The Dream / John Donne

DEAR love, for nothing less than thee

Would I have broke this happy dream ;

It was a theme

For reason, much too strong for fantasy.

Therefore thou waked'st me wisely ; yet 

My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it.

Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice

To make dreams truths, and fables histories ;

The Dissolution / John Donne

SHE's dead ; and all which die

To their first elements resolve ;

And we were mutual elements to us,

And made of one another.

My body then doth hers involve,

And those things whereof I consist hereby

In me abundant grow, and burdenous,

And nourish not, but smother.

The Damp / John Donne

WHEN I am dead, and doctors know not why,

And my friends' curiosity

Will have me cut up to survey each part,

When they shall find your picture in my heart,

You think a sudden damp of love

Will thorough all their senses move,

And work on them as me, and so prefer

Your murder to the name of massacre,

The Curse / John Donne

WHOEVER guesses, thinks, or dreams, he knows 

Who is my mistress, wither by this curse ; 

Him, only for his purse 

May some dull whore to love dispose, 

And then yield unto all that are his foes ; 

May he be scorn'd by one, whom all else scorn, 

Forswear to others, what to her he hath sworn, 

With fear of missing, shame of getting, torn. 

The Computation / John Donne

FOR my first twenty years, since yesterday,

I scarce believed thou couldst be gone away ; 

For forty more I fed on favours past, 

And forty on hopes that thou wouldst they might last ; 

Tears drown'd one hundred, and sighs blew out two ;

A thousand, I did neither think nor do, 

Or not divide, all being one thought of you ;

Or in a thousand more, forgot that too.

Yet call not this long life ; but think that I

Am, by being dead, immortal ; can ghosts die ?

The Canonization / John Donne

FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ;

Or chide my palsy, or my gout ;

My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout ;

With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ;

Take you a course, get you a place, 

Observe his Honour, or his Grace ;

Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face 

Contemplate ; what you will, approve, 

So you will let me love.

The Broken Heart / John Donne

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?

The Blossom / John Donne

LITTLE think'st thou, poor flower,

Whom I've watch'd six or seven days,

And seen thy birth, and seen what every hour

Gave to thy growth, thee to this height to raise,

And now dost laugh and triumph on this bough,

Little think'st thou,

That it will freeze anon, and that I shall

To-morrow find thee fallen, or not at all.

The Bait / John Donne

COME live with me, and be my love,

And we will some new pleasures prove

Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,

With silken lines and silver hooks.

There will the river whisp'ring run

Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun ;

And there th' enamour'd fish will stay,

Begging themselves they may betray.

The Anniversary / John Donne

ALL kings, and all their favourites,

All glory of honours, beauties, wits,

The sun it self, which makes time, as they pass,

Is elder by a year now than it was 

When thou and I first one another saw.

All other things to their destruction draw,

Only our love hath no decay ;

This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday ;

Running it never runs from us away,

But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

Song: Soul's joy, now I am gone / John Donne

SOUL'S joy, now I am gone,

And you alone,

—Which cannot be,

Since I must leave myself with thee,

And carry thee with me—

Yet when unto our eyes

Absence denies

Each other's sight,

And makes to us a constant night,

When others change to light ;

Song : Sweetest love, I do not go / John Donne

SWEETEST love, I do not go,

For weariness of thee,

Nor in hope the world can show

A fitter love for me ;

But since that I

At the last must part, 'tis best,

Thus to use myself in jest

By feigned deaths to die.

Song : Go and catch a falling star / John Donne

GO and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me where all past years are,

Or who cleft the devil's foot,

Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy's stinging,

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind. 

Self-Love / John Donne

HE that cannot choose but love,

And strives against it still,

Never shall my fancy move,

For he loves against his will ;

Nor he which is all his own,

And cannot pleasure choose ;

When I am caught he can be gone,

And when he list refuse ;

Satire 5 / John Donne

Thou shalt not laugh in this leafe, Muse, nor they 

Whom any pity warmes; He which did lay 

Rules to make Courtiers, (hee being understood 

May make good Courtiers, but who Courtiers good?) 

Frees from the sting of jests all who'in extreme 

Are wrech'd or wicked: of these two a theame 

Charity and liberty give me. What is hee 

Who Officers rage, and Suiters misery 

Can write, and jest? If all things be in all,

Satire 4 / John Donne

Well; I may now receive, and die; My sinne 

Indeed is great, but I have beene in 

A Purgatorie, such as fear'd hell is 

A recreation to,'and scant map of this. 

My minde, neither with prides itch, nor yet hath been 

Poyson'd with love to see, or to bee seene, 

I had no suit there, nor new suite to shew, 

Yet went to Court; But as Glaze which did goe 

Satire 3 / John Donne

Kind pity chokes my spleen; brave scorn forbids

Those tears to issue which swell my eyelids;

I must not laugh, nor weep sins and be wise;

Can railing, then, cure these worn maladies?

Is not our mistress, fair Religion,

As worthy of all our souls' devotion

As virtue was in the first blinded age?

Satire 2 / John Donne

Sir; though (I thanke God for it) I do hate 

Perfectly all this towne, yet there's one state 

In all ill things so excellently best, 

That hate, towards them, breeds pitty towards the rest. 

Though Poetry indeed be such a sinne 

As I thinke that brings dearths, and Spaniards in, 

Though like the Pestilence and old fashion'd love, 

Ridlingly it catch men; and doth remove 

Never, till it be sterv'd out; yet their state 

Is poore, disarm'd, like Papists, not worth hate. 

Satire 1 / John Donne

Away thou fondling motley humorist, 

Leave mee, and in this standing woodden chest, 

Consorted with these few bookes, let me lye 

In prison, and here be coffin'd, when I dye; 

Here are Gods conduits, grave Divines; and here 

Natures Secretary, the Philosopher; 

And jolly Statesmen, which teach how to tie 

The sinewes of a cities mistique bodie; 

Negative Love / John Donne

I NEVER stoop'd so low, as they 

Which on an eye, cheek, lip, can prey ;

Seldom to them which soar no higher 

Than virtue, or the mind to admire. 

For sense and understanding may 

Know what gives fuel to their fire ; 

My love, though silly, is more brave ; 

For may I miss, whene'er I crave,