John Donne

1:Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail. ~ John Donne,

2:No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
~ John Donne,

* WISDOM TROVE *

* NEWFULLDB 2.4M *

1:No man is an island. ~ John Donne,

2:Death, thou shalt die. ~ John Donne,

3:Friends are ourselves. ~ John Donne,

4:Dull sublunary lovers love ~ John Donne,

5:Great sorrows cannot speak. ~ John Donne,

6:Kind pity chokes my spleen. ~ John Donne,

7:Lust-bred diseases rot thee. ~ John Donne,

8:Sleep is pain's easiest salve ~ John Donne,

9:In heaven it is always autumn. ~ John Donne,

10:In Heaven, it is always Autumn". ~ John Donne,

11:No man is an island unto himself. ~ John Donne,

12:Hee that hath all can have no more ~ John Donne,

13:Teach me to hear mermaids singing, ~ John Donne,

14:When I died last, and, Dear, I die ~ John Donne,

15:How imperfect is all our knowledge! ~ John Donne,

16:I am a little world made cunningly. ~ John Donne,

17:I find no abhorring in my appetite. ~ John Donne,

18:My love though silly is more brave. ~ John Donne,

19:The day breaks not, it is my heart. ~ John Donne,

20:The day breaks not: it is my heart. ~ John Donne,

21:Thou, sun, art half as happy as we. ~ John Donne,

22:Whoever loves, if he do not propose ~ John Donne,

23:I think it mercy if Thou wilt forget. ~ John Donne,

24:Pleasure is none, if not diversified. ~ John Donne,

25:No man is an island, entire of itself. ~ John Donne,

26:More than kisses, letters mingle souls. ~ John Donne,

27:Other men's crosses are not my crosses. ~ John Donne,

28:Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me. ~ John Donne,

29:Then love is sin, and let me sinful be. ~ John Donne,

30:I sing the progress of a deathless soul. ~ John Donne,

31:Nature hath no goal though she hath law. ~ John Donne,

32:Thy face is mine eye, and mine is thine. ~ John Donne,

33:Who are a little wise the best fools be. ~ John Donne,

34:As soon as there was two there was pride. ~ John Donne,

35:Nature hath no goal, though she hath law. ~ John Donne,

36:That our affections kill us not, nor dye. ~ John Donne,

37:Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet. ~ John Donne,

38:Death is an ascension to a better library. ~ John Donne,

39:Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love. ~ John Donne,

40:Death is an ascension to a better library. ~ John Donne,

41:I joy, that in these straits I see my west; ~ John Donne,

42:Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies. ~ John Donne,

43:Let me arrest thy thoughts, wonder with me, ~ John Donne,

44:Love, built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies. ~ John Donne,

45:To be no part of any body, is to be nothing. ~ John Donne,

46:Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail. ~ John Donne,

47:Men are sponges, which, to pour out, receive; ~ John Donne,

48:Be more than man, or thou'rt less than an ant. ~ John Donne,

49:Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfil ~ John Donne,

50:'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's. ~ John Donne,

51:we give each other a smile with a future in it ~ John Donne,

52:Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification. ~ John Donne,

53:Who knows his virtues name or place, hath none. ~ John Donne,

54:And swear No where Lives a woman true, and fair. ~ John Donne,

55:But think that we Are but turned aside to sleep. ~ John Donne,

56:For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ~ John Donne,

57:Between cowardice and despair, valour is gendred. ~ John Donne,

58:Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me. ~ John Donne,

59:For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love. ~ John Donne,

60:How much shall I be changed, before I am changed! ~ John Donne,

61:This only is charity, to do all, all that we can. ~ John Donne,

62:What if this present were the world's last night? ~ John Donne,

63:ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee ~ John Donne,

64:I did best when I had least truth for my subjects. ~ John Donne,

65:Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp. ~ John Donne,

66:My world's both parts, and 'o! Both parts must die. ~ John Donne,

67:Since you would save none of me, I bury some of you. ~ John Donne,

68:I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so. ~ John Donne,

69:Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today. ~ John Donne,

70:A man that is not afraid of a Lion is afraid of a Cat . ~ John Donne,

71:Festive alcohol sometimes leads to an excess of honesty. ~ John Donne,

72:And to 'scape stormy days, I choose an everlasting night. ~ John Donne,

73:I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so. ~ John Donne,

74:I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we lov'd? ~ John Donne,

75:She is all states, and all princes, I.
Nothing else is. ~ John Donne,

76:Enjoyment always has a spoiling, otherwise it cannot be so. ~ John Donne,

77:I shall die reading; since my book and a grave are so near. ~ John Donne,

78:The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can. ~ John Donne,

79:Solitude is a torment which is not threatened in hell itself. ~ John Donne,

80:Young men mend not their sight by using old men's spectacles. ~ John Donne,

81:And dare love that, and say so too, And forget the He and She. ~ John Donne,

82:Any man's death diminishes me, for I am involved with mankind. ~ John Donne,

83:But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner. ~ John Donne,

84:But, O alas! so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear? ~ John Donne,

85:Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven. ~ John Donne,

86:I wonder, by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we lov'd. ~ John Donne,

87:Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul! ~ John Donne,

88:Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love? ~ John Donne,

89:Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. ~ John Donne,

90:. . . Change is the nursery Of musicke, joy, life and eternity. ~ John Donne,

91:I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease. ~ John Donne,

92:Never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. ~ John Donne,

93:So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us often. ~ John Donne,

94:All occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons. ~ John Donne,

95:Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book. ~ John Donne,

96:Religion is not a melancholy, the spirit of God is not a damper. ~ John Donne,

97:Oh do not die, for I shall hate All women so, when thou art gone. ~ John Donne,

98:The Psalms foretell what I, what any shall do and suffer and say. ~ John Donne,

99:At the round earth's imagined corners, blow your trumpets, angels. ~ John Donne,

100:Send not to know
For whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee. ~ John Donne,

101:Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book. ~ John Donne,

102:On a huge hill, Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will ~ John Donne,

103:All our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death. ~ John Donne,

104:Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes. ~ John Donne,

105:Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee,
Before I knew thy face or name ~ John Donne,

106:And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all. ~ John Donne,

107:Thy firmness makes my circle just,
and makes me end where I begun. ~ John Donne,

108:Of all the commentaries on the Scriptures, good examples are the best. ~ John Donne,

109:Though truth and falsehood be Near twins, yet truth a little elder is. ~ John Donne,

110:He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book. ~ John Donne,

111:Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing. ~ John Donne,

112:All other things to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay. ~ John Donne,

113:Chastity is not chastity in an old man, but a disability to be unchaste. ~ John Donne,

114:If I dream I have you, I have you, for all our joys are but fantastical. ~ John Donne,

115:God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man's grave is his Sabbath. ~ John Donne,

116:That soul that can reflect upon itself, consider itself, is more than so. ~ John Donne,

117:Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant;
the only harmless great thing. ~ John Donne,

118:There is no health; physicians say that we, at best, enjoy but neutrality. ~ John Donne,

119:Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right, By these we reach divinity ~ John Donne,

120:The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I Abjure my so much loved variety. ~ John Donne,

121:I fix mine eye on thine, and there
Pity my picture burning in thine eye... ~ John Donne,

122:No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent. ~ John Donne,

123:Send home my long strayed eyes to me, Which (Oh) too long have dwelt on thee. ~ John Donne,

124:All other things to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay... ~ John Donne,

125:All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain. ~ John Donne,

126:I shall not live 'till I see God; and when I have seen Him, I shall never die. ~ John Donne,

127:Good is not good, unless A thousand it possess, But doth waste with greediness. ~ John Donne,

128:Licence my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below. ~ John Donne,

129:Our faults are not seen, But past us; neither felt, but only in The punishment. ~ John Donne,

130:Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right,
By these we reach divinity ~ John Donne,

131:As peace is of all goodness, so war is an emblem, a hieroglyphic, of all misery. ~ John Donne,

132:Can there be worse sickness, than to know that we are never well, nor can be so? ~ John Donne,

133:No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face. ~ John Donne,

134:To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend, All is the purlieu of the god of love. ~ John Donne,

135:As he that fears God fears nothing else, so he that sees God sees everything else. ~ John Donne,

136:For love all love of other sights controls and makes one little room an everywhere ~ John Donne,

137:If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee. ~ John Donne,

138:In best understandings, sin began, Angels sinned first, then Devils, and then Man. ~ John Donne,

139:Sir, more than kisses,
letters mingle souls;
For, thus friends absent speak. ~ John Donne,

140:A mathematical point is the most indivisble and unique thing which art can present. ~ John Donne,

141:Licence my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below. ~ John Donne,

142:Nothing but man of all envenomed things, doth work upon itself, with inborn stings. ~ John Donne,

143:O Lord, never suffer us to think that we can stand by ourselves, and not need thee. ~ John Donne,

144:That thou remember them, some claim as debt; I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget. ~ John Donne,

145:Christ beats his drum, but he does not press men; Christ is served with voluntaries. ~ John Donne,

146:I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call and invite God and his angels thither. ~ John Donne,

147:Our critical day is not the very day of our death; but the whole course of our life. ~ John Donne,

148:Poetry is a counterfeit creation, and makes things that are not, as though they were ~ John Donne,

149:If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee. ~ John Donne,

150:I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born. ~ John Donne,

151:All measure, and all language, I should pass,
Should I tell what a miracle she was. ~ John Donne,

152:And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet? ~ John Donne,

153:Filled with her love, may I be rather grown Mad with much heart, than idiot with none. ~ John Donne,

154:It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be; ~ John Donne,

155:Love is a growing, or full constant light; And his first minute, after noon, is night. ~ John Donne,

156:To roam Giddily, and be everywhere but at home, Such freedom doth a banishment become. ~ John Donne,

157:I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost
Who died before the god of Love was born. ~ John Donne,

158:Old grandsires talk of yesterday with sorrow, And for our children we reserve tomorrow. ~ John Donne,

159:Women are like the arts, forced unto none, Open to all searchers, unprized, if unknown. ~ John Donne,

160:And as if reporting some felony to the police they let you know you were not John Donne. ~ Ted Hughes,

161:It is too little to call man a little world; Except God, man is a diminutive to nothing. ~ John Donne,

162:Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this, The intelligence that moves, devotion is. ~ John Donne,

163:So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away. ~ John Donne,

164:Filled with her love, may I be rather grown
Mad with much heart, then idiot with none. ~ John Donne,

165:Love is a growing, or full constant light,
And his first minute, after noon, is night. ~ John Donne,

166:Thy sins and hairs may no man equal call,
for as thy sins increase, thy hairs do fall. ~ John Donne,

167:You are earth; he whom you tread upon is no less, and he that treads upon you is no more. ~ John Donne,

168:Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring makes it more. ~ John Donne,

169:Never start with tomorrow to reach eternity. Eternity is not being reached by small steps. ~ John Donne,

170:One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more, death thou shalt die. ~ John Donne,

171:To an incompetent judge I must not lie, but I may be silent; to a competent I must answer. ~ John Donne,

172:Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so. ~ John Donne,

173:How great love is, presence best trial makes, But absence tries how long this love will be. ~ John Donne,

174:Man hath weaved out a net, and this net throwne upon the Heavens, and now they are his own. ~ John Donne,

175:One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. ~ John Donne,

176:One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die. ~ John Donne,

177:Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For, he tames it, that fetters it in verse. ~ John Donne,

178:No man is an island,” said John Donne. I feel we are all islands—in a common sea. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh,

179:If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die. ~ John Donne,

180:Verse hath a middle nature: heaven keeps souls, The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrols. ~ John Donne,

181:No man is an island,' said John Donne. I feel we are all islands -- in a common sea. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh,

182:Oft from new truths, and new phrase, new doubts grow, As strange attire aliens the men we know. ~ John Donne,

183:I count all that part of my life lost which I spent not in communion with God, or in doing good. ~ John Donne,

184:If I lose at play, I blaspheme; if my fellow loses, he blasphemes. So, God is always the loser. ~ John Donne,

185:Eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period. ~ John Donne,

186:Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time. ~ John Donne,

187:No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. ~ John Donne,

188:That which attempts to elevate the ugly to the level of beauty becomes neither; but an obscenity. ~ John Donne,

189:The rich have no more of the kingdom of heaven than they have purchased of the poor by their alms. ~ John Donne,

190:When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language. ~ John Donne,

191:Doubt wisely; in strange way To stand inquiring right, is not to stray; To sleep, or run wrong, is. ~ John Donne,

192:The sun must not set upon anger, much less will I let the sun set upon the anger of God towards me. ~ John Donne,

193:No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
~ John Donne,

194:Then as the earth’s inner, narrow crooked lanes Do purge salt waters’ fretful tears away —John Donne ~ M C Beaton,

195:Let not thy divining heart Forethink me any ill; Destiny may take thy part, And may thy fears fulfill. ~ John Donne,

196:Send me nor this, nor that, to increase my store,
But swear thou think'st I love thee, and no more. ~ John Donne,

197:Sleep with clean hands, either kept clean all day by integrity or washed clean at night by repentance. ~ John Donne,

198:Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed. ~ John Donne,

199:BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us? ~ John Donne,

200:O how feeble is man's power, that if good fortune fall, cannot add another hour, nor a lost hour recall! ~ John Donne,

201:Doubt wisely; in strange way
To stand inquiring right, is not to stray;
To sleep, or run wrong, is. ~ John Donne,

202:God is so omnipresent. . . . God is an angel in an angel, and a stone in a stone, and a straw in a straw. ~ John Donne,

203:To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts. ~ John Donne,

204:Keep us, Lord, so awake in the duties of our calling that we may sleep in thy peace and wake in thy glory. ~ John Donne,

205:I neglect God and his angles for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door. ~ John Donne,

206:No man is an island, entire of himself,” says John Donne, but two may be, together, needing nothing else. ~ Alex Beecroft,

207:Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys. ~ John Donne,

208:No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face."

