T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
The Indifferent
By John Donne (15721631)(From Poems, 1633) I CAN love both fair and brown; | |
Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays; | |
Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays; | |
Her whom the country form’d, and whom the town; | |
Her who believes, and her who tries; | 5 |
Her who still weeps with spongy eyes, | |
And her who is dry cork, and never cries. | |
I can love her, and her, and you, and you; | |
I can love any, so she be not true. | |
Will no other vice content you? | 10 |
Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers? | |
Or have you all old vices spent and now would find out others? | |
Or doth a fear that men are true torment you? | |
O we are not, be not you so; | |
Let me—and do you—twenty know; | 15 |
Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go. | |
Must I, who came to travel through you, | |
Grow your fix’d subject, because you are true? | |