As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"The breath goes now," and some say, "No,"
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we, by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do;
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
from John Donne
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I first read this in my British Literature class when I was a sophomore in high school, and I think it may very well be the sole reason I ever wanted to be an English major in the first place.
ReplyDeleteLast fall in London, I bought a compass the day before our scheduled walking tour to St. Paul's and wrote a message down the side of it. I left it on John Donne's monument in the cathedral, in place of leaving flowers on a grave. I'm sure the custodians just threw it away the second I left, but it didn't seem right to visit Dr. Donne and leave him nothing.
I also think it's funny that the Welsh claim John Donne for their own. And I think it's sad that he's one of the few prominent figures from medieval British history that I'm not directly related to.