[The Autumnal] ~ John Donne,

209:Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfill. ~ John Donne,

210:As God loves a cheerful giver, so he also loves a cheerful taker. Who takes hold of his gifts with a glad heart. ~ John Donne,

211:God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. ~ John Donne,

212:The distance from nothing to a little, is ten thousand times more, than from it to the highest degree in this life. ~ John Donne,

213:Changed loves are but changed sorts of meat,
And when he hath the kernel eat,
Who doth not fling away the shell? ~ John Donne,

214:The world is a great volume, and man the index of that book; even in the body of man, you may turn to the whole world. ~ John Donne,

215:Doth not a man die even in his birth? The breaking of prison is death, and what is our birth, but a breaking of prison? ~ John Donne,

216:No man is an island, no man stands alone . . . Each man's death diminishes me, because I am involved with mankind . . . ~ John Donne,

217:Take me to you, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free, nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. ~ John Donne,

218:I have done one braver thing than all the Worthies did, and yet a braver thence doth spring, which is, to keep that hid. ~ John Donne,

219:There is hook in every benefit, that sticks in his jaws that takes that benefit, and draws him whither the benefactor will. ~ John Donne,

220:There is in every miracle a silent chiding of the world, and a tacit reprehension of them who require, or who need miracles. ~ John Donne,

221:The World is a great Volume, and man the Index of
that Booke; even in the Body of Man, you may turne to the whole world. ~ John Donne,

222:...but come bad chance
And wee joyne to it our strength
And wee teach it art and length
It selfe o'er us to advance. ~ John Donne,

223:How many times go we to comedies, to masques, to places of great and noble resort, nay even to church only to see the company. ~ John Donne,

224:'Twas much, that man was made like God before: But, that God should be made like man, much more. ~ John Donne, Holy Sonnets, Sonnet XXII,

225:But he who loveliness within Hath found, all outward loathes, For he who color loves, and skin, Loves but their oldest clothes. ~ John Donne,

226:Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. ~ John Donne,

227:...Whatever dies was not mixed equally, If our two loves be one Or thou and I love so alike That none can slacken, none can die. ~ John Donne,

228:Men have conceived a twofold use of sleep; it is a refreshing of the body in this life, and a preparing of the soul for the next. ~ John Donne,

229:I do not love a man, except I hate his vices, because those vices are the enemies, and the destruction of that friend whom I love. ~ John Donne,

230: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. ~ John Donne,

231:We love and understand talent; we wish it be within us. The truly gifted, those exceptional few, must wait for the world to catch up. ~ John Donne,

232:Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run? ~ John Donne,

233:Every woman is a science; for he that plods upon a woman all his life long, shall at length finde himself short of the knowledge of her. ~ John Donne,

234:Great sins are great possessions; but levities and vanities possess us too; and men had rather part with Christ than with any possession. ~ John Donne,

235:At one blood labors to beget,
Spirits as like as it can,
Because such figures need to knit,
that subtle knot which makes us man. ~ John Donne,

236:If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two, Thy soul the fixt foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do. ~ John Donne,

237:If every gnat that flies were an archangel, all that could but tell me that there is a God; and the poorest worm that creeps tells me that. ~ John Donne,

238:Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. ~ John Donne,

239:Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. ~ John Donne,

240:The difference between the reason of man and the instinct of the beast is this, that the beast does but know, but the man knows that he knows. ~ John Donne,

241:Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore, ask not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. - John Donne ~ Meg Cabot,

242:Twice or thrice had I loved thee before I knew thy face or name, so in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, angels affect us oft, and worshiped be. ~ John Donne,

243: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. ~ John Donne,

244: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. ~ John Donne,

245:O! I shall soon despair, when I shall see
That Thou lovest mankind well, yet wilt not choose me,
And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me. ~ John Donne,

246:In the first minute that my soul is infused, the Image of God is imprinted in my soul; so forward is God in my behalf, and so early does he visit me. ~ John Donne,

247:This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong arts
Make of so noble individual parts
One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts. ~ John Donne,

248:Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it and made fit for God. ~ John Donne,

249:Only our love hath no decay; this, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday, running it never runs from us away, but truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day. ~ John Donne,

250: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. ~ John Donne,

251:If that be simply perfectest
Which can by no way be expresst
But negatives, my love is so.
To All, which all love, I say no.

Negative Love ~ John Donne,

252:Stay, O sweet, and do not rise;
The light that shines comes from thine eyes;
The day breaks not, it is my heart,
Because that you and I must part. ~ John Donne,

253:I am the dust and the ashes of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and what marble is so precious? But I am more than dust and ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul. ~ John Donne,

254:Poor heretics there be,Which think to establish dangerous constancy,But I have told them, ‘Since you will be true,You shall be true to them, who are false to you. ~ John Donne,

255:Only our love hath no decay;
This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,
Running it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day. ~ John Donne,

256:And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it. ~ John Donne,

257: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? ~ John Donne,

258: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. ~ John Donne,

259: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. ~ John Donne,

260:Poor heretics there be,
Which think to establish dangerous constancy,
But I have told them, ‘Since you will be true,
You shall be true to them, who are false to you. ~ John Donne,

261:That subtle knot which makes us man So must pure lovers souls descend T affections, and to faculties, Which sense may reach and apprehend, Else a great Prince in prison lies. ~ John Donne,

262:I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den? ~ John Donne,

263: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. ~ John Donne,

264:God affords no man the comfort, the false comfort of Atheism: He will not allow a pretending Atheist the power to flatter himself, so far, as to seriously think there is no God. ~ John Donne,

265:True and false fears let us refrain, 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. ~ John Donne,

266:Between these two, the denying of sins, which we have done, and the bragging of sins, which we have not done, what a space, what a compass is there, for millions of millions of sins! ~ John Donne,

267:From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure, then from thee much more, must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. ~ John Donne,

268:He must pull out his own eyes, and see no creature, before he can say, he sees no God; He must be no man, and quench his reasonable soul, before he can say to himself, there is no God. ~ John Donne,

269:True and false fears let us refrain,
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. ~ John Donne,

270:One Reformation-era proverb, which would be cited in different forms by John Donne and William Shakespeare, proclaimed that women who died unmarried were doomed to “lead apes in hell. ~ Rebecca Traister,

271:All problems have to be solved eventually by ONESELF, and that's where all your lovely John Donne stuff turns out to be a load of crap because, in the last analysis, A MAN IS AN ISLAND. ~ Kenneth Williams,

272: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. ~ John Donne,

273: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. ~ John Donne,

274:As virtuous men pass mildly away
And whisper to their souls, to goe,
While some of their friends doe say,
The breath goes now, and some say, no:

So let us melt, and make no noise... ~ John Donne,

275:Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. ~ John Donne,

276:What gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God? ~ John Donne,

