Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (100 page)
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Authors: Homer,William Shakespeare
John Donne (1573–1631)
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
5
Must die at last, ’tis best
Thus to use myself in jest,
By feignèd death to die.
Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here to-day;
10
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way.
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Hastier journeys, since I take
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More wings and spurs than he.
O how feeble is man’s power,
That, if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall.
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But come bad chance,
And we join to it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o’er us t’ advance.
When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st no wind,
25
But sigh’st my soul away;
When thou weep’st, unkindly kind,
My life’s blood doth decay.
It cannot be
That thou lov’st me as thou say’st,
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If in thine my life thou waste,
That art the best of me.
Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill.
Destiny may take thy part
35
And may thy fears fulfil;
But think that we
Are but turned aside to sleep:
They who one another keep
Alive, ne’er parted be.
40
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Donne (1573–1631)
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,
5
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 was partial,
That some to me, some should to others fall,
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Dear, I shall never have it all.
Or if then thou gavest 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,
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Which have their stocks entire, and can in tears,
In sighs, in oaths, in 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:
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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
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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 gav’st it:
Love’s riddles are that, though thy heart depart,
It stays at home, and thou with losing sav’st it,
30
But we will love a way more liberal
Than changing hearts, — to join them; so we shall
Be one, an one another’s All.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Donne (1573–1631)
I LONG to talk with some old lover’s ghost,
Who died before the god of love was born:
I cannot think that he, that then loved most,
Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn.
But since this god produced a destiny,
5
And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be,
I must love her that loves not me.
Sure they which made him god meant not so much,
Nor he in his young godhead practised it;
But when an even flame two hearts did touch,
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His office was indulgently to fit
Actives to passives; correspondency
Only his subject was; it cannot be
Love, if I love who loves not me.
But every modern god will now extend
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His vast prerogative as far as Jove;
To rage, to lust, to write too, to commend;
All is the purlieu of the god of love.
O were we wakened by his tyranny
To ungod this child again, it could not be
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I should love her that loves not me.
Rebel and atheist, too, why murmur I,
As though I felt the worst that love could do?
Love may make me leave loving, or might try
A deeper plague, to make her love me too,
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Which, since she loves before, I am loath to see,
Falsehood is worse than hate; and that must be,
If she whom I love should love me.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Donne (1573–1631)
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.
Stay! or else my joys will die,
5
And perish in their infancy.
’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?
10
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.
Light hath no tongue, but is all eye.
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say: —
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That, being well, I fain would stay,
And that I lov’d my heart and honour so,
That I would not from him, that had them, go.
Must business thee from hence remove?
Oh, that’s the worse disease of love!
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The poor, the fool, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He, which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Donne (1573–1631)
LITTLE think’st thou, poor flower,
Whom I have watched six or seven days,
And seen thy birth, and seen what every hour
Gave to thy growth, thee to this height to raise,
And now dost laugh and triumph on this bough,
5
— Little think’st thou
That it will freeze anon, and that I shall
To-morrow find thee fall’n, or not at all.
Little think’st thou, poor heart,
That labourest yet to nestle thee,
10
And think’st by hovering here to get a part
In a forbidden or forbidding tree,
And hop’st her stiffness by long siege to bow,
— Little think’st thou
That thou, to-morrow, ere the sun doth wake,
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Must with the sun and me a journey take.
But thou, which lov’st to be
Subtle to plague thyself, wilt say —
“Alas! if you must go, what’s that to me?
Here lies my business, and here will I stay:
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You go to friends, whose love and means present
Various content
To your eyes, ears, and taste, and every part:
If then your body go, what need your heart?”
Well, then, stay here: but know
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When thou hast said and done thy most,
A naked thinking heart, that makes no show,
Is to a woman but a kind of ghost;
How shall she know my heart? Or, having none,
Know thee for one?
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Practice may make her know some other part,
But take my word, she doth not know a heart.
Meet me in London, then,
Twenty days hence, and thou shalt see
Me fresher and more fat, by being with men,
35
Than if I had stay’d still with her and thee.
For God’s sake, if you can, be you so too:
I will give you
There to another friend, whom you shall find
As glad to have my body as my mind.
40
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Donne (1573–1631)
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 snored we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
5
If ever any beauty I did see.
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
10
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.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
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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 mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
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Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order