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A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING

MOURNING 20

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
While some of their sad friends, do say,

"The breath goes now," and

So let us melt, and make no noise,

some say,

"No."

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;

'T were 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 trepidation of the spheres, 21

Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love

Whose soul is sense

cannot admit

Of absence, 'cause it doth remove

The thing which elemented it.

pure

But we by a love so far refined,

That ourselves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

Care less eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansiön,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd 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 circle just,

And makes me end where I begun.

A FEVER

O! Do not die, for I shall hate

All women so, when thou art gone, That thee I shall not celebrate,

When I remember thou wast one.

But yet thou canst not die, I know;

To leave this world behind, is death; But when thou from this world wilt go, The whole world vapours with thy breath.

Or if, when thou, the world's soul, go'st,
It stay, 't is but thy carcase then ;
The fairest woman, but thy ghost,
But corrupt worms, the worthiest men.

O wrangling schools, that search what fire
Shall burn this world, had none the wit

Unto this knowledge to aspire,

That this her fever might be it?

And yet she cannot waste by this,

Nor long bear this torturing wrong,

For more corruption needful is,
To fuel such a fever long.

These burning fits but meteors be,
Whose matter in thee soon is spent ;
Thy beauty, and all parts which are thee,
Are unchangeable firmament.

Yet 't was of my mind, seizing thee,
Though it in thee cannot persèver;
For I had rather owner be

Of thee one hour, than all else ever.

NOTES