277: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. ~ John Donne,

278:Having heard so often, and so believably, John Donne’s bell tolling softly that “Thou must die,” one turns more sharply to life, with an immediacy and appreciation that would not otherwise exist. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison,

279:Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy, or charms, can make us sleep as well, And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then? ~ John Donne,

280: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. ~ John Donne,

281:Love was as subtly caught, as a disease; But being got it is a treasure sweet, which to defend is harder than to get: And ought not be profaned on either part, for though 'Tis got by chance, 'Tis kept by art. ~ John Donne,

282:Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee, 'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new. ~ John Donne,

283:Contemplative and bookish men must of necessity be more quarrelsome than others, because neither do they contend about matters of fact nor can they determine their controversies by any certain witnesses or judges. ~ John Donne,

284:At the round earth's imagined corners, blow Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise From death, you numberless infinities Of souls **** All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain. ~ John Donne,

285: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; Water suggest her clear, and the earth sure; Time shall not lose our passages. ~ John Donne,

286:As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there. ~ John Donne,

287:First, I give my gracious God an entire sacrifice of body and soul, with my most humble thanks for that assurance which His Blessed Spirit imprints in me now of the Salvation of the one, and the Resurrection of the other; ~ John Donne,

288:If we consider eternity, into that time never entered; eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period; and eternity had been the same as it is, though time had never been. ~ John Donne,

289:Man is not only a contributory creature, but a total creature; he does not only make one, but he is all; he is not a piece of the world, but the world itself, and next to the glory of God, the reason why there is a world. ~ John Donne,

290:How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be ~ John Donne,

291:Somewhere, Bunny had heard that John Donne had been acquainted with Izaak Walton, and in some dim corridor of his mind this friendship grew larger and larger, until in his mind the two men were practically interchangeable. ~ Donna Tartt,

292:But if love is not the cure, it certainly can act as a very strong medicine. As John Donne has written; it is not so pure and abstract as one might once have thought and wished, but it does endure and it does grow. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison,

293:I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in, and invite God, and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his Angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door. ~ John Donne,

294:Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
(...)
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

(Sonnet X, 1609) ~ John Donne,

295:O how feeble is man's power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!
But come bad chance,
And we join to'it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o'er us to'advance. ~ John Donne,

296:If that be simply perfectest
Which can by no way be expressed
But negatives, my love is so.
To all which all love, I say no.
If any who deciphers best
What we know not, ourselves, can know
Let him teach me that nothing. ~ John Donne,

297: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 ruined me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not. ~ John Donne,

298:Love is strong as death; but nothing else is as strong as either; and both, love and death, met in Christ. How strong and powerful upon you, then, should that instruction be, that comes to you from both these, the love and death of Jesus Christ! ~ John Donne,

299:Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be? O wilt thou therefore rise from me? Why should we rise, because 'tis light? Did we lie down, because 'twas night? Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither Should in despite of light keep us together. ~ John Donne,

300:All mankind is of one author and is one volume,” John Donne wrote in one of his most beautiful meditations. “When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. ~ Jonathan Rosen,

301:Now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons. ~ John Donne,

302:Goe and catche a falling starre, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me, where all past yeares are, Or who cleft the Divel's foot. Teach me to hear Mermaides' singing, Or to keep of envies stinging, And finde What winde Serves to advance an honest minde. ~ John Donne,

303:She picked up the book from the bedside. A stray quotation from Peter should always be sought first in John Donne. She found it there, quite quickly.
Methinks I lied all winter when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring makes it more. ~ Dorothy L Sayers,

304:Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,
All just supply, and all relation;
Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a phoenix, and that then can be
None of that kind, of which he is, but he. ~ John Donne,

305:At most, the greatest persons are but great wens, and excrescences; men of wit and delightful conversation, but as morals for ornament, except they be so incorporated into the body of the world that they contribute something to the sustentation of the whole. ~ John Donne,

306:Society is itself an education in the extrovert values, and rarely has there been a society that has preached them so hard. No man is an island, but how John Donne would writhe to hear how often, and for what reasons, the thought is so tiresomely repeated. ~ William H Whyte,

307:We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tombs and hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; And if no peace of chronicle we prove, We'll build in sonnet pretty rooms; As well a well wrought urne becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs. ~ John Donne,

308:He said, “There’s a sermon of John Donne’s I have often had cause to remember during my lifetime. He says, Other men’s crosses are not my crosses. We all have our own cross to carry, and one is all most of us are able to bear. How much do you owe him, Vicky? ~ Madeleine L Engle,

309:For this, Love is enraged with me;
Yet kills not. If I must example be
To future rebels, if the unborn
Must learn by my being cut up and torn,
Kill and dissect me, Love; for this
Torture against thine own end is:
Racked carcasses make ill anatomies ~ John Donne,

310:Men perish with whispering sins-nay, with silent sins, sins that never tell the conscience that they are sins, as often with crying sins; and in hell there shall meet as many men that never thought what was sin, as that spent all their thoughts in the compassing of sin. ~ John Donne,

311:On a huge hill,
Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will
Reach her, about must, and about must goe;
And what the hills suddenness resists, winne so;
Yet strive so, that before age, deaths twilight,
Thy Soule rest, for none can worke in that night. ~ John Donne,

312:We are all conceived in close prison; in our mothers wombs, we are close prisoners all; when we are born, we are born but to the liberty of the house; prisoners still, though within larger walls; and then all our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death. ~ John Donne,

313:The force of originality “that made Donne so potent an influence in the seventeenth century makes him now at once for us, without his being the less felt as of his period, contemporary—obviously a living poet in the most important sense.” In “The Good-Morrow” Leavis said that ~ John Donne,

314:Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification; and as without this, without holiness, no man shall see God, though he pore whole nights upon his Bible; so without that, without humility, no man shall hear God speak to his soul, though he hear three two-hour sermons every day. ~ John Donne,

315:Commemoration of Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922 A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knees, a noise in my ear, a light in my eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayers. ~ John Donne,

316:Contemplative and bookish men must of necessity be more quarrelsome than others, because they contend not about matter of fact, nor can determine their controversies by any certain witnesses, nor judges. But as long as they go towards peace, that is Truth, it is no matter which way. ~ John Donne,

317:I sing the progress of a deathless soul,
Whom Fate, which God made, but doth not control,
Placed in most shapes; all times before the law
Yoked us, and when, and since, in this I sing.
And the great world to his aged evening,
From infant morn, through manly noon I draw. ~ John Donne,

318:When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me, when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust. ~ John Donne,

319:Distant American colonies were presented as a cure. The poor could be purged. In 1622, the famous poet and clergyman John Donne wrote of Virginia in this fashion, describing the new colony as the nation’s spleen and liver, draining the “ill humours of the body . . . to breed good bloud. ~ Nancy Isenberg,

320:Yet nothing can to nothing fall, Nor any place be empty quite; Therefore I think my breast hath all Those pieces still, though they be not unite; And now, as broken glasses show A hundred lesser faces, so My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, But after one such love, can love no more. ~ John Donne,

