Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

John Donne (1572–1631). The Poems of John Donne. 1896.

Songs and Sonnets

Valediction to his Book

I’LL tell thee now (dear love) what thou shall 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-gravèd 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 the 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,

Transferr’d 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 view’d

At their brightest, but to conclude

Of longitudes, what other way have we,

But to mark when and where the dark eclipses be?