Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. I. Early Poetry: Chaucer to Donne
John Donne (15721631)A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
A
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
‘Now his breath goes,’ and some say ‘No’;
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
’Twere profanation of our joys,
To tell the laity our love.
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Of absence, ’cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Careless eyes, lips, and hands, to miss;
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect as that comes home.
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run,
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.