John Donne - Delphi Poets Series Read Online Free PDF Page A

am their epitaph.
    Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
    For I am every dead thing,
    In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
       For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death — things which are not.
    All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
    I, by Love’s limbec, am the grave
    Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
       Have we two wept, and so
Drown’d the whole world, us two; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.
    But I am by her death — which word wrongs her —
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
    Were I a man, that I were one
    I needs must know; I should prefer,
       If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.
    But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
    At this time to the Goat is run
    To fetch new lust, and give it you,
       Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight is.

WITCHCRAFT BY A PICTURE.
    I FIX mine eye on thine, and there
    Pity my picture burning in thine eye;
My picture drown’d in a transparent tear,
    When I look lower I espy;
   Hadst thou the wicked skill
By pictures made and marr’d, to kill,
How many ways mightst thou perform thy will?
    But now I’ve drunk thy sweet salt tears,
    And though thou pour more, I’ll depart;
My picture vanished, vanish all fears
    That I can be endamaged by that art;
   Though thou retain of me
One picture more, yet that will be,
Being in thine own heart, from all malice free.

THE BAIT.
    COME live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.
    There will the river whisp’ring run
Warm’d by thy eyes, more than the sun;
And there th’ enamour’d fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.
    When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.
    If thou, to be so seen, be’st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark’nest both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.
    Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy net.
    Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;
Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes’ wand’ring eyes.
    For thee, thou need’st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait:
That fish, that is not catch’d thereby,
Alas! is wiser far than I.

THE APPARITION.
    WHEN by thy scorn, O murd’ress, I am dead,
And that thou thinkst thee free
From all solicitation from me,
Then shall my ghost come to thy bed,
And thee, feign’d vestal, in worse arms shall see:
Then thy sick taper will begin to wink,
And he, whose thou art then, being tired before,
Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think
     Thou call’st for more,
And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink:
And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou
Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie,
     A verier ghost than I.
What I will say, I will not tell thee now,
Lest that preserve thee; and since my love is spent,
I’d rather thou shouldst painfully repent,
Than by my threatenings rest still innocent.

THE BROKEN HEART.
    He is stark