John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (36 page)

Tell her that those whom th’ heavens’ injuries
  Have kept at sea in wandering desperation
Sit down at length, and brag of miseries,
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  The highest measure of their ostentation.
So hath she lost me till my latest glory
Is her content, and my affliction’s story.

Tell her that tears and sighs shall never cease
  With flowing streams, to sink her in conceit,
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Till at the length she pity or release
  The gentle heart that on her eyes did wait,
Pure lights embracing in each other’s scope
The strength of faith and weaknesses of hope.

Thus do I breathe forth my unhappiness,
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  And play with rhymes, as if my thoughts were free,
Wherein if I had power but to express
  Her name, the world would with my griefs agree.
But, idle vein! consume thyself in this.
That I have sworn to bury what she is.   30

Love-Sonnet (I.)

O MADAM, you are of all women true,
Nay virtue’s self, that’s more, for only you
Are that which we imagine to be she;
You, and but you, make virtue here to be;
You, who by binding make us truly free,
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Whose only bondman lives in liberty;
You, in which happy word all things are meant
Excepting wickedness and punishment.
You, that are you, which I love more than I,
In whom my soul can rest, yet I not die;
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Nay lives, by being there, for that’s his place,
I, but a cabinet that keeps your face
  Or model in my heart, for all that’s I
  May in your picture live, in you must die.

Love-Sonnet (II.)

IS there no day, madam, for you? is all
A sullen night? it is not out of choice;
For watchful virtue never did rejoice
In darkness, when it subject was to fall.
But you are led by some unlucky hand
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That guides your feet into a path obscure,
Yet looks that you as steadily should stand
As at noonday, and keep your feet as pure.
O, pardon me; should I be guided so
From light, from truth, and from the sight of men,
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My guides should too late and quickly know
That darkness was the way to Error’s den,
  And he should feel, that barr’d me from the light,
  The best time to revenge my wrongs were night.

A Warning

VICTORIOUS beauty! though your eyes
    Are able to subdue an host
    And therefore are unlike to boast
The taking of a little prize,
Do not a single heart despise.
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It came alone, but yet so arm’d
    With former love I durst have sworn
    That when a privy coat was worn
With characters of beauty charm’d
Thereby it might have ’scaped unharmed.
    10

But neither steel nor stony breast
    Are proof against those looks of thine;
    Nor can a beauty less divine
Of any heart be long possessed
When thou pretend’st an interest.
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Thy conquest in regard of me,
    Alas! is small; but in respect
    Of her that did my love protect,
Were it divulged, deserves to be
Recorded for a victory.
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And such a one—as some that view
    Her lovely face perhaps may say—
    Though you have stolen my heart away,
If all your servants prove not true.
May steal a heart or two from you.
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To the Young Gentlewomen

BEWARE, fair maid,  of musky courtier’s oaths;
  Take heed what gifts and favours you receive;
Let not the fading gloss of silken clothes
  Dazzle thy virtues, or thy fame bereave.
For loose but once the hold thou hast of grace,
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Who will respect thy favour or thy face?

Each greedy hand doth catch to spoil the flower,
  Where none regards the stalk it grew upon;
Each creature loves the fruit still to devour,
  And let the tree to fall or grow alone.
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But this advice, fair creature, take from me;
Let none take fruit unless he take the tree.

Believe not oaths nor much protesting men,
  Credit no vows, nor no bewailing songs;
Let courtiers swear, forswear, and swear again,
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  Their hearts do live ten regions from their tongues;
And when with oaths they make the heart to tremble
Believe them least, for then they most dissemble.

Beware, lest Caesar do corrupt thy mind,
  And foul ambition sell thy modesty;
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Say tho’ a king thou ever courteous find,
  He cannot pardon thy impurity;
Begin with king, to subject you will fall,
From lord to lackey, and at last to all.

