Free John Donne - Delphi Poets Series by John Donne Page A

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.
Was’t not enough that thou didst dart thy fires
Into our bloods, inflaming our desires,
And madest us sigh, and blow, and pant, and burn,
And then thyself into our flames didst turn?
Was’t not enough that thou didst hazard us
To paths in love so dark and dangerous,
And those so ambush’d round with household spies,
And over all thy husband’s towering eyes,
Inflamed with th’ ugly sweat of jealousy;
Yet went we not still on in constancy?
Have we for this kept guards, like spy on spy?
Had correspondence whilst the foe stood by?
Stolen, more to sweeten them, our many blisses
Of meetings, conference, embracements, kisses?
Shadow’d with negligence our best respects?
Varied our language through all dialects
Of becks, winks, looks, and often under boards
Spoke dialogues with our feet far from our words?
Have we proved all the secrets of our art,
Yea, thy pale inwards, and thy panting heart?
And, after all this passed purgatory,
Must sad divorce make us the vulgar story?
First let our eyes be riveted quite through
Our turning brain, and both our lips grow to;
Let our arms clasp like ivy, and our fear
Freeze us together, that we may stick here,
Till Fortune, that would ruin us with the deed,
Strain his eyes open, and yet make them bleed.
For Love it cannot be, whom hitherto
I have accused, should such a mischief do.
O Fortune, thou’rt not worth my least exclaim,
And plague enough thou hast in thy own name.
Do thy great worst; my friend and I have charms,
Though not against thy strokes, against thy harms.
Rend us in sunder; thou canst not divide
Our bodies so, but that our souls are tied,
And we can love by letters still and gifts,
And thoughts and dreams; love never wanteth shifts.
I will not look upon the quickening sun,
But straight her beauty to my sense shall run;
The air shall note her soft, the fire, most pure;
Waters suggest her clear, and the earth sure.
Time shall not lose our passages; the spring,
How fresh our love was in the beginning;
The summer, how it ripen’d in the year;
And autumn, what our golden harvests were;
The winter I’ll not think on to spite thee,
But count it a lost season; so shall she.
And dearest friend, since we must part, drown night
With hope of day — burdens well borne are light — ;
The cold and darkness longer hang somewhere,
Yet Phoebus equally lights all the sphere;
And what we cannot in like portion pay
The world enjoys in mass, and so we may.
Be then ever yourself, and let no woe
Win on your health, your youth, your beauty; so
Declare yourself base Fortune’s enemy,
No less be your contempt than her inconstancy;
That I may grow enamour’d on your mind,
When mine own thoughts I here neglected find.
And this to the comfort of my dear I vow,
My deeds shall still be what my deeds are now;
The poles shall move to teach me ere I start;
And when I change my love, I’ll change my heart.
Nay, if I wax but cold in my desire,
Think, heaven hath motion lost, and the world, fire.
Much more I could, but many words have made
That oft suspected which men most persuade.
Take therefore all in this; I love so true,
As I will never look for less in you.

ELEGY XIV.
    JULIA.
    HARK, news, O envy; thou shalt hear descried
My Julia; who as yet was ne’er envied.
To vomit gall in slander, swell her veins
With calumny, that hell itself disdains,
Is her continual practice; does her best,
To tear opinion e’en out of the breast
Of dearest friends, and — which is worse than vile —
Sticks jealousy in wedlock; her own child
Scapes not the showers of envy.  To repeat
The monstrous fashions how, were alive to eat
Deare reputation; would to God she were
But half so loth to act vice, as to hear
My mild reproof.  Lived Mantuan now again
That female Mastix to limn with his pen,
This she Chimera that hath