Poetry

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? were we not wean’d till then? But suck’d on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be; If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere. Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone; Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown; Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres Without sharp north, without declining west? Whatever dies, was not mix’d equally; If our two loves be one, or thou and I Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

Busy old fool, unruly Sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains, call on us? Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late schoolboys and sour prentices, Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride, Call country ants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong Why shouldst thou think? I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, But that I would not lose her sight so long. If her eyes have not blinded thine, Look, and tomorrow late tell me, Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me. Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday, And thou shalt hear, “All here in one bed lay.”

She’s all states, and all princes I; Nothing else is; Princes do but play us; compared to this, All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy. Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we, In that the world’s contracted thus; Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be To warm the world, that’s done in warming us. Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere.

For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love; Or chide my palsy, or my gout; My five grey 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.

Alas! alas! who’s injured by my love? What merchant’s ships have my sighs drown’d? Who says my tears have overflow’d his ground? When did my colds a forward spring remove? When did the heats which my veins fill Add one more to the plaguy bill? Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still Litigious men, which quarrels move, Though she and I do love.

Call’s what you will, we are made such by love; Call her one, me another fly, We’re tapers too, and at our own cost die, And we in us find th’ eagle and the dove. The phoenix riddle hath more wit By us; we two being one, are it; So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit. We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love.

As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst 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 trepidation of the spheres, 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.

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 expansion, 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.