321:Out of a fired ship, which by no way
But drowning could be rescued from the flame,
Some men leap'd forth, and ever as they came
Near the foes' ships, did by their shot decay;
So all were lost, which in the ship were found,
They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown'd. ~ John Donne,

322:And when a whirl-winde hath blowne the dust of the Churchyard into the Church, and man sweeps out the dust of the Church into the Church-yard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce, This is the Patrician, this is the noble flower, and this the yeomanly, this the Plebian bran. ~ John Donne,

323:And if there be any addition to knowledge, it is rather a new knowledge than a greater knowledge; rather a singularity in a desire of proposing something that was not knownat all beforethananimproving, anadvancing, a multiplying of former inceptions; and by that means, no knowledge comes to be perfect. ~ John Donne,

324:My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres, Without sharp north, without declining west? Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die. ~ John Donne,

325:To a large degree, since the beginning of time, charisma or the lack of it has impacted upon those in quest of acclaim. As media expands, this has become ever more vital. Thus, demeanor if unappealing, can defeat one's likelihood of success, causing the death of prospects whilst they are still embryonic. ~ John Donne,

326:Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harm Nor question much That subtle wreath of hair, which crowns my arm; The mystery, the sign you must not touch, For 'tis my outward soul, Viceroy to that, which then to heaven being gone, Will leave this to control, And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution. ~ John Donne,

327:Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more. ~ John Donne,

328:And now good morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room, an everywhere. Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone, Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown, Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one. ~ John Donne,

329:This Extasie doth unperplex (We said) and tell us what we love, Wee see by this, it was not sexe, Wee see, we saw not what did move: But as all severall soules contain Mixture of things, they know not what, Love, these mixt souls, doth mixe againe. Loves mysteries in soules doe grow, But yet the body is his booke. ~ John Donne,

330:That this world’s general sickness doth not lie
In any humour, or one certain part;
But as thou sawest it rotten at the heart,
Thou seest a hectic fever hath got hold
Of the whole substance, not to be controlled,
And that thou hast but one way, not to admit
The world’s infection, to be none of it. ~ John Donne,

331:As the poet John Donne wrote, “No man is an island.” While we may cherish the myth of the lonely creative genius, it is just that—a myth. In truth, no individual (or idea) can flourish in a vacuum. Relationships, camaraderie, and collaboration are the lifeblood of our personal well-being and our professional success. ~ Jocelyn K Glei,

332:Commemoration of Richard Meux Benson, Founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist, 1915 Our critical day is not the very day of our death, but the whole course of our life; I thank him, that prays for me when my bell tolls; but I thank him much more, that catechizes me, or preaches to me, or instructs me how to live. ~ John Donne,

333:I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwreck, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotency might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming. ~ John Donne,

334:People, too, become like islands in such an atmosphere, self-contained, whole and serene; respecting other people’s solitude, not intruding on their shores, standing back in reverence before the miracle of another individual. ‘No man is an island,’ said John Donne. I feel we are all islands – in a common sea. We ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh,

335:I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him meerly seise me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwrack, I would do it in a Sea, where mine impotencie might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming. ~ John Donne,

336:O miserable condition of man, which is not imprinted by God, who, as he is immortal himself, had put a coal, a beam of immortality into us, which we might have blown into a flame, but blew it by our first sin; we beggared ourselves by hearkening after falses riches, and infatuated ourselves by hearkening after false knowledge. ~ John Donne,

337:God made sun and moon to distinguish the seasons, and day and night; and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons. But God hath made no decrees to distinguish the seasons of His mercies. In Paradise the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in heaven it is always autumn. His mercies are ever in their maturity. ~ John Donne,

338:My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares,
And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest,
Where can we finde two better hemispheares
Without sharpe North, without declining West?
What ever dyes, was not mixt equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die. ~ John Donne,

339:Despite all the intellectual activity of the time there was in print no guide to the tongue, no linguistic vade mecum, no single book that Shakespeare or Martin Frobisher, Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nash, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Izaak Walton, or any of their other learned contemporaries could consult. ~ Simon Winchester,

340: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
Love was as subtly catched, as a disease;
But being got it is a treasure sweet,
Which to defend is harder than to get:
And ought not be profaned on either part,
For though 'tis got by chance,'tis kept by art ~ John Donne,

341:I call not that virginity a virtue, which resideth onely in the bodies integrity; much less if it be with a purpose of perpetually keeping it: for then it is a most inhumane vice. - But I call that Virginity a virtue which is willing and desirous to yield it self upon honest and lawfull terms, when just reason requireth; and until then, is kept with a modest chastity of body and mind. ~ John Donne,

342:Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains, call on us? Must to thy motions lovers'seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late schoolboys, and sour prentices, Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride, Call countryants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time. ~ John Donne,

343:No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. ~ John Donne,

344:It was part of Adam's punishment, In the sweat of thy brows thou shalt eat thy bread: it is multiplied to me, I have earned bread in the sweat of my brows, in the labour of my calling, and I have it; and I sweat again and again, from the brow to the sole of the foot, but I eat no bread, I taste no sustenance: miserable distribution of mankind, where one half lacks meat, and the other stomach! ~ John Donne,

345:All Kings, and all their favorites, All glory of honors, beauties, wits, The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass, Is elder by a year, now, than it was When thou and I first one another saw: All other things, to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay; This, no tomorrow hash, nor yesterday, Running, it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day. ~ John Donne,

346:Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whome thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me;
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery. ~ John Donne,

347:All mankind is one volume. When one man dies, a chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language. And every chapter must be translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God's hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall live open to one another ~ John Donne,

348:Y por esa puerta entrarán, y en esa casa morarán,

donde no habrá ni nubes ni sol, ni oscuridad ni

deslumbramiento, sino una luz constante, ni ruido ni silencio,

sino una música constante, ni miedos ni esperanzas, sino

una ecuanimidad constante, ni amigos ni enemigos, sino

unas constantes comunión e identidad, ni fin ni principio,

sino una constante eternidad. ~ John Donne,

349:A bride, before a "Good-night" could be said, Should vanish from her clothes into her bed, As souls from bodies steal, and are not spied. But now she's laid; what though she be? Yet there are more delays, for where is he? He comes and passeth through sphere after sphere; First her sheets, then her arms, then anywhere. Let not this day, then, but this night be thine; Thy day was but the eve to this, O Valentine. ~ John Donne,

350:TIS the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world's whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph. ~ John Donne,

351:when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another; ~ John Donne,

352:BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time. ~ John Donne,

353:Dear love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream;
It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for fantasy,
Therefore thou wak'd'st me wisely; yet
My dream thou brok'st not, but continued'st it.
Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice
To make dreams truths, and fables histories;
Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best,
Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest. ~ John Donne,

354:A bride, before a "Good-night" could be said,
Should vanish from her clothes into her bed,
As souls from bodies steal, and are not spied.
But now she's laid; what though she be?
Yet there are more delays, for where is he?
He comes and passeth through sphere after sphere;
First her sheets, then her arms, then anywhere.
Let not this day, then, but this night be thine;
Thy day was but the eve to this, O Valentine. ~ John Donne,

355:A human being without the proper empathy or feeling is the same as an android built so as to lack it, either by design or mistake. We mean, basically, someone who does not care about the fate which his fellow living creatures fall victim to; he stands detached, a spectator, acting out by his indifference John Donne's theorem that "No man is an island," but giving that theorem a twist: that which is a mental and a moral island is not a man. ~ Philip K Dick,

356:No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods. Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is beholden to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable.....

