John Donne (1572 – 1631)
Jacobean metaphysical poet.
Licence my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O, my America, my Newfoundland
My kingdom, safest when with one man mann'd,
My mine of precious stones, my empery;
How am I blest in thus discovering thee !
To enter in these bonds, is to be free ;
Then, where my hand is set, my soul shall be."
A bracelet of bright hair about the bone.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be,
To taste whole joys.
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.
And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out;
The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man's wit,
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess that this world's spent,
When in the planets, and the firmament
They seek so many new; then see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;
All just supply, and all relation:
Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.
Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and their map, who lie
Flat on this bed.
When God's hand is bent to strike, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; but to fall out of the hands of the living God is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination.
But he who loveliness within
Hath found, all outward loathes,
For he who color loves, and skin,
Loves but their oldest clothes.
Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here today.
I do nothing upon myself, and yet am mine own executioner.
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I
Abjure my so much loved variety.
I have done one braver thing
Than all the Worthies did;
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is to keep that hid.
Hee drinkes misery, and he tastes happinesse; he mowes misery, and he gleanes happinesse; he journeys in misery, he does but walke in happinesse.
So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss,
Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.
The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts
Not of two lovers, but two loves the nests.
And dare love that, and say so too,
And forget the He and She.
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes, upon one double string;
So to entergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
His writings, like his actions, were faulty, violent, a little morbid even, and abnormal. He was not, and did not attempt to be, an average man. But actions and writings alike, in their strangeness and aloofness, were unadulterated by a tinge of affectation.