John Donne Selected Poems-7

THE BROKEN HEART.

He is stark mad, whoever says,

That he hath been in love an hour,

Yet not that love so soon decays,

But that it can ten in less space devour ;

Who will believe me, if I swear

That I have had the plague a year?

Who would not laugh at me, if I should say

I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,

If once into loves hands it come !

All other griefs allow a part

To other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;

They come to us, but us love draws ;

He swallows us and never chaws ;

By him, as by chaind shot, whole ranks do die ;

He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

If twere not so, what did become

Of my heart when I first saw thee?

I brought a heart into the room,

But from the room I carried none with me.

If it had gone to thee, I know

Mine would have taught thine heart to show

More pity unto me ; but Love, alas !

At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,

Nor any place be empty quite ;

Therefore I think my breast hath all

Those pieces still, though they be not unite ;

And now, as broken glasses show

A hundred lesser faces, so

My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,

But after one such love, can love no more.

THE ECSTACY.

WHERE, like a pillow on a bed,

A pregnant bank swelld up, to rest

The violets reclining head,

Sat we two, one anothers best.

Our hands were firmly cemented

By a fast balm, which thence did spring ;

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread

Our eyes upon one double string.

So to engraft our hands, as yet

Was all the means to make us one ;

And pictures in our eyes to get

Was all our propagation.

As, twixt two equal armies, Fate

Suspends uncertain victory,

Our souls—which to advance their state,

Were gone out—hung twixt her and me.

And whilst our souls negotiate there,

We like sepulchral statues lay ;

All day, the same our postures were,

And we said nothing, all the day.

If any, so by love refined,

That he souls language understood,

And by good love were grown all mind,

Within convenient distance stood,

He—though he knew not which soul spake,

Because both meant, both spake the same—

Might thence a new concoction take,

And part far purer than he came.

This ecstasy doth unperplex

(We said) and tell us what we love ;

We see by this, it was not sex ;

We see, we saw not, what did move :

But as all several souls contain

Mixture of things they know not what,

Love these mixd souls doth mix again,

And makes both one, each this, and that.

A single violet transplant,

The strength, the colour, and the size—

All which before was poor and scant—

Redoubles still, and multiplies.

When love with one another so

Interanimates two souls,

That abler soul, which thence doth flow,

Defects of loneliness controls.

We then, who are this new soul, know,

Of what we are composed, and made,

For th atomies of which we grow

Are souls, whom no change can invade.

But, O alas ! so long, so far,

Our bodies why do we forbear?

They are ours, though not we ; we are

Th intelligences, they the spheres.

We owe them thanks, because they thus

Did us, to us, at first convey,

Yielded their senses force to us,

Nor are dross to us, but allay.

On man heavens influence works not so,

But that it first imprints the air ;

For soul into the soul may flow,

Though it to body first repair.

As our blood labours to beget

Spirits, as like souls as it can ;

Because such fingers need to knit

That subtle knot, which makes us man ;

So must pure lovers souls descend

To affections, and to faculties,

Which sense may reach and apprehend,

Else a great prince in prison lies.

To our bodies turn we then, that so

Weak men on love reveald may look ;

Loves mysteries in souls do grow,

But yet the body is his book.

And if some lover, such as we,

Have heard this dialogue of one,

Let him still mark us, he shall see

Small change when were to bodies gone.

LOVES DEITY.

I LONG to talk with some old lovers ghost,

Who died before the god of love was born.

I cannot think that he, who then loved most,

Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn.

But since this god produced a destiny,

And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be,

I must love her that loves not me.

Sure, they which made him god, meant not so much,

Nor he in his young godhead practised it.

But when an even flame two hearts did touch,

His office was indulgently to fit

Actives to passives. Correspondency

Only his subject was ; it cannot be

Love, till I love her, who loves me.

But every modern god will now extend

His vast prerogative as far as Jove.

To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend,

All is the purlieu of the god of love.

O ! were we wakend by this tyranny

To ungod this child again, it could not be

I should love her, who loves not me.

Rebel and atheist too, why murmur I,

As though I felt the worst that love could do?

Love might make me leave loving, or might try

A deeper plague, to make her love me too ;

Which, since she loves before, Im loth to see.

Falsehood is worse than hate ; and that must be,

If she whom I love, should love me.