Read Online John Donne - Delphi Poets Series by John Donne - Free Book Online Page A

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