But he who loveliness within Hath found, all outward loathes, For he who color loves, and skin, Loves but their oldest clothes.
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 Must die at last, ’tis best, To use my self in jest Thus by feign’d deaths to die.
Nature’s lay idiot, I taught thee to love.
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.
O how feeble is man’s power, that if good fortune fall, cannot add another hour, nor a lost hour recall!
Sleep is pain’s easiest salve, and doth fulfill all the offices of death, except to kill.
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us often.
If poisonous minerals, and if that tree, Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damned; alas; why should I be?
There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once.
I have done one braver thing than all the Worthies did, and yet a braver thence doth spring, which is, to keep that hid.
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we lov’d?
Doubt wisely; in strange way To stand inquiring right, is not to stray; To sleep, or run wrong, is.
If I dream I have you, I have you, for all our joys are but fantastical.
Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631 He was the Word that spake it; He took the bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it I do believe, and take it.
True joy is the earnest which we have of heaven, it is the treasure of the soul, and therefore should be laid in a safe place, and nothing in this world is safe to place it in.
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.
Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me, why plowing, building, ruling and the rest, or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest, by cursed Cain’s race invented be, and blest Seth vexed us with Astronomy.
That thou remember them, some claim as debt; I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.
Other men’s crosses are not my crosses.
I did best when I had least truth for my subjects.