to gall;
And that this place may thoroughly be thought
True paradise, I have the serpent brought.

‘Twere wholesomer for me that winter did
    Benight the glory of this place,
And that a grave frost did forbid
    These trees to laugh and mock me to my face;
    But that I may not this disgrace
Endure, nor yet leave loving, Love, let me
Some senseless piece of this place be;
Make me a mandrake, so I may grow here,
Or a stone fountain weeping out my year.

Hither with crystal phials, lovers, come,
    And take my tears, which are love’s wine,
And try your mistress’ tears at home,
    For all are false, that taste not just like mine.
    Alas! hearts do not in eyes shine,
Nor can you more judge women’s thoughts by tears,
Than by her shadow what she wears.
O perverse sex, where none is true but she,
Who’s therefore true, because her truth kills me.

VALEDICTION TO HIS BOOK.

I’LL tell thee now (dear love) what thou shalt do
    To anger destiny, as she doth us;
    How I shall stay, though she eloign me thus,
And how posterity shall know it too;
       How thine may out-endure
       Sibyl’s glory, and obscure
       Her who from Pindar could allure,
And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame,
And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name.

Study our manuscripts, those myriads
    Of letters, which have past ‘twixt thee and me;
    Thence write our annals, and in them will be
To all whom love’s subliming fire invades,
       Rule and example found;
       There the faith of any ground
       No schismatic will dare to wound,
That sees, how Love this grace to us affords,
To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records.

This book, as long-lived as the elements,
    Or as the world’s form, this all-gravèd tome
    In cypher writ, or new made idiom;
We for Love’s clergy only are instruments;
       When this book is made thus,
       Should again the ravenous
       Vandals and Goths invade us,
Learning were safe; in this our universe,
Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels verse.

Here Love’s divines — since all divinity
    Is love or wonder — may find all they seek,
    Whether abstract spiritual love they like,
Their souls exhaled with what they do not see;
       Or, loth so to amuse
       Faith’s infirmity, they choose
       Something which they may see and use;
For, though mind be the heaven, where love doth sit,
Beauty a convenient type may be to figure it.