Believe your Glass

BELIEVE your glass, and it will tell you, dear,
    Your eyes enshrine
    A brighter shine
Than fair Apollo; look if there appear
    The milky sky,
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    The crimson dye
Mixed in your cheeks; and then bid Phoebus set;
More glory than he owes appears. But yet

… Be not deceived with false alteration:
*    *    *    *    *
    As Cynthia’s globe,
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    A snow-white robe,
Is soonest spotted; a carnation dye
Fades and discolours, opened but to eye.

Make use of youth and beauty while they flourish,
    Time never sleeps;
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    Though it but creeps
It still gets forward. Do not vainly nourish
    Them to self-use:
    It is abuse;
The richest grounds lying waste turn bogs and rot,
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And so being useless were as good were not.

Walk in a meadow by a river-side,
    Upon whose banks
    Grow milk-white ranks
Of full-blown lilies in their height of pride,
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    Which downward bend,
    And nothing tend
Save their own beauties in their glassy stream:
Look to yourself; compare yourself with them—

In show, in beauty: mark what follows then;
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    Summer must end,
    The sun must bend
Its long absented beams to others; when
    Their Spring being crossed
    By winter’s frost,
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And snipped by bitter storms ’gainst which nought boots,
They bend their proud tops lower than their roots.

Then none regard them, but with heedless feet
    In dust each treads
    Their declin’d heads.
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So when youth’s wasted, Age and you shall meet;
    Then I alone
    Shall sadly moan
That interview; others it will not move;
So light regard we what we little love.
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Fortune never Fails

WHAT if I come to my mistress’ bed,
  The candles all eclipsed from shining?
Shall I then attempt for her maiden-head,
  Or show myself a coward by declining?
    Oh no,
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      Fie, do not so;
  For thus much I know by divining,
    Blind is Love,
    The dark it doth approve
  To prey on pleasures panting;
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    What needs light
    For Cupid in the night,
  If jealous eyes be wanting?

Fortune never fails, if she bids take place,
  To second all the fair proceedings;
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Love and she, though blind, yet each other embrace
  To favour all their servants’ meetings.
    Venture, I say,
    To sport and play,
  If in place all be fitting;
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    Though she say “Fie,”
    Yet doth she not deny,
  For “Fie” is but a word of trial.
    Jealousy doth sleep;
    Then do not weep
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  At force of a fair denial.

Glorious is my love, worth triumphs in her face;
  Then too-too bold were I to venture.
Who loves, deserves to live in a princess’ grace;
  Why stand you then afraid to enter?
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    Lights are all out,
    Then make no doubt,
  A woer boldly may take a choosing.
    Beauty is a bait
    For a princely mate.
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  Fie, why stand you then a musing?
    You’ll repent too late,
    If she do you hate
  For love’s delights refusing.

To Mrs. Boulstred

SHALL I go force an elegy? abuse
My wit, and break the hymen of my Muse
For one poor hour’s love? deserve it such
Which serves not me to do on her as much?
Or, if it could, I would that fortune shun—
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Who would be rich, to be so soon undone?
The beggar’s best,  his wealth he doth not know,
And but to show it him increaseth woe.
But we two may enjoy an hour; when never
It returns, who would have a loss for ever?
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Nor can so short a love, if true, but bring
A half-hour’s fear with thought of the losing.
Before it all hours were hope, and all are,
That shall come after it, years of despair.
This joy brings this doubt, whether it were more
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To have enjoyed it or to have died before.
’Tis a lost Paradise, a fall from grace,
Which I think Adam felt more than his race;
Nor need those angels any other hell;
It is enough for them from heaven they fell.
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Beside, conquest in love is all in all,
That, when I list, she under me may fall;
And for this turn, both for delight and view,
I’ll have a Succuba as good as you.
But when these toys are past, and hot blood ends,
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The best enjoying is, we still are friends.
Love can but be friendship’s outside; their two
Beauties differ as minds and bodies do.
Thus I this great good still would be to take,
Unless one hour another happy make,
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Or that I might forget it instantly,
Or in that blest estate that I might die.
But why do I thus travail in the skill
Of despised poetry, and perchance spill
My fortune, or undo myself in sport
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By having but that dangerous name in court?
I’ll leave, and since I do your poet prove,
Keep you my lines as secret as my love.