But if love is not the cure, it certainly can act as a strong medicine. As John Donne has written, it is not so abstract as one might have thought and wished, but it does endure, and it does grow. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison,

357:A human being without the proper empathy or feeling is the same as an android built so as to lack it, either by design or mistake. We mean, basically, someone who does not care about the fate which his fellow living creatures fall victim to; he stands detached, a spectator, acting out by his indifference John Donne's theorem that 'No man is an island,' but giving that theorem a twist: that which is a mental and a moral island is not a man. ~ Philip K Dick,

358:We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats and drink and air and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and regular work. But in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity, nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant. ~ John Donne,

359: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. ~ John Donne,

360:If they be so two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other dar 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. ~ John Donne,

361:Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun; Thyself from thine affection Takest warmth enough, and from thine eye All lesser birds will take their jollity. Up, up, fair bride, and call Thy stars from out their several boxes, take Thy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and make Thyself a constellation of them all; And by their blazing signify That a great princess falls, but doth not die. Be thou a new star, that to us portends Ends of much wonder; and be thou those ends. ~ John Donne,

362:To John Donne
Donne, the delight of Phoebus and each Muse
Who, to thy one, all other brains refuse;
Whose every work of thy most early wit
Came forth example, and remains so yet;
Longer a-knowing than most wits do live;
And which no affection praise enough can give!
To it, thy language, letters, arts, best life,
Which might with half mankind maintain a strife.
All which I meant to praise, and yet I would;
But leave, because I cannot as I should!
~ Ben Jonson,

363:A bride, before a ‘Good-night’ could be said, Should vanish from her clothes into her bed, As souls from bodies steal, and are not spied. But now she’s laid; what though she be? Yet there are more delays, for where is he? He comes and passeth through sphere after sphere; First her sheets, then her arms, then anywhere. Let not this day, then, but this night be thine; Thy day was but the eve to this, O Valentine. JOHN DONNE: An Epithalamion on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine. ~ Dorothy L Sayers,

364:Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun;
Thyself from thine affection
Takest warmth enough, and from thine eye
All lesser birds will take their jollity.
Up, up, fair bride, and call
Thy stars from out their several boxes, take
Thy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and make
Thyself a constellation of them all;
And by their blazing signify
That a great princess falls, but doth not die.
Be thou a new star, that to us portends
Ends of much wonder; and be thou those ends. ~ John Donne,

365:All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated....As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. ~ John Donne,

366:All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated... As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all... No man is an island, entire of itself... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. ~ John Donne,

367:And the crazy part of it was even if you were clever, even if you spent your adolescence reading John Donne and Shaw, even if you studied history or zoology or physics and hoped to spend your life pursuing some difficult and challenging career, you still had a mind full of all the soupy longings that every high-school girl was awash in... underneath it, all you longed to be was annihilated by love, to be swept off your feet, to be filled up by a giant prick spouting sperm, soapsuds, silk and satins and, of course, money. ~ Erica Jong,

368: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 th' 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. Suth wilt thou be to me, who must Like th' other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I began. ~ John Donne,

369:If I were but mere dust and ashes I might speak unto the Lord, for the Lord's hand made me of this dust, and the Lord's hand shall re-collect these ashes; the Lord's hand was the wheel upon which this vessel of clay was framed, and the Lord's hand is the urn in which these ashes shall be preserved. I am the dust and the ashes of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and what marble is so precious? But I am more than dust and ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul. And being so, the breath of God, I may breathe back these pious expostulations to my God: ~ John Donne,

370:Away thou fondling motley humorist,
Leave mee, and in this standing woodden chest,
Consorted with these few bookes, let me lye
In prison, and here be coffin'd, when I dye;
Here are Gods conduits, grave Divines; and here
Natures Secretary, the Philosopher;
And jolly Statesmen, which teach how to tie
The sinewes of a cities mistique bodie;
Here gathering Chroniclers, and by them stand
Giddie fantastique Poets of each land.
Shall I leave all this constant company,
And follow headlong, wild uncertaine thee? ~ John Donne,

371:Now, as in Tullia’s tomb one lamp burnt clear Unchanged for fifteen hundred year, May these love-lamps we here enshrine In warmth, light, lasting, equal the divine. Fire ever doth aspire, And makes all like itself, turns all to fire, But ends in ashes; which these cannot do, For none of these is fuel, but fire too. This is joy’s bonfire, then, where love’s strong arts Make of so noble individual parts One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts. JOHN DONNE: Eclogue for the Marriage of the Earl of Somerset. ~ Dorothy L Sayers,

372:Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair. ~ John Donne,

373:Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorius nothing I did see,
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than a parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too,
And therefore what thou wert, and who
I bid love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow. ~ John Donne,

374:Here lies a she sun, and a he moon there; She gives the best light to his sphere; Or each is both, and all, and so They unto one another nothing owe; And yet they do, but are So just and rich in that coin which they pay, That neither would, nor needs forbear, nor stay; Neither desires to be spared nor to spare. They quickly pay their debt, and then Take no acquittances, but pay again; They pay, they give, they lend, and so let fall No such occasion to be liberal. More truth, more courage in these two do shine, Than all thy turtles have and sparrows, Valentine. ~ John Donne,

375:The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die martyrs but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as his cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day. And as even his birth is his death, so every action and passage that manifests Christ to us is his birth, for Epiphany is manifestation. ~ John Donne,

376: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. ~ John Donne,

377:Here lies a she sun, and a he moon there;
She gives the best light to his sphere;
Or each is both, and all, and so
They unto one another nothing owe;
And yet they do, but are
So just and rich in that coin which they pay,
That neither would, nor needs forbear, nor stay;
Neither desires to be spared nor to spare.
They quickly pay their debt, and then
Take no acquittances, but pay again;
They pay, they give, they lend, and so let fall
No such occasion to be liberal.
More truth, more courage in these two do shine,
Than all thy turtles have and sparrows, Valentine. ~ John Donne,

378:Please write and tell me about London, I live for the day when I step off the boat-train and feel its dirty sidewalks under my feet. I want to walk up Berkeley Square and down Wimpole Street and stand in St.Paul's where John Donne preached and sit on the step Elizabeth sat on when she refused to enter the Tower, and like that. A newspaper man I know, who was stationed in London during the war, says tourists go to England with preconceived notions, so they always find exactly what they go looking for. I told him I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he said:
"Then it's there. ~ Helene Hanff,

379:... 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 th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun. ~ John Donne,

380:Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre 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 th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun. ~ John Donne,

381:Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. ~ John Donne,

382:At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ;
For, if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that's as good
As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.
~ John Donne,

383:Annunciation

Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo, faithful virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He will wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son and Brother;
Whom thou conceivst, conceived; yea thou art now
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shuts in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb. ~ John Donne,

384:Holy Sonnets: Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?"

Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste,
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday;
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind, and death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feebled flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour I can myself sustain;
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart. ~ John Donne,

385:Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun, Which was my sin, though it were done before? Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run, And do run still, though still I do deplore? When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done, For I have more. "Wilt Thou forgive that sin, which I have won Others to sin, and made my sin their door? Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun A year or two:—but wallow'd in a score? When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done, For I have more. "I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun My last thread, I shall perish on the shore; But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son Shall shine as He shines now, and heretofore; And having done that, Thou hast done, I fear no more. ~ John Donne,

386:Death Be Not Proud

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.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. ~ John Donne,

387:Man would not be man if his dreams did not exceed his grasp. ... Like John Donne, man lies in a close prison, yet it is dear to him. Like Donne's, his thoughts at times overleap the sun and pace beyond the body. If I term humanity a slime mold organism it is because our present environment suggest it. If I remember the sunflower forest it is because from its hidden reaches man arose. The green world is his sacred center. In moments of sanity he must still seek refuge there. ... If I dream by contrast of the eventual drift of the star voyagers through the dilated time of the universe, it is because I have seen thistledown off to new worlds and am at heart a voyager who, in this modern time, still yearns for the lost country of his birth. ~ Loren Eiseley,

388:Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow'd in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more. ~ John Donne,

389:I
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, though which I run,
And do run still: though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For, I have more.

II
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin? And, made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year, or two: but wallowed in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

III
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thy self, that at my death thy son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done,
I fear no more. ~ John Donne,

390:Dad loved Aeney more than anything, but he couldn’t show it. He just couldn’t. There’s a Code for fathers in Ireland. Maybe it’s everywhere, I don’t know, I haven’t cracked it. My father followed the Code. He was careful about his children, he didn’t want to ruin us though somehow felt sure he would. He thought Aeney and I were marvels but he didn’t want to make a mistake. Maybe he thought Abraham was watching. So he’d probably thought about it for a long time before he came in from the casting and decided he should go fishing with Aeney. Dad could be sudden like that. He couldn’t help it. It’s the nature of Poets. You don’t believe me, look up William Blake, say hello to those impulses, go meet Mr John Donne in a dark church some time, spend a summer’s day with young William Butler, Ace Butterfly-catcher. ~ Niall Williams,

391:Ve y coge una estrella fugaz;
fecunda a la raíz de mandrágora;
dime dónde está el pasado,
o quién hendió la pezuña del diablo;
enséñame a oír cómo canta la sirena,
a apartar el aguijón de la envidia,
y descubre
cual es el viento
que impulsa a una mente honesta.

Si has nacido para ver cosas extrañas,
cosas invisibles al ojo,
cabalga diez mil días y noches
hasta que la edad cubra de nieve tus cabellos.
Cuando retornes, me contarás
las extrañas maravillas que te acontecieron,
y jurarás
que en ningún lugar
vive una mujer justa y constante.

Si la encuentras, dímelo,
¡dulce peregrinación sería!
Pero no, porque no iría,
aunque fuera justo al lado;
aunque fiel, al encontrarla,
y hasta al escribir la carta,
sin embargo,
antes que fuera,
infiel con dos, o tres, fuera. ~ John Donne,

392:No man is an island, said John Donne, but I humbly dare to add: No man or woman is an island, but every one of us is a peninsula, half attached to the mainland, half facing the ocean – one half connected to family and friends and culture and tradition and country and nation and sex and language and many other things, and the other half wanting to be left alone to face the ocean.

I think we ought to be allowed to remain peninsulas. Every social and political system that turns each of us into a Donnean island and the rest of humankind into an enemy or a rival is a monster. But at the same time every social and political and ideological system that wants to turn each of us into no more than a molecule of the mainland is also a monstrosity. The condition of peninsula is the proper human condition. That's what we are and that's what we deserve to remain. ~ Amos Oz,

393:To Lucy, Countess Of Bedford, With John Donne's
Satires
Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are
Life of the Muses' day, their morning star!
If works, not th' author's, their own grace should look,
Whose poems would not wish to be your book?
But these, desir'd by you, the maker's ends
Crown with their own. Rare poems ask rare friends.
Yet satires, since the most of mankind be
Their unavoided subject, fewest see;
For none e'er took that pleasure in sin's sense
But, when they heard it tax'd, took more offence.
They, then, that living where the matter is bred,
Dare for these poems, yet, both ask and read
And like them too, must needfully, though few,
Be of the best; and 'mongst those best are you,
Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are
The Muses' evening, as their morning star.
~ Ben Jonson,

394:Song

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Thought at next door we might meet;
Though she were true when you met her,
And last till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three. ~ John Donne,

395:I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry;
But where's that wiseman, that would not be I,
If she would not deny?
Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water's fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain;
And, by delighting many, frees again
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when 'tis read.
Both are increased by such songs,
For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fools be. ~ John Donne,

396:Song

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

—John Donne, 1572–1631 ~ Neil Gaiman,

397:The Good-Morrow

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we lov'd? Were we not wean'd till then?
But suck'd on countrey pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?
T'was so; But this, all pleasures fancies bee.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dreame of thee.

And now good morrow to our waking soules,
Which watch not one another out of feare;
For love, all love of other sights controules,
And makes one little roome, an every where.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let Maps to other, worlds on worlds have showne,
Let us possesse one world; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares,
And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest,
Where can we finde two better hemispheares
Without sharpe North, without declining West?
What ever dyes, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die. ~ John Donne,

398:Mark but this Flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be. Taylor recognized that one. John Donne, a poem known as “The Flea.” Easy enough, it had been a hit in high school. The whole sucking business had every guy in her English class beet red when their teacher, a comely young woman, had read the poem aloud. Well, Baldwin said the poems are some of the classics. Now they just needed to figure out what they meant to Whitney and the man who was sending them to her. Taylor pulled her cell phone out of its holster and dialed Baldwin’s number. She got his voice mail and left a message for him to call her as soon as he got the call. That was the best she could do for now. She carried the laptop out to her truck, then went back in to make sure she hadn’t left anything. Satisfied that she wouldn’t need to make another return trip, she left, locking the door behind her and placing the key under the mat, just as it had been that first day when she and Quinn had come over. “I ~ J T Ellison,

