John Donne (1572–1631)

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls to go;

While some of their sad friends do say,

Now his breath goes, and some say, No;

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;

’Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears,

Men reckon what it did and meant;

But trepidations of the spheres,

Though greater far, are innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love,

Whose soul is sense, cannot admit

Absence; for that it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so far refined,

That ourselves know not what it is,

Inter-assurèd of the mind,

Careless, eyes, lips and hands to miss,

—Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show

To move, but doth if th’ other do.

And though it in the centre sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans and hearkens after it,

And grows erect as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circles just,

And makes me end where I begun.