John Donne (1572–1631). The Poems of John Donne. 1896.
Songs and SonnetsThe Ecstacy
W
A pregnant bank swell’d up, to rest
The violet’s reclining head,
Sat we two, one another’s best.
By a fast balm, which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string.
Was all the means to make us one;
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls—which to advance their state,
Were gone out—hung ’twixt her and me.
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.
That he soul’s language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,
Because both meant, both spake the same—
Might thence a new concoction take,
And part far purer than he came.
(We said) and tell us what we love;
We see by this, it was not sex;
We see, we saw not, what did move:
Mixture of things they know not what,
Love these mix’d souls doth mix again,
And makes both one, each this, and that.
The strength, the colour, and the size—
All which before was poor and scant—
Redoubles still, and multiplies.
Interanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
Of what we are composed, and made,
For th’ atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They are ours, though not we; we are
Th’ intelligences, they the spheres.
Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses’ force to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.
But that it first imprints the air;
For soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.
Spirits, as like souls as it can;
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot, which makes us man;
To affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.
Weak men on love reveal’d may look;
Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change when we’re to bodies gone.