399:Shakespeare was not even able to perform a function that we consider today as perfectly normal and ordinary a function as reading itself. He could not, as the saying goes, “look something up.” Indeed the very phrase—when it is used in the sense of “searching for something in a dictionary or encyclopedia or other book of reference”—simply did not exist. It does not appear in the English language, in fact, until as late as 1692, when an Oxford historian named Anthony Wood used it. Since there was no such phrase until the late seventeenth century, it follows that there was essentially no such concept either, certainly not at the time when Shakespeare was writing—a time when writers were writing furiously, and thinkers thinking as they rarely had before. Despite all the intellectual activity of the time there was in print no guide to the tongue, no linguistic vade mecum, no single book that Shakespeare or Martin Frobisher, Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nash, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Izaak Walton, or any of their other learned contemporaries could consult. ~ Simon Winchester,

400:Air and Angels

Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is,
Love must not be, but take a body too;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid love ask, and now
That it assume thy body I allow,
And fix itself to thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught
Every thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere.
Then as an angel, face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere.
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angel's purity,
'Twixt women's love and men's will ever be. ~ John Donne,

401:LOVE'S DIET To what a cumbersome unwieldiness And burdenous corpulence my love had grown, But that I did, to make it less, And keep it in proportion, Give it a diet, made it feed upon That which love worst endures, discretion. Above one sigh a day I allowed him not, Of which my fortune, and my faults had part; And if sometimes by stealth he got A she sigh from my mistress' heart, And thought to feast upon that, I let him see 'Twas neither very sound, nor meant to me. If he wrung from me a tear, I brined it so With scorn and shame, that him it nourished not; If he sucked hers, I let him know 'Twas not a tear which he had got; His drink was counterfeit, as was his meat; For eyes, which roll towards all, weep not, but sweat. Whatever he would dictate I writ that, But burnt her letters when she writ to me; And if that favour made him fat, I said, "If any title be Conveyed by this, ah! what doth it avail, To be the fortieth name in an entail?" Thus I reclaimed my buzzard love, to fly At what, and when, and how, and where I choose. Now negligent of sports I lie, And now, as other falconers use, I spring a mistress, swear, write, sigh, and weep; And the game killed, or lost, go talk or sleep. ~ John Donne,

402:Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, nay more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our mariage bed and mariage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, we are met,
And cloisterd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou
Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;
’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee. ~ John Donne,

403:He is stark mad, whoever says,
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour ;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
If once into love's hands it come !
All other griefs allow a part
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;
They come to us, but us love draws ;
He swallows us and never chaws ;
By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die ;
He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

If 'twere not so, what did become
Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
More pity unto me ; but Love, alas !
At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite ;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite ;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more. ~ John Donne,

404:BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think ?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

She's all states, and all princes I ;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere. ~ John Donne,

405:Busie olde foole, unruly Sunne;
Why dost thou thus,
Through windowes, and through curtaines call on us?
Must to they motions lovers seasons run?
Sawcy pedantique wretch, goe chide
Late schoole boyes, and sowre prentices,
Goe tell Court-huntsmen, that the King will ride,
Call countrey ands to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clyme,
Nor houres, dayes, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beames, so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou thinke?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a winke,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine
Looke, and tomorrow late, tell mee,
Whether both the India's of spice and Myne
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with mee.
Aske for those Kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt heare, All here in one bed lay.

She'is all States, and all Princes, I,
Nothing else is;
Princes doe but play us; compar'd to this,
All honor's mimique; All wealth alchimie,
Thou sunne art halfe as happy'as wee,
In that the world's contracted thus;
Thine ages askes ease, and since thy duties bee
To warme the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art every where;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare. ~ John Donne,

406: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. ~ John Donne,

407:A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
BY JOHN DONNE

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 th' 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 th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun. ~ John Donne,

408:If yet I have not all thy love,
Dear, I shall never have it all,
I cannot breathe one other sigh, to move,
Nor can entreat one other tear to fall,
And all my treasure, which should purchase thee,
Sighs, tears, and oaths, and letters I have spent.
Yet no more can be due to me,
Than at the bargain made was meant;
If then thy gift of love were partial,
That some to me, some should to others fall,
Dear, I shall never have thee all.

Or if then thou gravest me all,
All was but all, which thou hadst then;
But if in thy heart, since, there be or shall
New love created be, by other men,
Which have their stocks entire, and can in tears,
In sighs, in oaths, and letters outbid me,
This new love may beget new fears,
For, this love was not vowed by thee.
And yet it was, thy gift being general;
The ground, thy heart, is mine, whatever shall
Grow there, dear, I should have it all.

Yet I would not have all yet;
He that hath all can have no more,
And since my love doth every day admit
New growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in store;
Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,
If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest it:
Love's riddles are, that though thy heart depart,
It stays at home, and thou with losing savest it:
But we will have a way more liberal,
Than changing hearts, to join them, so we shall
Be one, and one another's all. ~ John Donne,

409:The Canonization"

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his honor, or his grace,
Or the king's real, or his stampèd face
Contemplate; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.

Alas, alas, who's injured by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned?
Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find the eagle and the dove.
The phœnix 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.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for Love.

And thus invoke us: "You, whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes
(So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize)
Countries, towns, courts: beg from above
A pattern of your love! ~ John Donne,

410:A VALEDICTION: OF THE BOOK I'll tell thee now (dear love) what thou shalt do To anger destiny, as she doth us; How I shall stay, though she eloign me thus, And how posterity shall know it too; How thine may out-endure Sibyl's glory, and obscure Her who from Pindar could allure, And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame, And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name. Study our manuscripts, those myriads Of letters, which have past 'twixt thee and me; Thence write our annals, and in them will be To all whom love's subliming fire invades, Rule and example found; There the faith of any ground No schismatic will dare to wound, That sees, how Love this grace to us affords, To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records. This book, as long-lived as the elements, Or as the world's form, this all-graved tome In cypher writ, or new made idiom; We for Love's clergy only are instruments; When this book is made thus, Should again the ravenous Vandals and Goths invade us, Learning were safe; in this our universe, Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels verse. Here Love's divines—since all divinity Is love or wonder—may find all they seek, Whether abstract spiritual love they like, Their souls exhaled with what they do not see; Or, loth so to amuse Faith's infirmity, they choose Something which they may see and use; For, though mind be the heaven, where love doth sit, Beauty a convenient type may be to figure it. Here more than in their books may lawyers find, Both by what titles mistresses are ours, And how prerogative these states devours, Transferred from Love himself, to womankind; Who, though from heart and eyes, They exact great subsidies, Forsake him who on them relies; And for the cause, honour, or conscience give; Chimeras vain as they or their prerogative. Here statesmen, (or of them, they which can read) May of their occupation find the grounds; Love, and their art, alike it deadly wounds, If to consider what 'tis, one proceed. In both they do excel Who the present govern well, Whose weakness none doth, or dares tell; In this thy book, such will there something see, As in the Bible some can find out alchemy. Thus vent thy thoughts; abroad I'll study thee, As he removes far off, that great heights takes; How great love is, presence best trial makes, But absence tries how long this love will be; To take a latitude Sun, or stars, are fitliest viewed At their brightest, but to conclude Of longitudes, what other way have we, But to mark when and where the dark eclipses be? ~ John Donne,

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