To a Painted Lady

NOT kiss! By Jove I will, and make impression!
As long as Cupid dares to hold his session
Within my flesh and blood, our kisses shall
Out-minute time, and without number fall.
Do I not know these balls of white and red
    5
That on thy cheeks so amorously are spread,
Thy snowy neck, those veins upon thy brow,
Which with their azure wrinkles sweetly bow,
Are artificial and no more thine own,
Than chains which on S. George’s day are shown
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Are proper to the wearers; yet for this
I idol thee, and beg a luscious kiss.
The fucus and ceruse which on thy face
Thy cunning hand lays on to add new grace
[Deceive me with such pleasing fraud, that I
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Find in thy art, what can in Nature lie.]

Much like a painter that upon some wall,
On which the cadent sunbeams use to fall,
Paints with such gilded art a butterfly,
That silly maids with slow-moved fingers try
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To catch at it, and blush at their mistake,
Yet of this painted fly more reckoning make.
Such is our state, since what we look upon
Is nought but colour and proportion.
Take we a face as full of fraud and lies
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As gypsies in their cunning’st flatteries,
That is more false and more sophisticate
Than are saints’ relics, or a man of state;
Yet this being glossed by the sleight of art
Gains admiration, winning many a heart.
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[But case there be a difference in the mould,
Yet may thy Venus be more choice, and hold
A dearer treasure. Often times we see
Rich Candian wines in wooden bowls to be;]

The odoriferous civet doth not lie
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Within the precious musk-cat’s ear or eye,
But in a baser place; for prudent Nature,
In drawing use of various forms and feature,
Gives unto them the shop of her large treasure,
To fair parts comeliness, to baser pleasure.
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The fairest flowers, which in the Spring do grow,
Are not so much for use as for the show;
As lilies, hyacinths, and the gorgeous birth
Of all pied flowers which diaper the earth,
Please more with their discolour’d purple train
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Than wholesome pot herbs which for use remain.
Shall I a gaudy-speckled serpent kiss
For that the colours which he wears be his?
A perfumed cordevant who will not wear
Because the scent is borrow’d otherwhere?
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The robes and vestments which do grace us all
Are not our own, but adventitial.
Time rifles Nature’s beauty, but sly Art
Repairs by cunning this decaying part;
Fills here a wrinkle and there pearls a vein,
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And with a nimble hand runs o’er again
The breaches dented in by th’ arm of Time,
Making deformity to be no crime.
As, when great men be gripp’d by sickness’ hand,
Industrious physic pregnantly doth stand
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To patch up old diseases, and doth strive
To keep their tottering carcases alive.
Beauty’s a candle-light, which every puff
Blows out, and leaves naught but a stinking snuff
To fill our nostrils with. This boldly think;
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The clearest candle makes the foulest stink;
As your pure food and finest nourishment
Gets the most hot and most strong excrement.
Why hang we then on things so apt to vary,
So fleeting, brittle, and so temporary,
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That agues, coughs, the toothache, or catarrh
(Slight houses of diseases) spoil and mar?
But when old age their beauties hath in chase,
And ploughs up wrinkles in their once smooth face,
Then they become forsaken, and do show
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Like stately abbeys ruin’d long ago.
Nature but gives the model or first draft
Of fair perfection, which by Art is taught
To make itself a complete form and birth;
So stands a copy to those shapes on earth.
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Jove grant me you a reparable face,
Which, whilst that colours last, can want no grace.
Pygmalion’s painted image I could love,
So it were warm, and soft, and could but move.