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Donne

 

John Donne
1572-1631

 
"The Canonization"

 

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 stamped face
      Contemplate, what you will, approve,
      So you will let me love.

Alas, alas, who's injur'd 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 plaguey Bill?
Soldiers find wars, and Lawyers find out still
      Litigious men, which quarrels move,
      Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
      Call her one, me another fly,
We are 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.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
      And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
      And if no piece of Chronicle we prove,
           We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
           As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
      And by these hymns, all shall approve
      Us Canoniz'd for Love:

And thus invoke us; You whom reverend love
      Made one another's hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
      Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
     Into the glasses of your eyes
     (So made such mirrors and such spies
That they did all to you epitomize,)
      Countries, Towns, Courts: Beg from above
      A pattern of your love!

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