1.18: John Donne Songs and Sonnets

The Flea

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is ;

It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two ;

And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.

Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,

And cloister’d in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that self-murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it suck’d from thee?

Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou

Find’st not thyself nor me the weaker now.

‘Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;

Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me,

Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

The Good Morrow

I WONDER by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved ? were we not wean’d till then ?

But suck’d 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 mix’d 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 be’st 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.

The Woman’s Constancy

NOW thou hast loved me one whole day,

To-morrow when thou leavest, 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

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

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 to impart

The skill of specular stone,

When he, which can have learn’d 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 placèd 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 th’ 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 honour’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.

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 form’d, 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 fix’d 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 return’d ere long,

And said, “Alas ! some two or three

Poor heretics in love there be,

Which think to stablish 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 confitures 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 honour, 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 ruin’d fortune flout ;

With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ;

Take you a course, get you a place,

Observe his Honour, or his Grace ;

Or the king’s real, or his stamp’d 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 drown’d?

Who says my tears have overflow’d 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 th’ 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 increasèd 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.

Lover’s Infinitesness

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.

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,

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.

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,

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

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.

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.

[Another of the Same]

‘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.

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.

Source:

Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. Vols 1 and 2 Edited by E.K. Chambers London: Lawrenece & Bullen, 1896.